THE GREEN SLIME-1968-A giant asteroid is on a collusion course with Earth. Members of a crew aboard space station Gamma are sent to investigate. Robert Horton is Jack Rankin the kind of egotistical, hard edged commander who is sent to the satellite to over see things. Richard Jaeckel is Vince Elliot the commander in charge of Gamma who also happens to been a rival of Rankin's. Elliot's fiancée(Luciana Paluzzi ) was also once sweet on Rankin. It seems Vince once made a mistake that cost some crewmen their lives, blah, blah.. The asteroid is destroyed but not before a living green fungus is brought aboard ship.
Although this was made at Toei Studios in Japan and has a Japanese director none of the cast members are Asian (it was a co-production with MGM) but seeing some of the cheesy sets and effects makes you think Star-Man or Rhodan might pop up! The tentacle monsters the slime grows into looks like Syd & Marty Kroft rejects! It's hilarious!
And it doesn't help that the male crew wear toy motorcycle helmets. It's funny to see Horton being a hard ass while wearing one. A briefly seen nurse is played by Linda Miller (Jackie Gleason's daughter). Co-screenwriter Bill Finger was a comic book writer who helped Bob Kane develop the original Batman character. Director Kinji Fukasaku was a busy film maker right up until his death in 2007. His other films include the whacky MESSAGE FROM SPACE, GRAVEYARD OF HONOR and BATTLE ROYALE 1 and 2. It seems the one thing everyone really remembers about this movie is the awesome theme song!
Thanks for reading!
RIP Irene Kaelin
2 comments:
I still need to see this one, too, but it seems like something I'd like (especially since it has a THEME SONG!). But talk about your awkward taglines!
I think the tag line could be a reference to Hitchcock's THE BIRDS which had the line: "The Birds is coming"...
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