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Japan
- U.S. - Italy / 1968
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku
Starring
Robert Horton
Luciana Paluzzi
Richard Jaeckel
Color / 89 Minutes / G
Format: VHS
MGM Home Video
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Music
from the film
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Green
Slime Theme
MP3 format - 1.5 MB
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your mouse pointer over an image for a pop-up caption
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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6
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Commander
Jack Rankin is an asshole. And he's the movie's hero.
Rankin (American TV vet Robert Horton), a
vain, overbearing officer of the United Nations Space Command,
is put in charge of an emergency mission to save our world.
There's been a sudden change in the orbit of a huge asteroid
named Flora — which looks just like a giant plastic meatball
— sending it on a collision course with Earth. With only 10
hours left to avert the ultimate cataclysm, Rankin will lead
an expedition to plant nuclear bombs on Flora and destroy the
asteroid before impact. Prior to the mission Rankin will take
command of U.N. space station Gamma 3 and assemble his team
there.
Time to insert dopey love triangle. Gamma
3's current honcho is Commander Vince Elliot (consummate character
actor Richard Jaeckel), an estranged friend of Rankin and now
engaged to Lisa (Thunderball's
Luciana Paluzzi) — the fiery Italian redhead who's the station's
chief medical officer and Rankin's former lover. The two buddies
had a serious falling out after Rankin ratted out Elliot before
a board of inquiry over a command decision that resulted in
crew fatalities. Lisa's turning to Elliot after the end of her
relationship with Rankin has only made things more awkward.
Rankin could care less, however. With his perfect hair helmet
and cocksure attitude, Cmdr. Hard-ass knows Elliot's a wuss
and that he and Lisa'll be knockin' boots in no time.
But first things first. Rankin's got
a job to do, and it begins with the spray-coiffed alpha male
asserting authority over Elliot's command. (Even wearing a space
helmet can't muss Rankin's 'do.) Within minutes of docking at
Gamma 3
he and his team are aboard one of the station's space cruisers,
heading for the asteroid with Elliot and scientist Dr. Hans
Halverson (Ted Gunther) in tow. They land on Flora to wander
an alien landscape set even cheesier than those on original
Star Trek. (Gravity on the asteroid, for some reason,
is the same as Earth's.) While the bombs are being planted,
Halverson discovers a bizarre form of life — a pulsing green
ooze that generates an illumination within its sludge-like surface.
Despite Elliot's objection Rankin almost abandons Halverson
at blast-off when the scientist is tardy for the rendezvous.
He satisfies himself with smashing Halverson's bio-sample instead.
"You can't take it with you!" he barks, hurling the
sample case to the ground and shattering it. But that's exactly
what theyend
up doing.
With asteroid destroyed and Earth saved, Rankin and the
team return to the space station. Unknowingly, a small chunk
of the gelatinous ooze is brought back on the spacesuit of one
of the men. (Because idiot Rankin broke the sample case.)
While the station's jubilant crew party like it's 1999 — and
Rankin puts not so subtle (or tactful) feelers out to Lisa —
the slime is growing and multiplying, soon to break loose as
a lumbering horde of maladjusted Sid and Marty Krofft characters
who can electrocute humans on contact. The very lives of the
crew at stake, Rankin sees his cue to show everyone who's got
gonads of steel...
The
Green Slime, a Japanese/U.S./Italian
co-production without a single Asian in the cast, is a treat
for lovers of cornball sci-fi schlock. Watching capable actors
spouting ludicrous dialog and playing ridiculous scenes with
totally straight faces is always a ton o' fun. The flick features
some of the crappiest FX I've had the pleasure to snicker at;
these include vehicle and building models that look like children's
toys, rockets that smoke just like in the old Buck Rogers serials,
humorously Freudian spaceship docking and really lame rubber
monster suits.
The best special effect is actually
Horton's hairstyle, which is impervious to any and all adverse
forces. Example: With an automatic door coming down behind him,
our hero has one chance to save himself from being trapped with
the creatures. With split-second timing, Rankin — clearly shown
wearing a strapped-down helmet — turns and does an acrobatic
dive-and-roll maneuver to make it through the doorway in time.
When he jumps up from his roll, the helmet is nowhere to
be seen. And his hair is perfect.
One can't let the movie's groovy rock 'n' roll theme song
go unmentioned, either. I give this so-bad-it's-good clunker
a hearty "Rankin-style" thumbs up!(Why isn't it on widescreen
DVD?) 5/02/01
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