The Revenge of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 3 - The Green Slime

Oh my what a hoot - This Italian/American/Japanese production written by, among other folks, Bill Finger – more famous for the early Batman comic books – Directed by a Japanese director with an American cast and using Japanese special effects this is just an amazing mess from 1968.

Sometime in the future an asteroid is discovered that is about to hit the earth in 12 hours. Jack Rankin – is ordered out of retirement and sent on a mission to destroy said asteroid, without much further ado he rockets off to the space station Gamma 3 who is commanded by his former Friend (until he ratted on him during a hearing) his former Girl (who is now engaged to the Former Friend – a lot of our time will be wasted dealing with the problems of these three people. By the end of the film not enough of them die to suit one.) who is the chief medical officer on the Station.

Once on Gamma Three the FF and Jack and a handpicked crew head off for the asteroid to blow it up. There as the asteroid is being made ready to blow up the scientist who was a late addition to the mission finds- yes – green slime – it moves about blob like and is everywhere – the scientist get excited and puts some of the slime in a Jar ( you can see that this is not going to go well) then just barely manages to get back to the ship before they take off – Jack is ready to leave him but FF makes him wait.

Let’s just be clear here Jack is a colossal dick and acts like a colossal dick to just about everybody except the GF who he’s just smarmy towards. Anyway as the scientist arrives jack has a hissy fit and smashes the jar and we see some of the slime getting on a space suit (oh boy – you know this isn’t going to end well at all)

They blow up the asteroid, Jack acts like a dick and they return to Gamma 3 there they have a party – champagne and everything – and since this was the 60’s the colors are all day glow and hurt you eyes – the Nostro this ain’t.

One thing that made me blink when I was watching it was the bottles being opened - was it really the best use of their limited resources to bring booze onto a space station and if you wanted to maybe not use fragile glass bottles to transport the stuff it. Hey it’s supposed to be the future here!

Anyway at the part Jack acts smarmy to the ex GF (“you don’t love him you pity him”) and then explains to her why he tossed FF under the bus all those years ago – his thoughts are along these lines: “he’s too nice to be a commander. He got people killed trying to save someone because he hates to see people die. Now I can watch people under my command all the live long day and doesn’t bother me a bit” well he didn’t say that bit but in just a few moments, he’s about to show how little he values anybody else’s life.

Seems while the folks are partying – the green slime bit that came back from the asteroid starts growing and growing and offs an extra – Rankin and FF investigate and eventually they find that the slime is now – well – it’s turned into a 4 foot tall or so green Cyclops creature with tentacles that shoot electricity and little feet that move it about. It makes gibbering noises as well. Per the Internet movie data base, the monsters (never more than 3 in any one shot so I guess they only had the three suits) were played by Japanese school children. So either the child labor laws in Japan are a lot different or some kids will do anything to get out of cram school.

After the FF ‘s efforts to capture the creature (for science!) end with folks getting killed. Jack takes over and his plan ends up with other people getting killed (but he wasn’t soft headed about it or something. He’s really unlikable.)

As they battle the green things (I can’t really call them slime because they aren’t any more) they discover that shooting them with lasers isn’t a very good idea as every drop of green ooze that comes out of the creatures can turn into another creature. This is what you would call a bad thing.

Now this film was made in 1968 at the height of the Vietnam war – and I’m not sure if that had anything to do with not so much the plot point but the reaction of Jack and the FF to the discovery that using lasers only makes things worse – they keep shooting the beasts with lasers for the rest of the movie. It’s like yes this won’t work but we can’t think of anything else to do so we’ll just keep doing thing just in case . I may just be showing my age but that described a lot of Viet Nam in a nutshell.

Anyway after much tooing and froing where the aliens multiply and each attempt to confine them fails until Jack finally orders the evacuation of the base (he’s assumed command under the orders that allowed him to boss folks about to destroy the asteroid. ) the FF blows his stack and Jack has him arrested – the plan is to now evacuate the space station and then send towards earth were it and the little green folks will burn up - there is a bit where the aliens are trying to hitch a ride on the shuttles so FF (who gets let go – I don’t care why neither will you) and several others don space suits and one of the movies sillier set pieces (and that is saying something) start shooting the green guys with the lasers that don’t work on them.

The movie ends with Jack going to the control room alone surrounded by the little green guys where he needs to do something all science fiction heroes do at the end of the film – throw a switch of some sort to do something. When all hope seems lost FF comes to the rescue allows Jack to be the man and then to prevent any sort of embarrassing plot lines left untied – gets killed by one of the green guys.

The film ends with Jack presiding over the funeral of FF – the ex GF looking on with an unreadable expression and the theme song starting up (which is pretty groovy in a 60’s way and has nothing to do with the film’s story they just told the song writer the title Green Slime and let him go at it).

Really with the insane level over acting and the just the silliness of the monsters it’s a lot of fun – a guilty pleasure of mine for sure.

There really isn’t a good green slime food that I can think of – so guacamole and chips it is.