"It’s a magnificent discovery we must do everything we possibly can to capture it."
An asteroid called Flora is on a collision course heading for Earth. The lead astronaut on the mission is Commander Jack Rankin (Robert Horton). He is sent from Earth to the Gamma 3 space station to assemble a team to deal with the asteroid.
On the space station is his rival Commander Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel) and a former love interest Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi). Vince and Lisa are now a couple. The assembled team leaves the space station. They land on the asteroid and plant their charges. The team blows up the asteroid barely escaping the explosion’s massive shockwave. The mission is a success.
However, one of the astronauts unknowingly brings back to the space station a smidge of green substance. The substance starts to grow and mutate. Then it begins to duplicate. Soon there are multiple tentacled green things with one red eye zapping and electrocuting people all over the station. The creatures feed on energy. They can spawn new creatures from their own blood as well as heal themselves. The space station is in mortal danger unless the two rivals can work together and find a way to kill these monstrosities.
"The Green Slime" was released in 1968 and was directed by Kinji Fukasaku. MGM was originally planning to make the movie in Italy with filmmaker Antonio Margheriti. Margheriti was responsible for making the Gamma 1 quadrilogy. MGM was impressed with his work. Green Slime was to be an unofficial fifth movie. The only connection being the space station that was renamed Gamma 3. Instead the movie was shot in Japan in conjunction with Toei productions using a Japanese film crew but American actors and Caucasian amateur and semi-professional actors living in Japan.
The make up on the zapped people was good and when you first see the slime it looks pretty good too. It’s shinny, it foams and it glows green. Almost like a green version of the Blob. Kinda cool. The problem is when it gets big and starts running around the space station. The creatures look like paper mache covered chicken wire with extra long wiggly tentacles and sparklers attached to the tentacles. Which is what they probably are. They were played by Japanese children in monster suits.
The monsters in “Green Slime” effectively changed the movie from your basic Sci-Fi movie to a so-bad-its-good movie. Add to the monsters the really funny theme song in the beginning and ending credits and you have one really cheezy movie. It could have been a good intense science fiction movie, but it’s not. The goofy monsters turned it into a really funny camp fest. In effect a guilty pleasure. Which is also OK.