The Green Slime (1968) is not a terribly good film, but it has a few interesting elements that make it worthy of watching. The most notable of these features is that the film is a joint production between Toei (Japan) and MGM. Shot in Japan with an American cast. This means it's like watching Battle in Outer Space (1959) but with actors you might see in Fantastic Voyage (1966).
The story begins as we discover an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. Retiring Commander Rankin (Robert Horton) is sent with a team to detonate it before all life on the planet is destroyed upon impact. That team includes the fiance of Rankin's former girlfriend. The mission is successful, but the team inadvertently brings back a hitchhiking specimen onto the space station with them - The Green Slime.
And that's all in the first act, so this is not a movie that's slow to get started.
Once on the space station though, the story focuses on a race to figure out the evolving Green Slime and keep it from reaching Earth.
Most of the drama in the film comes from the love triangle clashes between the two dueling commanders. And by drama, I mean groan-worthy arguments and snark that amounts to little more than a series of pissing contests while the threat to the space station increases, people die, and the possibility of unleashing the Green Slime on Earth grows larger.
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| Larger....more numerous, same thing. |
Even as the story is solid and the threat is straight-forward, the relationship between the two rival Commanders (and former best friends) is incredibly annoying. The best thing to alleviate this distraction is to focus your attention on the fantastic set work, costuming, and of course, The Green Slime creatures (which all look like something that you might see in an episode of Ultraman).
Recommended if you've never seen The Green Slime (1968), if you're wondering about the predecessors of the Alien franchise, or if you need an easy way to explain how annoying a pissing contest can be.
