Body Melt 1993

In the movie, Ryan, an employee at the Vimuville health spa, begins his day with the urgent mission to warn the residents of Pebbles Court in the Melbourne suburb of Homesville about a dangerous experiment involving their illegal new vitamins. As Ryan sets out early in the morning, his lover and Vimuville’s manager, Shaan, [Suzi Dougherty], becomes suspicious of his intentions. She cunningly administers him a massive overdose of the vitamins, which triggers a terrifying mutation process that causes his body to change uncontrollably. In his desperate attempt to reach Pebbles Court and deliver a warning, Ryan speeds wildly through the streets, breaking traffic laws in his frantic rush to warn others. He tries covertly to record his message on a dictaphone, but tragically, his efforts end in a crash, ejecting him violently through the windshield of his car. As he lies injured, tentacles begin to sprout from his throat, wrapping around him and smothering him to death. Before the police can arrive at the scene, the tentacles retreat back into his body, leaving a horrifying aftermath.

Veteran detective [Gerard Kennedy], Det. Sam Phillips, along with his rookie partner [Andrew Daddo], arrive to investigate this mysterious death. Their initial inquiry, however, uncovers no immediate evidence of foul play at Vimuville, allowing Shaan to continue her sinister plans. Despite warnings from her business partner and the local doctor, [Ian Smith], Dr. Carrera, who was involved in developing the vitamins, she pushes forward, risking others’ lives. The first victim is Cheryl Rand, a young pregnant woman whose bizarre and gruesome death involves her placenta detaching and recklessly crawling around their home before exploding her abdomen. Her husband, Brian Rand, [Brett Climo], is wrongly accused of her murder. Meanwhile, Dr. Carrera encounters their next-door neighbor, [William McInnes], Paul Matthews, who was also given the vitamins. He discovers Matthews with the lower half of his face decayed and attacking him with superhuman strength, ripping off his own ear before Carrera can inject him with a deadly sedative. Carrera, however, forgets to take the vial of sedative with him when fleeing, leaving police to find it along with Matthews’ torn ear and his deteriorated body.

The story unfolds further with a subplot involving two young residents, Sal and Gino, who attempt to visit Vimuville to become sperm donors but end up lost at a farm owned by Pud, played by [Vincent Gil]. Pud is revealed to be a disfigured former colleague of Carrera, and his own family’s grotesque mutations are a result of experimenting on themselves with the vitamins. Pud confesses that he intentionally left out a crucial part of the vitamin formula, which makes the vitamins lethal to anyone who consumes them. As the chaos escalates, Shaan’s workforce continues her plan by secretly lacing food with the potent vitamins and offering it to the residents of Pebbles Court, despite warnings from Dr. Carrera that more testing is needed. Elloise Noble, [Amanda Douge], forestalls eating the food, being on an organic diet, but her brother Brandon, [Ben Geurens], becomes the first to succumb after a rollerskating accident, his body disintegrating overnight.

The death toll rises as members of the Noble family fall victim to the mutating effects. Mr. Noble, [Adrian Wright], begins uncontrollably sneezing, causing his head to dissolve in mucus. Elloise desperately seeks help but soon realizes she, too, has been affected, muttering Vimuville’s slogan incoherently with her face half-melted. Her frantic attempt to alert her mother, Angelica, [Suzi Dougherty], who was also poisoned, culminates in her mother’s gruesome death when her tongue extends several feet and chokes her. As chaos engulfs them, Shaan continues her experiments, feeding the family contaminated food, unware that she herself has fallen prey to the mutating vitamins.

Detective Phillips and Johnno confront the chaos at Vimuville, discovering it utterly abandoned and filled with mutated, dead employees. Dr. Carrera arrives to find the horror, ultimately taking his own life to escape the nightmare. The police investigators find no way to stop the spread as Brian Rand, having ingested the vitamins, explodes in a violent vomit attack before dying, with death now classified as “hypernatural causes.” In a disturbing final scene, the vitamins are shown on shelves in a local store, revealing they had already been distributed before Vimuville shut down, leaving open the terrifying possibility that the deadly supplements could still threaten others.

“They might have just played with something they didn’t understand,” as the plot thickens around the deadly, mutated vitamins and the catastrophic consequences of scientific hubris.