Text and Subtext 21: Body Melt

It’s been a while, but school is over, so here we are with another Tubi Trash recommendation. This one, however is good trash. BIZARRE trash, but good trash.

Body Melt is akin to a lot of other 80/90s cheesy schlock in that’s it’s schlock that’s making an attempt at a social statement of sorts. Like Deathspa, this particular gem - a gooey gem, at that - lampoons the 80s & 90s health and vitamin supplement movement, with a corrupt health and wellness company at the center of the plot, using a small, perfect, utopian Australian suburban town as a testing ground for a new health and body-shaping supplement.

We don’t need to go into the plot, really. It being a horror movie about how a societal fad is taken advantage of by an amoral corporation for monetary gain, you can fill in the blanks: body horror. Gooey, gross, disturbing, gooey (did I already say that?), and sometimes hilarious (see erection explosion) body horror. There’s also this weird and bizarre (but eventually relevant) side-plot about an inbred Australian outback family, too.

Anyway. Get to the gym, eat a salad, pass on the vitamin supplements, and watch Body Melt on Tubi today.