The Green Slime

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.

With a title like "The Green Slime", your expectations for this film are certainly not going to be great. However, despite many knocks against the film other than the title, the overall effort is surprisingly watchable.

The film stars mostly American actors, though it was filmed in Japan and it shows. The sets and rockets are very reminiscent of those you might see in Japanese sci-fi films and Godzilla-type films. This isn't necessarily bad, as for this style of film it is one of the better ones. However, considering that in the US, 2001 was being released as well, then THE GREEN SLIME's special efforts really look shabby in comparison. I am sure that the folks that made this film felt much the same way and cursed 2001's brilliant special effects!

As for the plot, this is generally the best thing about this sci-fi film. The idea of a small and seemingly insignificant organism growing rapidly and taking over a space station is interesting and is reminiscent of movies such as THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN. I am sure that the folks at NASA were also seriously worried about such possibilities. I liked this idea, but unfortunately making this growing green menace look menacing and credible was tough--and the folks who made this film didn't even come close! The green glop morphed into silly looking creatures that looked a lot like the sea monster from "Sigmund and the Sea Monster"! I think if they'd just kept the green slime in the form of a rapidly spreading slime instead of silly electricity-spouting semi-humanoids it would have played out better.

So the overall effort has a lot of cheese as well as a few dumb performances (such as the doctor who needlessly gets himself killed and Richard Jaekel's very inconsistent character) but there is also a bit of charm about it, as this was kind of the last gasp for the 1950s style sci-fi yarn. Now, thanks to better special effects and audiences that expected more, films like THE GREEN SLIME were a dying breed.

By the way, you may recognize the female lead, Luciana Paluzzi. She was one of the Bond villains from THUNDERBALL and she was never lovelier.

I have a special attachment to this film: I was stationed in the Air Force in Japan in 1968 when this was filmed. Most of the cast (with the exception of course of the "name" actors) were U.S. Military personnel or dependents. Bud Widom was an announcer on Armed Forces Radio in Tokyo, and Ann Ault (nurse) directed our theater group (The Kanto Players). She directed me as Dr. Bradley in "The Man Who Came to Dinner". Ann also had a a great voice and appeared as a headliner at the Tokyo Hilton. For the earlier comment, Green Slime HAS been shown on MS3TK. It was, I think, made for it, even though MS3TK was just a dream at the time.

Before you can say, "Sock it to me!" a giant asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. Ivan Reiner, Kinji Fukasaku and the gang get western TV star Robert Horton (as Jack Rankin) to command a mission dealing with the problem. He clashes with future "Oscar" nominated site commander Richard Jaeckel (as Vince Elliott). These two "Gamma 3" rivals both dig luscious doctor Luciana Paluzzi (as Lisa Benson). They decide to land one of their groovy spaceships on the giant rock and lay down some explosives. The mission gets a little hairy, but winds up successful. But the team has inadvertently picked up "The Green Slime" - a bubbly mess that grows into energy eating beasts even "Mr. Clean" can't wipe up!

****** The Green Slime (12/19/68) Kinji Fukasaku ~ Robert Horton, Richard Jaeckel, Luciana Paluzzi, Ted Gunther

I agree that this movie is now entertaining on a bad movie level, but those who say it had to be made as a joke are dead wrong. This came out in a time before America (and particularly American kids) became so f--king "sophisticated". I saw this as a 10 year-old on the big screen when it was released; all us kids were thrilled by the adventure and did NOT laugh. It's a shame that kids today are denied the chance to experience this kind of innocent, totally unsophisticated fun in a theater. You can be smug about how "cheesy" these kinds of movies were, and how much more "sophisticated" we all are now, but on the flip side we didn't have things like school massacres back then, did we?