Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 9:1	Budget Medium

A Japanese-Italian-American science fiction movie! Yes!

As the movie opens we find out that a known asteroid has suddenly not only shifted its orbit to crash into Earth, it is only about 12 hours away. There are no other options but to nuke it. Immediately springing into action the high command decides that the only man for the job is decommissioned officer, Jack Rankin. Quickly grasping the situation, Rankin accepts the mission and immediately sets off for the space station where he assumes command of not only the mission, but the of the entire Gamma 3 space station much to the dismay of its erstwhile commander, Vince Elliot. Quickly everyone climbs into another space ship and head out to the asteroid with the intent of blowing it to smithereens. It becomes Rankin's turn to be irked when a scientist is allowed to go on the mission as well. The team splits into three crews and head out to plant the bombs but their space buggies get covered with Green Slime and won't start up again. Quickly running back to the ship the team takes off from the asteroid barely escaping the blast. Inadvertently a tiny drop of the Green Slime is brought aboard the space station and quickly grows big enough to kill a crew member. Eventually it reproduces enough to infect the entire space station and Rankin sends the station to burn up in Earth's atmosphere.

Green Slime is considered one of the true classically cheesy movies. Some movies earn their cheesiness with horrific acting, amusingly bad sets or an incomprehensible plot. Green Slime actually had a reasonable budget, a couple of well known actors, and an experienced director. And yet, from the instant the movie starts and you are subjected to the title song, you know you are in for a treat.

Open the door, you'll find the secret
You'll find the answer if you keep it
You'll believe it when you find
Something screaming across your mind

Green Slime!

What can it be? What's the reason?
Is this the end to all that we've done?
Is it just something in your head?
Will you believe it when you're dead?

Green Slime! Green Slime!

I think what gets me the most about this movie is just how seriously it takes itself. We really are supposed to believe everything that happens. Consider the fact that the "only man for the job" is no longer in the military and is on Earth. Is this a secret mission that only a super secret spy can complete? A mission that requires a certain cunning that only our hero possesses? Yeah, not so much. They are going to blow up a big rock. The mission that only Jack Rankin can complete involves flying to the asteroid, planting three bombs and running away from the blast. Really wouldn't it be better to just get anyone out there who can move a bomb from the spaceship to the asteroid sooner rather than later? Why waste hours waiting for Rankin to get there? Of course by the end of the movie, Rankin has blown up just about everything he touches; the asteroid, parts of the station and then finally the entire station. Hmm, maybe he is the best man for the job.

Another amusing area is the asteroid itself. First of all it is round. Ceres is the largest known asteroid with a diameter of 580 miles and it has enough gravity to have a round shape. And while there is a possibility that there is water on (or actually in) Ceres, it does not have the shallow mud puddles that show up on the Green Slime's asteroid. Yes, the guys drive their buggies through puddles. Not sheets of ice or frozen methane but water puddles. Which would make the ambient temperature of the asteroid above 32F and suggest some sort of atmosphere. This is just before they apparently drill a hole to put the bomb next to. Oh, yeah, they drive these buggies out to where they want to plant the bombs, spend a bunch of time doing something that looks like drilling and when they finally decide the hole is deep enough, they put the bomb beside the hole. When the slime sucks all the power out of the buggies, the guys run back to the ship. You'll note that they do not use the jumping gait that the astronauts on the moon used. In fact, it looks very much like someone running on Earth. Tom Rogers* would love this movie.

In other reviews a great deal is made of the fact that virtually everything bad that happens in the movie can be traced to Rankin's rash acts. He smashes the jar that holds a sample of the green slime causing a small amount to splash on to someone's suit. Now I will grant you that this is a really bad idea, but remember most of the team encountered the slime and touched it thereby becoming contaminated with it. One review mentioned that the director was making a comment on the way America handled the war in Vietnam; oblivious and arrogant. I wonder if they are not crediting the film's creators with more subtlety than they are capable of, but I can see the parallel. In fairness to Rankin's behavior, he does do things "by the book" mostly and even allows Vince to try his hand and dealing with the situation. When an alien life form is found on the asteroid, Rankin does not bring back the samples and insists that the decontamination procedure be run three times. Now, we know that this turns out to be a bad idea, but it is not an unreasonable course of action. Later Rankin would get into an argument with Vince about reopening a door after the Slime has been trapped. Vince insists on trying to save the scientist who is in with the slime and forces Rankin to let him open the door only to find the scientist dead. Of course, the minute the door is opened the Slime resumes its attack on the station. So, saying that Rankin's actions are the cause of all the problems is a bit overblown, but I will grant you that he comes across as a major asshole. As I think about it, the fact that Rankin's "by the book" leadership fails as miserably as Vince's humanistic approach lends credence to the Vietnam connection. Nothing seemed to work there either.

Probably one of the reasons that people love to ridicule Rankin is he is just so over the top. Lets take a look at the "10 Gee" incident. After planting the bombs, the crew boards the spaceship for the trip home. The bombs are set to explode before the ship is likely to get out of the range of the blast. The pilot has the ship accelerating at only ten gees and Rankin tells him to speed it up. The pilot whines about "the ship not being able to take it". (On a side note, why the hell would you design a ship with a motor big enough to blow it apart?). At Rankin's urging the pilot tries to reach the lever to make the ship go faster, but the gee forces are too much for him. Seeing this Rankin simply stands up and pushes the levers forward himself. Just in case you don't get the message, the scene is replayed seconds later as Rankin barks at the pilot to turn on the force field. Of course, the wimpy pilot cannot possibly reach that button either forcing Rankin to once again lift himself against the tremendous gravitational forces and do the pilot's work for him. You see, he is not just the leader because he has the experience and skill but because he is also much more of a man. Little things like weighing 10 or 20 times his normal weight means nothing to our hero. While everyone else is incapacitated by the circumstance, Rankin simply does what needs to be done. Again, this is presented in a very straightforward way and we are expected to take it seriously.

Apparently the movie was funded by an Italian group, directed and produced in Japan with a Japanese crew and mostly acted by Americans with Luciana Paluzzi as the main exception. Having seen a few Italian movies in my time, I've got to think that a significant amount of the odd dynamic between the leads stems from this Italian involvement. Frequently in Italian movies (granted my exposure to this country's movie is much like my preference to any movies; B is better) the man in charge will make a horrible decision, something bad will come of it and nothing will be said. This guy will, however, rip any suborbanite a new one for making a mistake. The American contribution of actors is interesting. The two American leads have a lot of acting credits between them with Jimmie Horton spending much of his time on TV, but that acting pedigree is not overly apparent in the Green Slime. When Rankin is told that Vince is the commander at the spacestation, his eyebrows fly to the top of his head. When congratulated on a job well done, he flashes a huge smile and a big thumbs up. Of course, it is not like any of the actors here are really asked to do much acting. The screen is often full of people running frantically away from the mature Green Slime pods.

So a quick word on the mature Green Slime pods. They are rarely shown in the same shot with people and despite the fact that they eventually overrun the station, you have to wonder how. They don't move quickly. Think of a Romero zombie on downers. Lots of odd, squeaky noises and arm movement but little forward impetus. Running away from these guys would be overdoing it, a casual saunter would get you to safety. They do apparently have the ability to turn into a liquid and flow from place to place so that they can turn back into their pod form in time to jump out of a closet. Depending on whether you have a lead role in the movie or not, the pods are deadly to touch or mildly inconvenient. When one jumps out of the Health Scanner and grabs Dr. Benson, she easily fends it off. When it grabs military personnel with no names, they are quickly electrocuted. Rankin repeated fires lasers at them despite the fact that they don't really seem to be advancing on the team or posing any real immediate threat. Again, think zombies only slower.

There must be more than one version of this film available as my copy does not go into the backstory on the three leads. Rankin and Vince apparently both have had relations with Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi) and apparently Vince won out in the end. It is possible that these things were all discussed in the previous movies set in the Gamma 3 movie universe that I have not seen. This may also explain why Rankin hadn't gotten Vince kicked out of his command position and and why he had apparently took the blame for some earlier catastrophe. It would be nice to know about this because it is referenced about half a dozen times in the movie. Normally something mentioned that many times would eventually describe itself. Little pieces of the story would be added as the movie progresses building up some background that helps explain the motives of the main characters. So by the end of the movie do we have a sense of what happen to these three in the past? Maybe. The script likes to repeat itself and from the continued accusations that fly back and forth, I would guess that Rankin was in command of a mission and he let Vince talk him into trying to save one man, a plan that not only failed but cost the life of the rest of the crew. Or maybe Rankin tried to save one man and caused the death of the rest of the crew and now he over reacts to any breech of protocol. Or maybe Rankin saved Benson's live at the expense of the rest of the crew. So you can see the problem here. Rankin pulls rank occasionally and then other times lets Vince make terrible decisions. Why? Is he is playing some sort of game with Vince? If so, people are paying with their lives. Of course, if any of these events made sense or even moved logically from scene to scene the movie would lose some of its cheesiness and that would be a shame.

The special effects are mostly left over from the previous Gamma movies and feature bad miniatures, rockets with Bic lighter engines, foam rubber monsters. Sigh, you gotta love the oldies. If you have not seen this movie and consider yourself to be a B movie aficionado, you'll definitely want to look it up.

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* Tom Rogers maintains the Insultingly Stupid Movie Physics website that details the lack of concern that movies show for physics. Still, it's not like the movies treat anything with all that much respect. History, logic, biographies, and sports all take their lumps. Back