(Some Spoilers) Has already reached cult status in the ranks of bad but unintentional funny and hilariously entertaining movies "The Green Slime" is one of those films that most people who've seen it say is so bad that it's actually great.
The story takes place in the not so distant future with this space station Gamma III getting information from it's home base on earth, the Huston Space Center, that a killer asteroid, Flora, is headed for earth and is to reach its target in less then ten hours. The asteroid is so big, six million tons, that if it crashes it will annihilate in the blink of an eye all life on the blue and watery planet!
Getting the retired Commander Jack Rankin, Robert Horton, out of retirement to do the job his immediate superior Gen. Jonathon B. Thompson played by actor Bud Windon, in his first and only movie role,has to get him to work with his former friend and now bitter adversary Commander Vince Elliott, Richard Jacekal, who commanding Gamma III.
There's also a little sub-plot involving Commander Elliott's fiancée the head doctor on the space station the red headed and hot blooded Dr. Lisa Benson, Luciana Paluzzi. Lisa had been in love with the all business and by the book, in doing his job, Jack Rankin before she met the super sensitive and somewhat schmucky Vince Elliott who stoled her away from him. This rivalry in itself will cause far more damage to those on board, or on earth, then Asteroid Flora ever will.
Reluctantly following Rankin's orders to travel, together with him, to the out of control asteroid Elliott and his crew do in fact pull off the impossible. Setting or planting a number of nuclear bombs all over the "hot rock" the Rankin expedition blast the asteroid out of its orbit and save the earth. The only problem is that an algae-like substance that was growing on Flora latched itself on to the spacesuit of one of the crew member Michael played by Richard Hyllard, who also like Bud Windom, in his only movie role. That pulsating green algae will later grow and multiply at a fantastic rate living off the energy of the Gamma III space station!
With the space crew safely on board Gamma III the algae, known as the Green Slime, sucks up all the energy on board and grows into this octopus-like creature attacking and killing, by electrocuting, everyone and everything in the space station. The top scientist on Gamma III Dr. Hans Halvorsen, Ted Gunther, realizing what a find, a living organism outside the earths atmosphere, this creature is jeopardizes everyone on the space station by trying, against orders from Commander Rankin, to keep the thing alive for future studies.
Making things worse then they already are Dr. Halvorsen in his bizarre actions to keep the creature alive not only lets it multiply, into hundreds of octopus-like creatures, but ends up being electrocuted by it! It's now up to past bitter enemies, and now best of friends again, Commanders Rankin and Elliott to head off the Green Slimes from killing the entire, including themselves, crew of Gamma III. With time quickly running out and the creatures, the Green Slimes, now in the hundreds if not thousands sealing off the space stations only escape hatch there's only one way to stop them! A kamikaze-like attack lead by the two commanders who know if they don't succeed it will be curtains not only for them but the entire human race!
Campy but great action sequence with really cool special effect, for 1969, that more then make up for the films many deficiencies due to its very meager and shoestring budget. In fact there's not a single scene in the movie that I found at all boring even the corny love triangle between Commanders Rankin Elliott and Dr. Benson. In fact I found the relationship between Rankin and Elliott far more effective and genuinely moving, in a platonic and non-sexual way, then that between the two commanders and their love interest in the movie Dr. Lisa Benson!
The story takes place in the not so distant future with this space station Gamma III getting information from it's home base on earth, the Huston Space Center, that a killer asteroid, Flora, is headed for earth and is to reach its target in less then ten hours. The asteroid is so big, six million tons, that if it crashes it will annihilate in the blink of an eye all life on the blue and watery planet!
Getting the retired Commander Jack Rankin, Robert Horton, out of retirement to do the job his immediate superior Gen. Jonathon B. Thompson played by actor Bud Windon, in his first and only movie role,has to get him to work with his former friend and now bitter adversary Commander Vince Elliott, Richard Jacekal, who commanding Gamma III.
There's also a little sub-plot involving Commander Elliott's fiancée the head doctor on the space station the red headed and hot blooded Dr. Lisa Benson, Luciana Paluzzi. Lisa had been in love with the all business and by the book, in doing his job, Jack Rankin before she met the super sensitive and somewhat schmucky Vince Elliott who stoled her away from him. This rivalry in itself will cause far more damage to those on board, or on earth, then Asteroid Flora ever will.
Reluctantly following Rankin's orders to travel, together with him, to the out of control asteroid Elliott and his crew do in fact pull off the impossible. Setting or planting a number of nuclear bombs all over the "hot rock" the Rankin expedition blast the asteroid out of its orbit and save the earth. The only problem is that an algae-like substance that was growing on Flora latched itself on to the spacesuit of one of the crew member Michael played by Richard Hyllard, who also like Bud Windom, in his only movie role. That pulsating green algae will later grow and multiply at a fantastic rate living off the energy of the Gamma III space station!
With the space crew safely on board Gamma III the algae, known as the Green Slime, sucks up all the energy on board and grows into this octopus-like creature attacking and killing, by electrocuting, everyone and everything in the space station. The top scientist on Gamma III Dr. Hans Halvorsen, Ted Gunther, realizing what a find, a living organism outside the earths atmosphere, this creature is jeopardizes everyone on the space station by trying, against orders from Commander Rankin, to keep the thing alive for future studies.
Making things worse then they already are Dr. Halvorsen in his bizarre actions to keep the creature alive not only lets it multiply, into hundreds of octopus-like creatures, but ends up being electrocuted by it! It's now up to past bitter enemies, and now best of friends again, Commanders Rankin and Elliott to head off the Green Slimes from killing the entire, including themselves, crew of Gamma III. With time quickly running out and the creatures, the Green Slimes, now in the hundreds if not thousands sealing off the space stations only escape hatch there's only one way to stop them! A kamikaze-like attack lead by the two commanders who know if they don't succeed it will be curtains not only for them but the entire human race!
Campy but great action sequence with really cool special effect, for 1969, that more then make up for the films many deficiencies due to its very meager and shoestring budget. In fact there's not a single scene in the movie that I found at all boring even the corny love triangle between Commanders Rankin Elliott and Dr. Benson. In fact I found the relationship between Rankin and Elliott far more effective and genuinely moving, in a platonic and non-sexual way, then that between the two commanders and their love interest in the movie Dr. Lisa Benson!