"Open the door you'll find the secret
To find the answer is to keep itYou'll believe it when you find
Something screaming 'cross your mind
Green Slime
What can it be, what is the reason
Is this the end of all that breathes, and
Is it something in your head?
Will you believe it when you're dead?
Green Slime, Green Slime, Green Slime
What can it be, what is the reason
Is this the end to all that we've done?
Is it something in your head?
Will you believe it when you're dead?
Green Slime, Green Slime, Green Slime..."
(lyrics to the theme song from The Green Slime, sung by Richard Delvy)
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If the latter is your situation, I highly recommend you getting
your hands on that DVD as soon as possible, for a nifty little treasure awaits inside
that plastic case. But whether or not you’ve seen it, I’m proud to direct you to the essay I wrote, which was commissioned and freshly posted today by the good and
erudite folks at Trailers from Hell,
no slouches in the appreciation of movies both disreputable and culturally
christened. The Green Slime most
definitely belongs in the former category, though it seems to me its reputation
as a “so-bad-it’s-good” movie, or as simply bad, has been perpetuated largely
thanks to the easily observable fact of its rather obvious rubber monsters and other
less-than-“realistic” special effects.
If you’re willing to take a closer, more open-minded look,
you might discover the movie I loved when I saw it as very impressionable eight-year-old, a movie that holds up delightfully well as a solid piece of
genre filmmaking, one that holds a space station’s worth of visual marvels, provided
you can keep your snark in check and come to the movie on its own terms.
That’s what my Trailers from Hell piece is about. And when I wrote it, I culled lots and lots of
screen grabs from the DVD to provide illustrations, and of course they couldn’t
use them all. And since I have given TFH my piece to publish, I’ve decided to create a
sort of Green Slime gallery here out
of all those extra grabs, all dedicated to the movie’s primally beautiful pop
art wonders, as well as its appeals to childlike imagination which lays dormant
in some viewers, less so in others.
Without further hesitation, I present my Green Slime gallery for your enjoyment
right now—why wait, after all, to enjoy it, or to believe in Kinji Fukasaku’s
nifty movie, until you’re dead?
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The original lobby card from the movie’s 1968 release—I always loved that vaguely mod font used for the logo, as well as the catchphrase “Invaders from Beyond the Stars!”
And the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine that caught my eye long before I ever saw the movie and stoked the fires of my anticipation long before I had a chance to see the movie for myself.
As Richard Harland Smith so astutely observed, "This movie is like the Major Matt Mason Space Station play set come magically to life!"
From this...
...to this...
...and later to this as the Green Slime begin to replicate out of control.
One look at the way Fukasaku stages a simple confrontation between Commander Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel) and Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton), who has usurped Elliott’s authority over the doomed Gamma 3 space station during a time of unprecedented interstellar crisis, reveals that the movie, often dismissed as inept, has actually been directed with a fine eye toward pacing and the way images work together to create dramatic momentum and tension...
...to say nothing of how it manages to work in momentary relief and repose…
…before all hell breaks loose again.
I’ll bet Peter Max loved the shots of men in space in this movie.
The grandeur of The Green Slime’s pop art design at its peak. What a dynamic image, enhanced immeasurably by the sights of hundreds of Slimes swarming the surface of the space station as the surviving humans abandon their posts…
…and send the Gamma 3 into oblivion.
Salute, maestri! Yoku de kimashita!
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