Oct 101968
 
two reels

Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton) volunteers for a mission to destroy an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. But while planting the explosives, the team accidentally picks up a piece of alien slime which grows into deadly monsters when taken to the space station. Rankin must stop the slime, as well as deal with his uneasy relationship with the station commander and ex-best friend, Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel), and his ex-girlfriend, Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi), who is now Elliott’s fiancée.

While a Japanese-American co-production, The Green Slime is mostly influenced by its Italian writer and producer, Ivan Reiner. Certainly there is little of director Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) to be found, though the special effects of his countryman, Akira Watanabe, known for his work in Godzilla features, is evident in the rubber-suited monsters. Reiner had previously applied his interesting talents to the Italian space station “epics,” Wild, Wild Planet, The War of the Planets, and The Snow Devils. The Green Slime could easily be thought of as part of that series. Just change the name of the station to Gamma 1. It’s the same cheap sets, the same rockets that look like toys, the same groovy future, and the same testosterone-filled, irritable leads. Were 1960s males always suffering from PMS, or is there some sociological explanation for their sullen, irrational behavior?  Was being ill-tempered thought of as a positive male trait in 1968?

The Green Slime does fly above its competition with its psychedelic theme song. It could be played at any concert between Incense and Peppermint and Eight Miles High. It’s the perfect start to the film, announcing loudly that nothing in the next hour and a half should be taken seriously.

I was pretty excited as a child when The Green Slime screened locally, though even then I knew something wasn’t right with the film. I can be pretty forgiving of horrendous special effects, ludicrous science, and silly monsters, but there is only so much bickering I can handle before becoming annoyed. The Green Slime is bogged down in an unnecessary and constantly intrusive love-triangle subplot. As Rankin is an unlikable guy (again, I’m trying to fathom if the filmmakers thought this guy was sympathetic or just couldn’t write reasonable characters), any time spent on him swiping back his girl is tiring.

The shorter Japanese cut removes much of the squabbling between the always-right Rankin (though his tantrum-inspired breaking of the specimen jar caused the whole problem) and the always-wrong Elliott, but at the cost of the theme song. That’s too high a price.