The Green Slime

source: The Green Slime

I remember as a kid sitting in an old run-down theater watching this movie on a Saturday afternoon and thinking "it doesn't get much better than this". Rocket ships, laser gun battles with deadly aliens, risking your life for the "good of the planet". Of course that was 1968 and this movie looks pretty unspectacular now compared to Star Wars etc. but it is a good example of the "space opera" of that period. A multi-national space station launches a ship toward an oncoming asteroid in the hope of preventing a collision with earth. Lives are risked but in the end disaster is averted and the asteroid is destroyed everyone is safe......but are they? What has been brought back to the station? Can it be stopped in time? Good for those rainy afternoons with the kids, they may even enjoy it, you certainly will.

Yes, I said Japanese. Even though the whole thing was filmed in English with American actors, this is a Japanese production, and its one of the best I've ever seen! Everything about this movie is phenominal from a 60's point of view; I especially liked the Set design, and the costumes. If you like the godzilla type of movies, i suggest you see this at all costs.

The Green Slime starts as the United Nations Space Command (or UNSC for short) detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. The big boss General Jonathan Thompson (Bud Widom) calls in his best man, soon to retire Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton). General Thompson stresses the danger Earth faces, they asteroid (named 'Flora' for some reason) is six million tonnes of space rock that will hit Earth in ten hours & wipe all life out & lets face it it doesn't get more serious than that, does it? Commander Rankin delays his retirement & accepts the mission to destroy Flora. In no time at all Commander Rankin is aboard the 'Gamma 3' space station orbiting Earth, the plan is to land on Flora plant explosives & blow it up, simple eh? Well everything goes OK until an idiot named Michaels (Richard Hylland) starts messing around with some green slime, some of which sticks to his trouser leg. Back aboard Gamma 3 & the team are treated like heroes while their suits go for decontamination. It's not long before the blob of green slime has grown into a large green tentacled alien monster which feeds on energy & will kill any human standing in it's way. Rankin shoots it with a laser gun but it's blood also grows into more slime monsters, soon the entire space station is overrun with the bleeding things... This Japanese, American & Italian co-production was directed Kinji Fukasaku & is as entertaining & fun a film from start to finish as one could wish to watch. The script by Tom Rowe & Charles Sinclair moves along like a rocket & is never boring or dull which is most definitely a good thing. It's all rather silly but that's all part of it's goofy charm & entertainment. The character's are ridiculous, the love triangle between ex best friends Rankin & Commander Vince Elliot (Richard Jaeckel) over Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi) is really cheesy & some of the dialogue & macho posturing between them has to be seen & heard to be believed. The green slime themselves are class, how can you not love the things? The screeching noise they make, the big solitary eye, their lumpy somewhat shapeless bodies & their waving tentacles? OK they are just guys in ill fitting rubber monster suits but they still have to be some of the best & most memorable aliens monsters featured in a film from the period, I mean all monsters from that period were guys in rubber suits, right? One more thing, I didn't think they were slimy enough considering they are the green slime, once fully grown they're rather dry. Director Fukasaku directs as if The Green Slime were a cartoon with bright garish colours, simplistic shapes & basic spaceships & equipment. There's a real psychedelic 60's & 70's feel to the sets, colour schemes & costumes, The Green Slime is anything but futuristic looking. The special effects are an area that everyone seems to bash, well OK that's fine because effects have come a long way in forty odd years & if your one of those people who criticise a film such as Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) because the CGI doesn't look that good then The Green Slime definitely isn't the film for you. Sure I'll admit none of the special effects in The Green Slime are particularly convincing but I've seen worse & once again they just add to the fun rather than take from it. Technically the film is OK apart from some poor (by todays standards) effects work. The widescreen cinematography is impressive & I absolutely love that opening theme tune, where can I buy a copy? The acting isn't great although Paluzzi makes for an attractive love interest. The Green Slime has some unconvincing effects, the acting is rather wooden & the spaceships & equipment used look horribly dated but it has a certain charm, a certain something about it & of course it has the green slime themselves together with they're fantastic song! I throughly recommend it without hesitation.

...who love the campier aspects of this movie, I must beg to differ. More than most of my friends and relatives, I admire a movie that's so bad it's good (please see my Comment re: "Killdozer") but in this case The Green Slime is so bad it's JUST BAD! I can watch a good bad movie (i.e. A Boy And His Dog) every few years and enjoy laughing at it. Green Slime I simply cannot watch for more than 10 minutes, tops. And yet I find that this despicable little piece of slime :-) ISN'T AMONG THE BOTTOM 100!!! It takes an average of 2.6 or below to make it into the Bottom 100. Amazingly, Slime has an average over 4. So I have dutifully cast my IMDb vote of 1 (the worst) today. I URGE THE MOVIEGOING PUBLIC TO JOIN WITH ME IN THIS HEROIC ENDEAVOR TO DEMOTE THIS MOVIE TO THE STATUS IT DESERVES!!! CAST YOUR VOTES WITH ME, FOLKS!!! VOTE 1. DRIVE THE AVERAGE DOWN!!! BOTTOM 100! BOTTOM 100! BOTTOM 100! BOTTOM 100!

A Japanese-American-Italian collaboration on this sci-fi production, mostly revolving around the activities on space station Gamma 3. With a strange meteor on collision with the Earth, Commander Rankin (Robert Horton) is given the Armageddon type plot: blow up the meteor. Upon this mission a moldy piece of green, undulating jello is discovered. A small piece is inadvertently brought back to the station. For the rest of the movie, Rankin and the commander of the space station (Commander Elliot - Richard Jaekel), look for ways to curtail the growing green, moldy jello outbreak. Apparently the mold absorbs all types of energy and can grow a new self from a few cells. With the absorption of energy the jello turns into a mayhem causing six foot tall, two footed, two armed, two tentacled (the ends have pincers on them) asparagus with one giant red eye (that shoots energy out of it). This is a classic B movie archetype, mixed with Godzilla-style models, ships and equipment. Somehow Robert Horton gets the billing over Richard Jaeckel (Hollywood veteran know for many movies including the sarge in the Dirty Dozens). Robert is looking a little worn in this movie, giving anybody wearing a mask of an old Ronald Reagan a run for his money. The conflict arises mostly from these two characters. Apparently the two used to be friends and have since had a falling out. To add to the conflict, is Dr. Benson (ex-Bond girl, Luciana Paluzzi). Apparently Rankin used to date her before, and she is now Vince's fiancé. The acting is typical of most sci-fi B movies, terrible to average. This is mostly ranked up by Robert Horton (GIANT HAM AWARD WINNER) and the extras. Richard Jaekel pulls off his well known straight, tough guy. Luciana provides very little distraction from the doldrum in space and this movie. The addition of some new space age dances (resembling polka dancing on speed) and the intro theme song (flower power remix of green slime) is the Vegeta in this stew. The movie does reasonably well considering the limited budget. The film itself is not very endearing. I recommend it as a mindless alternative to prime time network TV or as a late night cap. Definitely not a keeper. -Celluloid Rehab

Why scoff at a film's limitations? Personally, I prefer to see through to its heart. And at the heart of Green Slime is one of the truly great sci-fi space operas. The storyline distills so much of the best B-grade sci-fi: The plummeting asteroid. The mission to save the planet. The creeping menace, overwhelming the space station, killing everything in its path. The tight-lipped hero, his jealous buddy, and the sexy (but brilliant) babe. The Great Sacrifice at the end... (And don't forget that rousing rock-n-roll theme song!) This is the stuff of great sci-fi. In fact, aside from the Japanese-style production, Green Slime isn't all that different from an episode of Star Trek... except maybe that the science is way more credible. It all seems like cliché, but if you think about it, cliché is something that's been done to death... and with Space Opera, we've never actually had that much of it. (Commander Cody; Rocky Jones... all much worse films than this.) So when a film like Green Slime dares to dish up a huge helping, all I can say is: bring it on! Is it hammy? Are the special effects cheap? Sure. So what? The actors are all third-raters, but they do their best. Are their tongues in their cheeks? I don't know, but if they are, it's done with amazing subtlety. They all LOOK terrifically serious, and that's how they deserve to be taken. If there's a self-parody here, it's a very crafty one. (But somehow I don't think so.) If anything, the tone reminds me of the wide-eyed early sci-fi of Amazing and the other pulps... it takes us back back to a time when adventure was accepted uncritically, before bone-headed cynicism somehow became "cool." Perhaps if the cast WERE Japanese, this film would have a cult attached to it. Maybe we shrewd Occidentals are just too clever to accept the wildness of a Godzilla movie transplanted into our own cultural context. If so, too bad for us.

You have GOT to see this movie to believe it. The music is better (or cheesier) than Austin Powers (Whammy bar electric guitars twang along while a pretentious singer who sounds like Elvis on Ludes wails "Green SLIME! Green Slime!") Richard Jaeckal (of The Dirty Dozen fame) is unintentionally hilarious as the space station Rambo. He grits his teeth every time the camera is on him (no exaggeration!) But the stars of this movie have to be the one-piece, rubber suited, one-eyed monsters with the electric touch. I saw this when I was 15, and I still remember laughing at them, and at the space station hanging on its wires, burning in space (The flames and smoke RISE UP...in space, get it?) All in all, a spectacularly bad movie...so bad its great.

If you've read the other reviews of this movie, then you already know most of the storyline. What "The Green Slime" really is is lots of fun. Groovy '60's mod clothes, Japanese monsters and miniature sets, way out dance celebration scene, all great stuff. And if you pay enough attention to the big picture, you can't help but think that this influenced "Alien"; people trapped in space, with killer creatures that can't easily be killed. It's just that "Alien" had a better budget and better writers. I was lucky enough to see this on the big screen, being as that there is only one print in the US. But it would be fun to rent it some rainy weekend afternoon, with plenty of popcorn and the kids.

Robert Horton was on the downslide and poor Richard Jaeckel was stuck in one more film unworthy of his talents. Luciana Paluzzi....well, with neither talent nor anywhere to slide, I guess she belongs in this movie. It's bright, loud and brassy and everything in the space station screams of the 1960's, including the theme song which has to be the most unusual ever tacked on to a sci-fi film. The color process they used (is it Technicolor?) is so unreal that the whole thing reminds me of a comic book. Watch "Danger,Diabolik" and you'll get that same feeling. Bile greens and mucous yellows.....ugh. The story line is not much but the special effects, frankly, may be better than some of that period. This was made before fx came into their own, so be a little forgiving. The monsters are not very well conceived and they are soooo slow moving. Just watch this one for the fun of it and try to forget how embarrassed the actors must have been mouthing those lines, wearing those outfits and running around in cardboard sets while being pursued (very slowly) by a bunch of green Jello. What a hoot!!