← Back to Reviews
in
Oh yeah. It's The Green Slime, bitches!
A wonderful thing happened one night in the early 1980s, when Young Wooley was a wee lad of, say, eleven. He turned on his TV one night, about two years after his parents had given up on silly notions like "bed-times" and "age-appropriateness", and there was a pale, curvaceous, awkward, funny, cleavage-spilling vamp pouring out of the TV and into his nascent sexuality and young Horror and Fantasy-afflicted mind.
Elvira had arrived.
And young Wooley was transfixed and forever changed.
And as he sat glued to the television that night and watched, stunned, as this siren faded to black with the words, "Unpleasant dreams...", he was assaulted by this:
... and another wonder was forever burned into his soul.
I believe I liked the movie, I certainly never forgot it, but I can tell you that I was still able to sing the theme song 20, 30, almost 40 years later. And I think I re-watched it even, like 15 years ago or something, though after revisiting it the other night, I cannot swear that that had actually ever happened.
Could The Green Slime hold up? Gather' round I will tell you now of my experience.
First of all, what is The Green Slime? Well, imagine if Armageddon and Aliens were the offspring (conjoined twins?) of an hermaphrodite that is half each of those films. Which is to say that an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth and a crew is sent up to land on the asteroid and blow it up with a nuclear bomb. No joke, that is the plot of this movie, 30 years before Armageddon. But also the whole ship gets infiltrated by unstoppable aliens who creep around the ducts and kill people. Of course, they start out as... well, Green Slime, but quickly build up into huge invincible alien-monsters who, silly as they may look, are also cool in my extremely stoned opinion...
This movie opens with some of the most obvious, hilarious miniatures in science fiction history. Here are some comments I made in my notes about them...
"Holy shit, some of these wide shots look like a picture of a child’s erector set on Christmas morning after dad spent the whole night putting it together."
"I would swear there were just Legos on the screen a moment ago."
"I am literally watching children’s toys fly and roll around on the screen."
"The “air tanks” slightly out of focus in the foreground are actually the nitrous oxide cartridges better known as Whippets."
... and yet… I’m not mad about it. There’s something really enjoyable about 1960s ultra-low-budget sci-fi aesthetic and, as cheap as this is, it’s just got some odd charm that I found endearing. Perhaps this would not be true if the movie were worse, but... there's actually a lot to like here. And I mean a lot. I think if you only watched the indoor/on-set scenes of this movie, you would think it was actually a pretty good movie.
For starters, the two main characters (male) are just way more interesting than they ought to or need to be. One of them I will simply refer to as The Jaw. Like this was the conversation:
Director to Casting Director: “Go out and get me a JAW!”
But The Jaw is actually kinda convincing.
And I was really digging this very adult, mature behavior and complex personal relationship between the two male leads... until it totally devolves into alpha-male dominance and beta-male failure, which I thought was actually a pretty neat subversion of my expectations, but also totally how it probably happens in real-life instead of the movies. The Jaw seems kinda heroic and selfless and maybe even misunderstood early on when there's a setup that there's some reason people actually don't want him for this mission. And it turns out, as the movie unfolds, that it's because The Jaw is just a straight-up alpha-male dick. The more pressure put on, the more he reverts to being a domineering jerk. But then his sort of second-in-command-by-default seems like a guy who has gotten an unfair rap as a beta-male and will obviously end up being heroic and shine and save the day in the end... except that he doesn't he goes into total beta-male fail. He even loses the girl and gets himself killed!
I found all of this rather clever honestly. The writers obviously never saw Pretty In Pink. And It is so obvious that the actors, at least the two leads, think they’re making a much better movie than they are… so they do.
A few other notes:
I resent that the Scientist is the stupidest person in this movie. This motherf*cker insists on playing with the damn Green Slime on the asteroid and he inadvertently brings it back onto the ship... but worst of all, he's one of these no-don't-kill-it-we-must-study-it idiots that ends up getting himself and everybody else killed. I mean, I am a scientist and I was not mad when this scientist got demolished by The Green Slime.
Neat use of reversing the film (several times but always effective) so The Green Slime looks like it’s climbing up.
Rotoscoping! Woot!
I dig that the reaction of the doctors to the threat is to protect their patients. Cuz I went through Katrina AND COVID and that’s what doctors do. I think twice in the movie, the injured in the sick bays are threatened and the doctors refuse to leave and stay by their patients and even get between their patients and The Green Slime. Because that's how we do it.
All of these things are great and I found myself really, really enjoying The Green Slime. At one point I wondered, “Is this going on too long” but then I realized it was kinda perfect. But finally, and most importantly, I had to ask myself, "Does the movie work as a Sci-Fi/Horror Adventure?" Which, if you're high enough, it totally does.
My final position is that The Green Slime may be the best movie ever made.
I recommend everyone watch The Green Slime immediately.
Oh yeah. It's The Green Slime, bitches!
A wonderful thing happened one night in the early 1980s, when Young Wooley was a wee lad of, say, eleven. He turned on his TV one night, about two years after his parents had given up on silly notions like "bed-times" and "age-appropriateness", and there was a pale, curvaceous, awkward, funny, cleavage-spilling vamp pouring out of the TV and into his nascent sexuality and young Horror and Fantasy-afflicted mind.
Elvira had arrived.
And young Wooley was transfixed and forever changed.
And as he sat glued to the television that night and watched, stunned, as this siren faded to black with the words, "Unpleasant dreams...", he was assaulted by this:
... and another wonder was forever burned into his soul.
I believe I liked the movie, I certainly never forgot it, but I can tell you that I was still able to sing the theme song 20, 30, almost 40 years later. And I think I re-watched it even, like 15 years ago or something, though after revisiting it the other night, I cannot swear that that had actually ever happened.
Could The Green Slime hold up? Gather' round I will tell you now of my experience.
First of all, what is The Green Slime? Well, imagine if Armageddon and Aliens were the offspring (conjoined twins?) of an hermaphrodite that is half each of those films. Which is to say that an asteroid is hurtling toward Earth and a crew is sent up to land on the asteroid and blow it up with a nuclear bomb. No joke, that is the plot of this movie, 30 years before Armageddon. But also the whole ship gets infiltrated by unstoppable aliens who creep around the ducts and kill people. Of course, they start out as... well, Green Slime, but quickly build up into huge invincible alien-monsters who, silly as they may look, are also cool in my extremely stoned opinion...
This movie opens with some of the most obvious, hilarious miniatures in science fiction history. Here are some comments I made in my notes about them...
"Holy shit, some of these wide shots look like a picture of a child’s erector set on Christmas morning after dad spent the whole night putting it together."
"I would swear there were just Legos on the screen a moment ago."
"I am literally watching children’s toys fly and roll around on the screen."
"The “air tanks” slightly out of focus in the foreground are actually the nitrous oxide cartridges better known as Whippets."
... and yet… I’m not mad about it. There’s something really enjoyable about 1960s ultra-low-budget sci-fi aesthetic and, as cheap as this is, it’s just got some odd charm that I found endearing. Perhaps this would not be true if the movie were worse, but... there's actually a lot to like here. And I mean a lot. I think if you only watched the indoor/on-set scenes of this movie, you would think it was actually a pretty good movie.
For starters, the two main characters (male) are just way more interesting than they ought to or need to be. One of them I will simply refer to as The Jaw. Like this was the conversation:
Director to Casting Director: “Go out and get me a JAW!”
But The Jaw is actually kinda convincing.
And I was really digging this very adult, mature behavior and complex personal relationship between the two male leads... until it totally devolves into alpha-male dominance and beta-male failure, which I thought was actually a pretty neat subversion of my expectations, but also totally how it probably happens in real-life instead of the movies. The Jaw seems kinda heroic and selfless and maybe even misunderstood early on when there's a setup that there's some reason people actually don't want him for this mission. And it turns out, as the movie unfolds, that it's because The Jaw is just a straight-up alpha-male dick. The more pressure put on, the more he reverts to being a domineering jerk. But then his sort of second-in-command-by-default seems like a guy who has gotten an unfair rap as a beta-male and will obviously end up being heroic and shine and save the day in the end... except that he doesn't he goes into total beta-male fail. He even loses the girl and gets himself killed!
I found all of this rather clever honestly. The writers obviously never saw Pretty In Pink. And It is so obvious that the actors, at least the two leads, think they’re making a much better movie than they are… so they do.
A few other notes:
I resent that the Scientist is the stupidest person in this movie. This motherf*cker insists on playing with the damn Green Slime on the asteroid and he inadvertently brings it back onto the ship... but worst of all, he's one of these no-don't-kill-it-we-must-study-it idiots that ends up getting himself and everybody else killed. I mean, I am a scientist and I was not mad when this scientist got demolished by The Green Slime.
Neat use of reversing the film (several times but always effective) so The Green Slime looks like it’s climbing up.
Rotoscoping! Woot!
I dig that the reaction of the doctors to the threat is to protect their patients. Cuz I went through Katrina AND COVID and that’s what doctors do. I think twice in the movie, the injured in the sick bays are threatened and the doctors refuse to leave and stay by their patients and even get between their patients and The Green Slime. Because that's how we do it.
All of these things are great and I found myself really, really enjoying The Green Slime. At one point I wondered, “Is this going on too long” but then I realized it was kinda perfect. But finally, and most importantly, I had to ask myself, "Does the movie work as a Sci-Fi/Horror Adventure?" Which, if you're high enough, it totally does.
My final position is that The Green Slime may be the best movie ever made.
I recommend everyone watch The Green Slime immediately.