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 The Green Slime Released: 1968 Directed by Kinji Fukasaku The Green Slime was a Japanese/American co-production with an strange pedigree. It was directed by the prolific Kinji Fukasaku and written by Bill Finger. For those who don't recognize those names right away, Fukasaku is better known for directing the Battles Without Humanity (also know as the Yakuza Papers) series and Battle Royale among many others. Bill Finger created Batman. How these two came together I don't know but that alone makes this a fascinating movie.  The premise of the film may seem familiar. An asteroid is headed to Earth and a group of astronauts are tasked with placing a bomb onto the asteroid to prevent it from hitting the Earth. On the asteroid they find a mysterious and seemingly alive green substance, a green slime if you will, which they unwittingly track onto their space station that unleashes an unstoppable ever evolving threat. So obviously that's very similar to the plot of Alien with a dash of Armageddon. There's a few bits in this film and one in scene particular that very much remind me of Alien. I would be surprised if Dan O'Bannon hadn't seen this movie and drawn inspiration from it.  So the Green Slime is one of those 60s B-movies that's unfairly maligned and dismissed as "a bad movie" or "so bad it's good". It was even the subject of the MST3K pilot. But I don't think it's either of those things. I think it's a genuinely good movie. Obviously the models and the costumes aren't all that realistic but I don't think they're meant to be or at least the aesthetic works in the movie's favor. It's got a great visual style and the models and creature design ads a lot of charm. It's a genuinely fun movie and those models and rubber suits give it the familiar feel of kaiju films/shows. But the characters are very American. The movie is quite noticeably a melding of the cultures of both its parent countries. People who dismiss The Green Slime as trash are people who refuse to or are embarrassed to engage with something like this on its own level. It also has a really cool theme song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwrhOd9Do2A  One of the best things about this movie is that it seems like the people involved actually cared about what they were making. Stuff like this was already treated like junk in its own time. The actors aren't really phoning it in and performing the kind of hammy acting you typically see in 50s/60s B-movies. There's no one here that's a masterclass in acting but it's still pretty solid. It's clearly not a big budgeted film but they really, really made the most of what they had. And while the monsters are silly looking rubber suits their design is actually pretty cool and the situation itself does inspire real dread. A bunch of people are completely helpless against a threat they can't comprehend. And at the center of it is a love triangle between one woman and two men who cannot stand each other. In fact the hero is a huge jerk which isn't really something I can recall seeing in other films like this. You care what happens. In short it's got a lot more substance than you'd expect out of something like this.  Previous Movies of the Month.
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Aug 2, 2021 06:14
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Loving these special effects so far, they're really charming
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Aug 2, 2021 08:31
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Absolutely a legit cracking good time.
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Aug 2, 2021 11:39
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This one, It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Ikarie XB-1 together pretty much form the Rosetta Stone of Alien.
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Aug 2, 2021 13:33
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TrixRabbi posted:This one, It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Ikarie XB-1 together pretty much form the Rosetta Stone of Alien. I'd heard that about It! The Terror from Beyond Space before but I haven't seen it. I've never heard of Ikarie XB-1 but it sounds cool. Movies where creatures get on someone's spaceship and ruin their day are cool.
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Aug 2, 2021 17:17
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It! is basically a proto-slasher with the stowaway alien killing the crew one by one, so it’s a very direct influence.
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Aug 2, 2021 18:15
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Watching this now and it's a hoot.
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Aug 2, 2021 19:00
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I love the alien design
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Aug 2, 2021 19:55
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One thing I noticed about the movie was how it was quite a bit more violent than I expected. Scenes like the guy getting shocked to death are surprisingly brutal.
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Aug 2, 2021 20:13
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TrixRabbi posted:This one, It! The Terror from Beyond Space and Ikarie XB-1 together pretty much form the Rosetta Stone of Alien. Plus Planet of the Vampires.
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Aug 2, 2021 22:11
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I didn’t like this nearly as much as the similar (and inspirational?) siege movie The Thing from Another World, but the green slimes were very cute. Fun any time they showed up squealing and flipping their tentacles around. Could’ve used more of that and less of the square-jawed military types flapping their lips, although I was relieved that the green slimes started jacking people up about 38 minutes into the film instead of the film waiting an hour plus to bring out the monster.
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Aug 2, 2021 22:12
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Samuel Clemens posted:Plus Planet of the Vampires. I knew there was one I was forgetting. All dope rear end movies.
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Aug 2, 2021 23:09
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Samuel Clemens posted:Plus Planet of the Vampires. I know it has the giant space traveler, but all I really remember about Planet of the Vampires is Bava’s repeated use of crash zooms for shock effects when the vampires appear. Like, bam, scary face! Kind of annoying and unnerving at the same time.
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Aug 3, 2021 01:03
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Servoret posted:I didn’t like this nearly as much as the similar (and inspirational?) siege movie The Thing from Another World, but the green slimes were very cute. Fun any time they showed up squealing and flipping their tentacles around. Could’ve used more of that and less of the square-jawed military types flapping their lips, although I was relieved that the green slimes started jacking people up about 38 minutes into the film instead of the film waiting an hour plus to bring out the monster. That's another reason why I like this so much. Most rubber suit monster movies of this era and this type basically jerk you around with boring bullshit until the last ten minutes of the movie when you finally see the monster. The Green Slime delivers on its promises.
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Aug 3, 2021 01:42
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Even if they aren’t great cinema, I will always have a soft spot for science fiction from the 40s through the 60s. It can be so full of optimism and the sets, props, and costumes reflect that. It’s like they were designed and built with a bunch of enthusiasm. The Green Slime was definitely a lot of fun and it’s just so representative of science fiction B movies. It may not be as stylish as Planet of the Vampires or have the scale of a Godzilla movie but it’s exactly what I imagine when someone talks about the genre. This was a great pick and something I really doubt I would have seen had it not been a MoTM. Thanks CPL593H!
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Aug 11, 2021 15:03
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I watched this after someone linked me the theme tune on youtube. Strong contender for most kickin rad monster movie song ever. I loved how adorably unconvincing the miniatures are. It's like Thunderbirds.
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Aug 14, 2021 12:54
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One thing I really like about Green Slime is that upends the ‘crazy scientist’ thing; Doctor Halversen is invariably either unobtrusive or helpful, but Rankin just shits on him repeatedly, ultimately getting him killed. Really, the moral of the picture is that attempts to repress knowledge of the creature invariably worsen the situation. More generally, it’s a hit on Rankin’s commitment to utilitarianism and ‘risk management’. SuperMechagodzilla fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Aug 15, 2021 |
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Aug 15, 2021 03:36
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bitterandtwisted posted:I watched this after someone linked me the theme tune on youtube. Strong contender for most kickin rad monster movie song ever. Yeah that's exactly the kind of charm I'm talking about in regards the the aesthetics. It doesn't look realistic it just looks cool. SuperMechagodzilla posted:One thing I really like about Green Slime is that upends the ‘crazy scientist’ thing; Doctor Halversen is invariably either unobtrusive or helpful, but Rankin just shits on him repeatedly, ultimately getting him killed. And none of it would have happened if Rankin didn't basically go "Shut up, nerd!" when Dr. Halversen wanted to study the Green Slime™ in a controlled setting. The first time I saw this I cracked up when he just knocked the sample right out of the doctor's hands before they left the asteroid. They lean right into Rankin being a complete rear end in a top hat. They barely even try to frame him as a hero. The way the military are portrayed as a bunch of dumb dumbs reminds me of the Day the Earth Stood still. Being a Japanese co-production I don't think it's a coincidence that the US military isn't portrayed in a very flattering light.
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Aug 15, 2021 03:57
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CPL593H posted:They lean right into Rankin being a complete rear end in a top hat. They barely even try to frame him as a hero. It's more that he's just straight-up wrong about nearly everything, but it's left uncommented-upon in the film. The subtlest gags is when Rankin leaves Halversen to die because the slimes might escape through a jammed door - and then the slimes end up just shoving the obstruction out of the way, locking themselves in.
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Aug 15, 2021 04:35
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SuperMechagodzilla posted:It's more that he's just straight-up wrong about nearly everything, but it's left uncommented-upon in the film. The subtlest gags is when Rankin leaves Halversen to die because the slimes might escape through a jammed door - and then the slimes end up just shoving the obstruction out of the way, locking themselves in. And once again he's like "gently caress off, nerd!" resulting in the death of the one guy who might actually be able to figure out how to stop these things without blowing up the space station which we technically don't even know works.
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Aug 15, 2021 04:55
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The sound these green slimes make is very unsettling. Like a baby mixed with the Thing alien.
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Aug 17, 2021 08:28
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I find it charming myself.
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Aug 17, 2021 09:15
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Who among us hasn't felt like flailing around while making a high pitch warbling screech?
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Aug 17, 2021 16:06
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It looks like a lot of the hardware / special effects came over from earlier Toho efforts such as Battle in Outer Space, Mysterians, and notably Gorath. The space station, UNSC rocket are definitely reworks of the same vehicles from Gorath with added / switched parts, the shuttle at the end and the Green Siimes themselves are probably the only totally new creations for this movie.
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Aug 19, 2021 23:46
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Inspired by this thread I gave the film a rewatch. In some ways this is a movie just ever so slightly out of its time. I think a lot of its reception has to do with the goofy title and more importantly, the fact that MGM themselves had put out 2001 some time earlier (over a year before this film's general US release, though it did premiere in '68), and that film of course raised the bar for cinematic portrayal of space travel to the point that this looked old hat instantly. Aesthetically it's not far from Shochiku's X From Outer Space or Moon Zero Two, but the public's perception of what space travel should look like was changing rapidly. But yeah, for the resources they had they don't skimp on anything. You've got multiple unique rocketship designs and big elaborate sets and yep, lots of monsters. The Green Slime do share the kaiju trait of being actually kind of endearing in their way- they're very distinctive even if they are also classic Bug Eyed Monsters. A cool monster (or horde of them) will help a movie a lot. And yeah, I always noticed the film is aware of its main character's rear end in a top hat nature, but recent comments did make me look at it in a new light. Elliott is definitely shown as having some flaws relating to insecurity- he's never quite forgiven himself for whatever the Hell he was written up for- but in the end he does the right thing, and Rankin is humbled. That awareness definitely helps. Rankin is never proven right for being a hardass, and indeed it backfires many times. (And for the "love triangle" talk, I do think Luciana Paluzzi's character is never really tempted to go back to Rankin. She maybe sees him in a better light after he takes the climactic risk but I get the feeling once the ship lands they go their separate ways.) Actually kinda subversive for the times! Also of note: this film was cited as inspiration for the fun boardgame Awful Green Things From Outer Space, by Tom Wham, originally published in 1980 (but Steve Jackson Games reprints it pretty regularly.)  Tom Wham posted:I wish to make it perfectly clear that I have not been to see the movie Alien. I did, however, enjoy the movie Green Slime. If you manage to catch it on the late show some night, it is sure to put you in the mood for a game of Awful Green Things. I've got a history with this flick. As I kid I read about it in books on sci-fi movies, where it was generally dismissed but still sounded neat. At one point TNT had it scheduled to come on after a World Cup game but to my disappointment, the game ran overtime. I checked the listings religiously after that (something I often did, back in The Day) and was finally able to tape a late-night showing on some channel or another. It was worth the wait.
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Aug 24, 2021 04:48
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 15:17 |
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Saw the movie and had a great time. The funky theme song at the beginning caught me unaware and it was a grand old time from there. The sudden zoom-in to the monsters are a tokosatsu/kaiju staple right? I remember thinking that was a fun choice by the director. Cool creature, neat sets and miniatures, plus an interesting design for the monster. All in all, a fun picture.  Oh yeah, the modern HD makes it clear how bad the skin of the two male leads was, but Robert Horton's (Rankin) hair was immaculate. Top ten sci-fi protagonist hair for sure.
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Aug 30, 2021 03:20
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