Green Cheese? No, it’s THE GREEN SLIME (MGM 1969)

We all love a good cheese-fest every now and then, right? Well, THE GREEN SLIME delivers the limburger by the rocket-load, with its rock bottom special effects, silly looking monsters, overwrought dialog, and a cool heavy-metalish theme song (Who was that singer belting out the tune? More on that later!). This MGM/Toei Studios mashup was made with a Japanese crew and American cast, with an Italian pedigree, no less.

An asteroid codenamed ‘Flora’ is hurtling toward a collision course with Earth, and Comm. Jack Rankin is sent to space station Gamma-3 with orders to blow the thing to smithereens. Gamma-3’s Commander, Vince Elliott, holds a longtime grudge against Rankin, and his fiancé Dr. Lisa Benson just happens to be Rankin’s ex. I smell a love triangle brewing! Rankin, Elliott, and other crew members blast off to the asteroid to plant explosives, but there’s this Blob-like, pulsating ooze around gripping their escape vehicles (ominous music plays whenever the slime is shown in close-up!). One of the men wants to bring some of the stuff back, but Rankin smashes his dreams (and the sample), and they barely escape with their lives.

However, a splash of the slime gets on one of their spacesuits and makes it back to the station, and that’s when the fun really begins! The Green Slime gets loose and starts killing people. The stuff feeds on ‘energy’ and reproduces at an alarming rate, creating horrible monsters… well, they’re not so horrible, just midgets in rubber monster suits. Kinda cute, in their own monsterous way. The one-red-eyed, tentacled lil’ demons (that make dolphin-like noises) begin to take over the station, killing everyone in their path by electrocuting them. Can the Green Slime be stopped???

Well, of course it can, but only by evacuating Gamma-3 and blowing the whole thing to kingdom come! This movie is derivative as hell, cobbling pieces of everything from Hawks’ THE THING to IT! THE TERROR FROM BEYOND SPACE , but it does have an endearing goofiness about it that makes it fun for sci-fi fans. Something not many people know (I sure didn’t) is THE GREEN SLIME is an unofficial sequel to Antonio Margheretti’s (aka Anthony Dawson) Italian Gamma-1 movies (WILD WILD PLANET, WAR OF THE PLANETS, etc). The special effects here are even cheezier though, if you can imagine.

Star Robert Horton looks like he’d much rather be home on the range in TV’s WAGON TRAIN than stuck in his space suit. Maybe that’s why his character Rankin is such a prick! Costar Richard Jaeckel (Elliott) seems frustrated having to play second banana once again, though he does get to redeem himself at the conclusion. Luciannna Paluzzi (Lisa) is beautiful, but can’t muster up any emotion for her one-dimensional role. The rest of the cast is a bunch of American actors who were probably on vacation and decided to pick up a quick paycheck. Hey, even actors gotta eat!

Kinji Fukasaku’s direction leaves much to be desired, in fact it’s pretty non-exsistant. He saw better days with 2000’s BATTLE ROYALE. THE GREEN SLIME is a Saturday Matinee flick that knows it, so I can’t really deride it too much. It just is what it is. As for that theme song, the singer belting out that proto-metal tune was Rick Lancelotti. Who, you may well ask? Lancelotti, also known as Rick Lancelot, was a minor 60’s figure who sang covers on TV’s SHINDIG, sang vocals for the kiddie show THE BANANA SPLITS, and worked briefly with rock maestro Frank Zappa. So now you know more about THE GREEN SLIME then you probably ever wanted (or needed) to! You’re welcome!