A Maldição de Zachary

This movie is so fun!! Every scene is good, they connect to each other well, and the gore effects are just outstanding. Many camp movies are unwatchably boring, but this one entertains start to finish. I recommend it highly if you like low budget gore.

"We could use some fresh blood around here," claims a punk-poet inhabitant of the low-rent boarding house where most of SLIME CITY takes place.

As Alex (Craig Sabin) gets settled into his new apartment in Flushing, New York, he meets strange neighbors under the spell of the resident ghost, Zachary. Alex soon learns that Zach has replaced their personalities with those of his long-dead buddies. Alex is warned that he'll be next, and that Zachary was a malevolent mystic and wrote a book of alchemist's recipes called "Flesh Control."

Instead of leaving, Alex eats "Himalayan yogurt" -- some sort of flavored ectoplasm -- and the next morning awakes in a pool of slime. Alex roams the streets and kills people. Among the other flat characters are Nicole (Mary Huner), who dresses in fishnet stockings, works strip joints, has clothed sex with Alex, and murders a one-night stand. Alex's straight-laced girlfriend Lori (also played by Huner) is unaware of Alex's newly acquired personal hygiene problem right up until the point where he tries to kill her.

In the closing sequence, Alex and Lori battle it out. She chops him up but the various disembodied parts start attacking. As Alex's head barks orders, his arms, hands and even internal organs attempt to get her. The wild action is funny at times but poorly staged. Originally shot on 16mm.

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.

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.

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.