The Green Slime

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. We'll need an extra leak-proof liner for this one.

The Green Slime (Kinji Fukasaku, 1968)  "The Green Slime ARE Coming?" Shouldn't that be "The Green Slime IS Coming?"

 

Well, believe me, the poster grammar is the least of this movie's problems. 

 

The Green Slime was an indirect follow-up to four low-budget Italian science fiction films* entailing a future Earth space station called Gamma One. The same models were used for the miniatures, but the station was re-christened Gamma Three, and the script and financing were provided by M-G-M in the U.S. The film was made in Japan, directed by Kinji Fukasaku with a Japanese crew and starring Western actors Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi and Richard Jaeckel, as well as control rooms full of ex-pat Western actors and U.S. military crew stationed in Japan. As the film was intended for international markets, they didn't bother doing sound recording while filming, so that everything—and I mean everything—was dubbed later on in a studio. It's just one of the things that gives the film a bizarre feeling of desperation.

Seems Earth has a problem: the asteroid Flora 80 is on a collision course with our planet and if it's allowed to hit it will create "an extinction-level" event. Ben Affleck not being born yet, and Robert Duvall unavailable trying to get James Caan on the Moon in Countdown, the Space Command sends Commander Jack Rankin (Horton) to Gamma Three to "blast the thing out of the sky" to which Rankin replies with a stalwart "thumbs up"—his go-to when he's trying to be positive.

When he gets to the station, he immediately shoves the station's in-command, Commander Vince Elliott (Jaeckel) out of rank, saying that until the asteroid's out of the way that he's in command of the station (dammit!) and anybody doesn't like it, well, there's the airlock outside over there. Vince sucks it up, this being an emergency and all...and because he's now involved with Rankin's old girlfriend, Dr. Lisa Benson (Paluzzi), who's in charge of "Medical" there on the station, so, hey Vince is "one-up" on Rankin.

Rankin, Elliott, and a team of technicians set off for the asteroid Flora, land and begin setting explosive charges to blast the thing out of the sky (as per orders), but inquisitive scientist Dr. Hans Halvorsen (Ted Gunther) finds some green goo that he just finds fascinating and wants to take a sample to examine aboard the station ("New life" and all that...). But, Rankin, knowing full-well that they're sitting on a "ticking time-bomb" nixes any "shilly-shallying" from egg-head scientists and knocks the container out of Halvorsen's grasp. 

Yee-ahhh, about those command skills. Good instincts, but bad technique. The sample shatters and some of that glop falls on one of the crew's suits, allowing it to get onboard the station, where, because it feeds on energy (allowing it to survive on a rock in space, I suppose), the station's decontamination procedures only manages to feed it, and make it grow into big, bulbous, one eyed creatures with claw-arms (ELECTRICAL claw-arms!) that wouldn't have passed the laugh-test for the show-runner of the really early "Doctor Who" shows.

Of course, they need time to grow from their ooze-state, so much time is spent monitoring Flora blowing up, and having a celebratory soiree where the music ain't good and the dancing's even worse, but given enough of that 1960's movie staple, the gyrating posterior shot. And, it gives Rankin, Elliott and Benson a chance to spell out everything they already know about each other, and for Rankin to pull a dick-move and ask Benson for a slow-dance right in front of her current lover. Everybody's probably wondering how soon they can get this jerk off the station!

But, no such luck! Pretty soon, the lights start flickering, which can only mean one thing! The Power station! And something's wrong! They find the burned still-smoking corpse of one of the technicians and Benson displays her considerable medical knowledge by announcing "He's dead." But, no time for mourning yet, kids, because one of those bulbous Green-Slime things is just around a conduit and starts to whip those electric arms around, killing a bunch of anonymous guys with ray-guns and football helmets. The lasers can't kill it, and if the thing bleeds, it just makes more of them, so the best the station can do is try to isolate the things...except...they forget about the station's ventilating system. Pretty soon, the things are schlumpfing all over the station, even in the hospital.

Since the things eats energy, laser guns have little lasting effect, so the best alternative is right out of the Superman TV-Villain handbook: to throw something at it, like hospital beds (they use a lot of those, it seems to be the most effective weapon), or if your laser gun—which only makes them stronger, remember—jams or runs out of...laser, I suppose**...you can throw that at them, too. If it jams in their eye, it's quite effective, apparently.

I mock, of course, because there is no way one could confuse this with high art—this came out the same year, and from the same studio, as 2001: a Space Odyssey (which was intended to be "the proverbial good science-fiction movie")—and The Green Slime has all the hallmarks of the proverbial bad sci-fi flick—the antiseptic art design, the "best-we-can-do" special effects, the stentorian acting (to keep from laughing), and a sensibility that can best be described as—to use a highfalutin' word—"puerile."*** That means it would merely impress children...or the child-like. I'm way past that sell-date to be impressed.

There are some notable things about it however. It's one of the few screen credits of William Finger, who spent most of his life in obscurity writing for comic books. Obscure, except for one co-creation of great significance for which he was denied credit for decades (until recently, that is). Bill Finger, along with artist Bob Kane, co-created the character of "Batman." That Batman. He wrote a lot of the defining stories of the Batman character (as well as co-creating Robin, Alfred, and quite a few of the major villains) from its origins in 1939 through to the 1960's. At least, he got credit for The Green Slime.

The director, Kinji Fukasaku, had been directing for seven years and really wasn't a slouch and was quite highly regarded. In fact, the next year, he replaced Akira Kurosawa (!!) as the director of the Japanese sequences of Tora! Tora! Tora! (!!!) and in 2000, he would write and direct a genuine classic, Battle Royale, which, whether directly or indirectly, served as inspiration for "The Hunger Games" series.

Another amazing fact and landmark about it is this: The Green Slime was the first movie skewered on "Mystery Science Theater 3000", serving as the show's pilot episode. If, for nothing else (okay...for nothing else), it has some significance.

* The first of the series was Wild, Wild Planet...or as it's known in Italy, I Criminali Della Galassia ("Criminals of the Galaxy").

** Or..maybe...the animator who draws the laser beams runs out of ink. 

 

*** See what passes for women's fashion in these things—short skirts, tight, shimmery fabrics, nothing you'd want to wear.  

 

Yeah. No. No, really.