This blond lady’s updo is a bit much, just to work at a space station, but go on sis.

I was not expecting that jaunty theme song. I don’t know what I was thinking. This movie came out in 1968. We’re lucky it didn’t have a girl in a bikini and body paint gogo dancing.

I wonder if the singer is the same guy who sang the Spiderman theme. If you are old enough, you remember the one that ended, “Nobody knows who you……ARE!”

This movie starts with the same plot basis as Armageddon and Deep Impact then takes a left turn into the plot from Alien. Actually let me correct that phrasing. The three movies I just mentioned borrowed heavily from The Green Slime.

Trimegaton units? Oh we’re making up words. I love the space station with the hand painted lettering. I was going to say that it had great effects for the 60’s. You can’t even see the strings. Then I remembered that 2001: A Space Odyssey came out the same year.

The slime effects were very cool!

Some of the ladies in this wear metallic clothes. At first I was amused. In the 1960’s this is how they thought people would dress in the future?

However, today in 2018….oh, right.

They save the planet by blowing up the asteroid, but accidentally bring back a life form to the space station. Sound familiar? The concept of accidentally bringing a lifeform back would be revisited ten years later in Alien.

Now I know why homegirl’s hair was so layed. They throw a champagne party with some of the worst “dancing” ever committed to film. She knew that if you stay ready you ain’t got to get ready. Same with the redhead girl with the 1/2 wig.

Not so much with dude with the dyed Auburn hair. He looks 60 about the face, but thinks this dyed hair allows him to play around 30 years old.

BTW, there is a love triangle subplot, but who cares? Incidentally, the Japanese version of this movie runs only 77 minutes because they eliminated the love triangle subplot. In my opinion that is the better version. 

How did the green slime become a giant tentacled crab monster?

It is clearly a person in a rubber suit (actually it’s a Japanese child and in future scenes, Japanese children), but it doesn’t matter. It’s still better than CGI. When the creature threw the man over the ledge and you see a dummy hit the floor with blood squirting from its head on impact – beautiful!

As I said earlier I enjoyed the practical effects. The only weak point was that the creature design was a little janky, but the execution of the costumes were good. The green slime effects were very cool. I liked them better than the creature.

I also enjoyed camera work. The stylistic choices were a nice touch and they made use of dramatic zoom ins and outs. The soundtrack was used sparingly, and the sound design was pretty typical of 1960’s era drive in sci-fi movies.

There were some parts that dragged. I think that the American version should also have been edited down to no more than 75-80 minutes.

Why do I already love this so much? The Green Slime is a classic 60’s Drive-In cheesefest in the best possible way. Fun fact: This was the first film featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 in 1988. If you get the chance, check it out!