Slime City

My review was written in May 1988 after a midnight screening in Greenwich Village.

"Slime City" is a minor horror title with spoof elements, shot in Brooklyn on a $50,000 budget. Currently unspooling midnights in Greenwich Village, it is destined for fringe audiences.

Title promises more than is delivered, in a tale of an apartment building whose denizens aren't what they seem. Student Robert C. Sabin moves in and after dining with a poet neighbor starts dripping slime from his forehead, his face starting to look like a pizza via makeup effects. Goopy look is only temporary but returns and Sabin turns into a murderous monster.

An occultist named Zachary was the cause of the problem, having turned the inhabitants of the building into monsters who possess their victims' bodies. Pastel-colored concoctions stored in the basement do the trick.

Pic climaxes in a repulsive, extended scene of grotesque makeup effects where heroine Mary Huner awkwardly hacks Sabin into little pieces but he just won't die. The fact that when his entrails spill out they look just like a breakfast of sausage and eggs appears to be tongue-in cheek.

Lighting and sound recording are amateurish but the film plays acceptably, with tolerable acting. A harsh jump-cut (scene deleted) during a dinner scenes with the heroine's paretns is jarring and ineffectual.

Sabin is a bland antihero, but Huner shows promise in her dual role as heroine and contrasting vamp in black Nicole, who seduces the hero.

Take a bit of BRAIN DAMAGE, mix with a bit of STREET TRASH, shake well and then pop it in the oven until overdone and the result is SLIME CITY! Hey that is not meant to be a putdown . . . I actually like this movie and not just because the apartment where most of it takes place is a dead ringer for the first New York apartment I lived in!

Seriously now, the story involves Alex (Robert Sabin) art student who moves into a building that has seen better days. The owner/landlady is happy he moved in, a little TOO happy and the tenants are all more than a little weird. Oh well, any old port, right?

The neighbour Ramon offers the new tenant a cup of some green stuff which he calls "Tibetan Yogurt" and some green wine which he calls "an elixir" which knocks Alex flat after a single sip. It isn't long before he has nightmares about a mysterious black robed figure and hallucinates that he seduces his sexy neighbour. Then again, maybe it ISN'T a hallucination. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Are we venturing into ERASERHEAD territory?

Actually no we aren't because existentialism soon takes a back seat to supernaturalism. Alex wakes up after his prolonged nightmare and discovers his body is melting! Stumbling down the street he flies into a rage and beats a street tramp to death. Hardly has the unlucky victim gasped out his last breath before Alex returns to normal. This isn't the end of his troubles though . . . oh no we have many more reels to unspool before this is over. Those few sips of the strange green fluid have hooked him on the strange elixir and melting soon becomes a regular occurrence which only violent murder can reverse. Alex's girlfriend (Mary Huner) and his frat boy ex-roommate pal are very concerned but can they save him or will they become his victims?

This movie is now available on DVD and many of you will probably want to discover it for yourself so I will not spoil all the surprises, of which this film has many. Somehow the plot covers murder, suicide, Satanism and reincarnation and never loses its coherency. Gore is relatively mild until the end and that's where all the stops are pulled out. My only regret is that I never got to see this movie at a late night screening with a bunch of stoned, drunk college students. THAT would have been a treat indeed.

Director Gregory Lamberson did a very good job with the limited resources he had. After almost 20 years this film is finally finding its audience. I hope it does well.

I watched this movie a few weeks ago. Like most people on here I think it deserves about a 5 out of 10. The first kill is definitely not expected, suddenly he just starts melting and kills a homeless man, which instantly made me want to see the rest of it. He killed the homeless man with some blunt weapon and was just beating his skull in, pretty awesome. I was impressed with the acting of the main characters best friend the most. The story was original, I've never seen anything like it before. The final scene was interesting to say the least and unfortunately the special effects weren't as good as the first kill but needless to say this is a cult classic that you should give a chance.

College student/video store employee Alex (Robert C. Sabin) gets an apartment with the hopes the privacy will allow him to get it on with his virgin girlfriend Lori (Mary Huner). Things change, however, when his neighbor Nicole (also Huner), a goth temptress, seduces him and makes him drink this green elixir. Soon Alex starts sweating orange slime and the only thing that can return him to normal is human blood. Turns out everyone in the tenement are occult followers of a guy named Zachary and Alex's body is going to be the host for his return.

This is really cheap and makes something like BASKET CASE (1982) look slick by comparison. But like Henenlotter's film, there is a certain charm in the capturing of sleazy era 1980s NYC. The highlight of the film is definitely the effects work by Scott Coulter and some of it (especially the end meltdown) is totally gross. Director Gregory Lamberson, unfortunately, lets the effects down with his really flat direction and the film would have benefited from some STREET TRASH level inventiveness (that film's director, Jim Muro, worked on this as a steadicam operator). Sabin is an odd choice for a lead, mostly because he has a lisp that makes him sound like Sylvester the cat when he gets mad. Huner really surprised me as I had no idea she played both lead female roles until the end credits. Lamberson recently completed the sequel SLIME CITY MASSACRE, which brings Sabin back.

I agree the numerous comparisons with "Street Trash" are very justified, but personally I think "Slime City" is a far more interesting and 'better' film because the characters in this film are at least sympathetic and the overall elaboration is definitely more appealing than "Street Trash", which is – in my humble opinion – a hideous and nearly unwatchable production. At least "Slime City" benefices from a much more pleasant & cheerful atmosphere, greatly inspiring music and the light-headed direction by Greg Lamberson! This is a terribly poor and laughably inept film, of course, but it certainly doesn't fail to entertain fans of cheap 'n cheesy 80's smut. The camera-work and editing are rudimentary and very amateurish, but the gore effects are incredibly grotesque and the storyline is too demented for words. The promising young painter Alex moves into an old apartment building, unaware that the other tenants are reincarnated disciples of a Satan-worshiping alchemist who committed suicide in the building's basement. Through eating bright-colored pudding, drinking vaporous wine and enjoying sexual contact with the luscious neighbor, Alex mutates into a sticky monster who kills homeless guys, prostitutes and ghetto hoodlums. His only hope for rescue lies in the hands of his virgin girlfriend Nicole, but she loves Alex too much to ever hurt him. "Slime City" surpasses the average 'so-bad-it's-good' 80's horror film; it's a genuine trash and crap FEAST! We're talking characters (like the hilarious prostitute) that patiently wait around for monstrous Alex to kill them, obtrusive spiritual media that pop up unasked and out of nowhere, incompetent police detectives that couldn't even prevent a crime if it happened right under their noses and body parts that continue to function after being separated from the torso. The climax is particularly outrageous (in a gooey way) and over-the-top hilarious. The acting performances are abominable, but you wouldn't expect it any other way, the whole thing is simply too insane to feature any tension and the vintage 80's soundtrack is too fabulous for words. If you like Troma films, Frank Hennenlotter's Indie-flicks and other no-budget crap from the 80's, "Slime City" is the ideal purchase for you. It would be a crime against good taste to rate this movie any more than 5 out of 10, but this is one of those times you shouldn't exclusively focus on the rating.