ne of the most attacked films of all time, Kinji Fukasaku's The Green Slime is an obvious attempt to cash-in on the burgeoning interest in 2001 (also released that year). But whereas Kubrick's space opera is positively majestic, the same cannot be said here.
The Thing From Another World-aping plot delivers some
apalling cornball dialogue, and the rest of the show doesn't fare much better: there's dreadfully wooden acting (witness the 'going up to 3 Gs' moment), the most obvious modelwork ever and it certainly doesn't date well, as best proved by the so-60s-it-hurts dance sequence, replete with then-fashion to boot.
But as with Plan 9, it at least isn't pretentious. This is one of those daft, crap-but-amusing sci-fi Bs that made the fifties and sixties so entertaining. It may also claim as position as a cinematic milestone, as it was apparently the first joint Japanese-American film production. And one might also argue its influence on Alien, but whether Ridley was taking down notes from this mess for his first masterpiece is debatable.
January 25, 2007
