The Green Slime (1968)

An asteroid is headed straight towards Earth, so an emergency plan enlists the dashing and handsome Commander Jack Rankin to save the day. First stop is a space station commanded by his former friend, Vince Elliott. I wonder if a hot, Italian red-head has anything to do with their personal problems.

Anyhow, our team takes another rocket to the meatball ... I mean asteroid, to carefully place explosives into a six inch hole they dug. You can’t just put them anywhere. I mean, science and all. The mission is a success, but a drop of green goo is carried back to the space station. But this is no ordinary green goo. Energy of any kind causes it to grow at an alarming rate. Wiggly rubber monster mayhem ensues.

This film is notorious for it’s campiness. Released the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey, it was never going to get much respect from the Sci-Fi crowd. Burdened with a very 1950’s story and done at a sliver of 2001’s budget, this is a film out of time. Knowing this I think the studio intentionally targeted the camp angle. The film’s title and matching theme song clearly don’t take the material seriously, but there is no indication that the cast and crew were in on the joke. They played it straight and the set pieces and corresponding miniatures were interesting and well designed, although they would occasionally look like they were made by a high school theater troupe on a craft store field trip.

Which takes us to the film’s biggest problem. A space station being menaced by Japanese children in green rubber suits. This might fly in a 1955 drive in, but science fiction was now an artform. Audiences would, at best, giggle at this. I think the filmmakers tried to make a serious film, but they didn’t have the material, the monster, or the timing. And there are more problems here. The character’s confused and annoying backstory, for example. Interestingly, this was a Japan/Hollywood collaboration and the Japanese release omitted the tedious love triangle, shortening the film by about twelve minutes. This could not have been a bad choice.

I wanted to like The Green Slime. But even while ignoring the shadow of Kubrick, we still don’t have a terribly interesting film. It didn’t bring nothing to the table, but still, it didn’t bring a whole lot. It could have been so much closer to mediocre. AMRU 2.5.