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The Green Slime (1968) - Blu-ray Review

4 beersIt’s green.  It radiates.  It spreads.  And it’s on the surface of a rogue asteroid headed toward our planet.  The Green Slime must be stopped.

Exactly how would YOU go about killing a two-tentacled, one-eyed beast that reproduces from its own blood as it is exposed to air?  Throw a box of tissue at it?  Careful.  Don’t make this bitch bleed!  That’s what the men and women of Gamma 3 experience in The Green Slime, a science fiction B-movie that is damn legendary in its allegiance to all things cheap and cheesy. 

This 1968 science fiction film is directed by Kinji Fukasaku (Tora! Tora! Tora! and Battle Royale) and hints – with one brief sequence – at the shaky camera technique he would soon employ (and make a trademark) in all his films.  The scene is a jarringly expressive one, happening on the screen as if by accident.  It works though, and, as a group of astronauts race toward an oncoming asteroid, the brief handheld moment works in ratcheting up the tension.

Produced by Walter Manley and Ivan Reiner and written by William Finger, Tom Rowe and Charles Sinclair, The Green Slime jettisons all science from this flick in favor of some rather outlandish fiction and features a full-on battle sequence in space as a group of astronauts go toe-to-toe with alien invades with laser rifles (and fists) right outside the space station.  One astronaut, exhausted by the seemingly endless fight, hurls his weapon through the blankness of space and buries his worthless rifle right into one alien’s gut. 

And that’s only one of the many, many goofy scenes in this wonky co-production between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Toei.  The whole assembly of this flick is a lo-fi approach to moviemaking.  From the pitiable models used in the shoot to the rickety sets the actors walk back and forth upon, this deprived production just howls with atomic age fury…ignoring the fact that is was damn near the 1970s when it was originally made. 

And yet it works as a fun-filled and imaginative trek into fungai and its many properties…in space!

In this way, The Green Slime, complete with its own rocking theme song, earns its stripes as solid, fast-moving drive-in flick of cheesy heroics and utter nonsense.  The aliens look ripped straight out of classic Doctor Who episodes (I love it) and the acting is so basic that it hurts a bit (still love it!).  The film has been immortalized forever as a cult classic thanks to it serving as the bedrock to the now-classic television series Mystery Science Theater 3000 when it debuted in 1988.

The film stars two sparring astronauts, Robert Horton as Commander Jack Rankin and Richard Jaeckel as Commander Vince Elliott, who wrestle against each other for command of Gamma 3 and for the hand of one of the loveliest looking doctors in campy science fiction history, Luciana Paluzzi (Thunderball) as Dr. Lisa Benson.  Va-va-va-voom!  She’s a keeper, for sure. 

While the men argue, the space station descends into chaos thanks to the mysterious green slime that grows and grows and quickly causes the space station to spiral out of control.  They’ve got to get it together in order to save themselves and mankind.  Will Lisa be the bridge between them?  Or will it be the threat of the aliens and their mysterious ways? 

With some fabulous poster art that is better than the movie itself, The Green Slime finally arrives on Blu-ray.  And just like the grinning Commander at the center of this flick, I can’t help but give this one a big THUMBS UP.

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The Green Slime (1968) - Blu-ray Review

MPAA Rating: Unrated.
Runtime:
90 mins
Director
: Kinji Fukasaku
Writer:
Bill Finger
Cast:
Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel
Genre
: Horror
Tagline:
Invaders From Beyond The Stars!.
Memorable Movie Quote: "Well, this confirms my first guess. The only answer is to blast that thing out of the sky."
Theatrical Distributor:
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Official Site:
Release Date:
May 21, 1969
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
October 10, 2017
Synopsis: A giant asteroid is heading toward Earth so some astronauts disembark from a nearby space station to blow it up. The mission is successful, and they return to the station unknowingly bringing back a gooey green substance that mutates into one-eyed tentacled monsters that feed off electricity. Soon the station is crawling with them, and people are being zapped left and right!

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[tab title="Blu-ray Review"]

The Green Slime (1968) - Blu-ray Review

Blu-ray

Blu-ray Details:

Home Video Distributor: Warner Bros.
Available on Blu-ray
- October 10, 2017
Screen Formats: 2.40:1
Subtitles
: English SDH
Audio:
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0
Discs: Blu-ray Disc; single disc
Region Encoding: Locked to Region A

Presented with an aspect ratio of 2.40:1 and supported by a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 soundtrack, the Warner Archive Collection’s new 2K scan of The Green Slime provides a detailed 1080p transfer that fans are sure to go cuckoo over.  Colors are bold.  Skin tones are meticulously handled by the upgrade.  While the new enhancement of the transfer cheapens the look of the low rent production, the black levels are improved and so too are the colors that pop and ooze like never before.  With a good wash of greys and greens, the film’s original optics are truly the only source of contention and that, honestly, can’t be helped.  This is a solid handling by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility.

Supplements:

Commentary:

  •  Sadly, nothing is included.

Special Features:

We get a trailer.  Boo.

  • Theatrical Trailer

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And here's the groovy The Green Slime theme song:

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The Green Slime (1968) - Blu-ray Review

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