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.

I saw the original video release, not the more recent EI Cinema re-release "Collector's Edition" which cut some scenes that ran too long without adding anything (so I've read). It's true there are some scenes that don't contribute anything: people walking up flights of stairs when we've already learned the building's layout, and the like.

Before the movie started, there was a trailer for Rock and the Money-Hungry Party Girls (1988), which looks pretty awful! Looking on the IMDb at Camp Video's titles, they have a lot of low-budget stuff that doesn't seem to have been widely seen of late. Let's see these put back in print!

Slime City is actually pretty enjoyable in a low-budget gory horror kind of way. Another user mentioned Body Melt and Basket Case, and those are fair comparisons I think, although Frank Henenlotter's Brain Damage might be more accurate than his Basket Case, though without the far-out visuals. Cronenberg may even have been an influence on this director.

A guy and his girlfriend check out a new apartment for him, which his friend helps him move into. His friend affectionately calls him a "slime" for wanting an apartment where maybe he can hook up with women other than his girlfriend, who is a "good girl" or possibly frigid.

Initially it seems the apartment building is full of retirees, but he meets a sexy punk club- goer, and a gloomy garbage-picking poet. The poet serves him some green "Himalayan yogurt" and green alcohol that belonged to the late father of one of the tenants. The poet has blue yogurt, since it's "his color." It looks pretty awful, but tastes pretty good.

After having the meal, and hooking up with the punk girl, the next morning he wakes up covered in clear slime. Later, his skin erupts into a mottled mess, dripping all over, and he's only recognizable because of his clothing. He kills a bum, and is restored to normal.

It turns out that the late old man was an alchemist of some kind, who committed suicide in the basement with his followers, and there is now a collection of colored "yogurts" and wine bottles and books in the basement. Alex is addicted to eating and drinking the stuff, and can't keep anything else down. The movie gets ickier and gooier as it goes on. Recommended to fans of that kind of thing.

A college student rents out an apartment. Strange happenings, occurring in the basement, give way to the student's mental and (literally) physical collapse.

For a zero-budget film, SLIME CITY isn't bad. The apartment building is cheap-looking(with bizzare jars stored in the basement)and odd characters roam the halls.

This is a surreal image of ghetto life, but the film never enters the world of pure satire. It is more concerned with grossing us out(which it often succeeds in doing)and scaring us(which it fails at), than with delivering a bigger overall message.

The acting is sturdy for an amateur production, and the effects are messy but not bad. It is the finished film that I was mostly disappointed with. The story just was not there, and with the lead female playing two parts, the end result is disbelief.

Still, as far as horror movies go, you could do much worse than SLIME CITY. It is just a shame that the makers of the film didn't realize that if they spent just a few bucks more, they could have afforded a real script.

And, when was the last time you saw a place in New York that looked like the inside of this building?

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.

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.