The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
Horror, Science Fiction • 1h 24m
Director: William Sachs
Cast: Alex Rebar, Burr DeBenning, Myron Healey, Michael Alldredge, Ann Sweeny, Lisle Wilson, Cheryl Smith, Julie Drazen, Stuart Edmond Rodgers, Chris Witney, Edwin Max, Dorothy Love, Janus Blythe, Jonathan Demme, Westbrook Claridge, DeForest Covan, Samuel W. Gelfman, Bonnie Inch, Mickey Lolich, Keith Michl, Leigh Mitchell, Don Walters, Newell Alexander, Rosemary Alexander, Dave Hull, Jennifer Mulaire
Vinegar Syndrome 4K Blu-ray
Best English-friendly release · updated 1 year ago
UHD tiers
Overview
An astronaut exposed to cosmic rays outside of Saturn's rings returns to Earth and begins to melt away. Escaping from the hospital, he wanders around the backwoods looking for human flesh to eat.
Director: Hal Needham
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
2026 Vinegar Syndrome 4K Blu-ray, 2025 Umbrella 4K Blu-ray
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
88 Films and Vinegar Syndrome have different extras
Director: Trey Parker
Best format: 1080p Blu-ray
UK Refuse Films or US Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray
UK Refuse Films or US Vinegar Syndrome Blu-ray
Both releases have two presentations: sourced from the original Betacam master tapes, and another that uses a filmout of the tapes.
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Director: Elaine May
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Cinématographe 4K Blu-ray
Cinématographe 4K Blu-ray > MoC > Olive Films. From nicolas:
The master is good but it’s not that big an upgrade from the Olive Films disc and Vinegar Syndrome’ encode has some blocky highlights. A shame that they didn’t hire David Mackenzie here.
Olive Films Blu-ray / Masters of Cinema Blu-ray
Cinématographe has unnecessary noise gating not present on the previous releases.
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab)
Vinegar Syndrome 4K Blu-ray see caps
For Blu-ray, UK Second Sight is better than Kino Lorber Blu-ray
Director: Joe Dante
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab) · YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Director: Abel Ferrara
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Vinegar Syndrome 4K Blu-ray in July
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
More Horror on Blu-ray
Director: Julia Ducournau
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Curzon 4K
HDR helps considerably with the deliberately murky aesthetic. VDMS encode is overall very good despite chroma noise in flashback sequences.
Director: Brian De Palma
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Arrow 4K Blu-ray has a better encode than the Kino Lorber and Capelight 4K Blu-rays. Capelight 4K Blu-ray looks low-passed in comparison to the Arrow but is slightly closer to the Arrow in PQ than the Kino Lorber.
Director: Bob Clark
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Scream Factory 4K Blu-ray
UK Arrow 4K Blu-ray in December
Directors: Banjong Pisanthanakun & Parkpoom Wongpoom
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Australia Umbrella 4K Blu-ray encoded by FiM
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray or US Arrow 4K Blu-ray
Both the US Arrow 4K Blu-ray and UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray are better than the horrible grade of the France Le Chat Qui Fume which has blacks looking greenish and milky with some yellow push. However, comparing these two, there's significant tradeoffs; Arrow has less black crush and some shots seems to be better graded but it's worse in some shots with a slight magenta grade; the UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray has a better color grading.
UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray and US Arrow 4K Blu-ray have exclusive extras
Director: John Carpenter
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Universal 4K Blu-ray. Maybe Turbine Blu-ray instead for better audio?
Sources: blog.sporv.com (opens in a new tab)
1997? Signature Collection LD
Good: 2017 Arrow and 2016 Shout! Factory Blu-ray have the original audio options.
the only track on Universal 4K, which is in DTS:X, has a mixing error of around 6dB too low on side channels, otherwise very similar to other 5.1 mixes.
Director: Ridley Scott
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
Theatrical Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray (additional scenes appear to be upscaled)
Original Theatrical 70mm 6-Track Stereo: Fox 4K Blu-ray (DTS-HD MA 4.1)
Original Theatrical 35mm Matrixed Dolby Stereo: 1999 DVD? (2.0 mix on the UHD is a downmix)
2003 Directors Cut: Fox 4K Blu-ray, Fox Blu-ray (DTS-HD MA 5.1)
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
Sources: slow.pics (opens in a new tab) · YouTube (opens in a new tab)
WB 4K Blu-ray see caps and comparison video
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
US Celluloid Dreams 4K Blu-ray
Sources: Blu-ray.com (opens in a new tab)
US Celluloid Dreams 4K Blu-ray caps and detailed QC breakdown
Director: Dario Argento
Best format: UHD Blu-ray
US Synapse 4K Blu-ray or UK Shameless 4K Blu-ray (some may prefer Synapse's grading, while some prefer Shameless's grading)
4.0 track on the Synapse 4K Blu-ray
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