The Green Slime Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

The Green Slime Blu-ray Movie Review

They Got Slimed

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 10, 2017

Some years ago, Drafthouse Films released an entire Blu-ray of trailers for bad movies called Trailer Wars. The Green Slime should have been on there. This 1968 monstrosity, made in Japan with an international cast, is a compendium of everything laughable about Sixties cut-rate sci-fi. It makes some of the Trailer Wars entries look good by comparison.

Still, there's no accounting for taste. The film sold well on DVD, which is why the Warner Archive Collection has transferred it anew for Blu-ray. WAC anticipates good sales—better, in fact, than many of the classics for which film buffs have been clamoring.

In a preview of Armageddon, a huge asteroid is heading for collision with Earth, and a mission led by Commander Rankin (Richard Horton) is dispatched to destroy it. The asteroid's surface is infested with a gelatinous green mucus, a splash of which hitches a ride on one of the astronauts' suits. When the team returns to Space Station Gamma 3—where decontamination procedures are lax (to say the least)—the slime multiplies into hordes of marauding creatures with cyclops eyes, rubber tentacles and a squeaky whine that is even more annoying than their nasty habit of delivering fatal electric shocks. A battle for mankind's future ensues, and it's complicated by a tepid romantic triangle among Rankin, station commander Elliott (Vince Jaeckel) and the outpost's doctor, Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi, Thunderball), who looks like she wouldn't know one end of a stethoscope from the other.

Green Slime has it all: wooden acting, inane dialogue, laughable effects and production design so haphazard and chintzy that it's already a self-parody. The creatures aren't the least bit intimidating, because they're so obviously heavy rubber suits worn by actors who can barely stand up in them. One good push from an insulated adversary, and they'd be helpless. Eventually the invaders are destroyed, and the Earth is once again saved from aliens (if not from bad cinema).

The Green Slime Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Warner Archive Collection first released The Green Slime on DVD in 2010, but scanning technology has advanced so far in just seven years that WAC commissioned a new scan of the same interpositive, which was done by Warner's Motion Picture Imaging facility, followed by the usual color correction and cleanup. The resulting 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray features a sharply detailed image that fully reveals the artificiality of every set, prop and model effect. But it's a colorful display, especially the titular gunk, the red of the asteroid where it's found and the blazing eyes of the creatures into which it evolves. Blacks are generally solid, and the film's grain pattern has been naturally resolved, though the grain may be a bit heavy for eyes accustomed to the clarity of digital photography. Many of the opticals are weak and faded, but this is a limitation of the source. WAC has placed the 90-minute film on a BD-25, but with no real competition for space, the feature still manages a high average bitrate of 31.39 Mbps.

The Green Slime Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Green Slime's original mono audio has been taken from the original magnetic master, cleaned of any damage or age-related distortion and encoded as lossless DTS-HD MA 2.0. The sound effects are as ridiculous as the rest of the movie, but they're clearly presented, along with the inane dialogue. The title song is annoyingly catchy. Fidelity and dynamic range are appropriate for the period and the film's schlocky aesthetic.

The Green Slime Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

The only extra is a trailer (1080p; 2.39:1; 2:12). It's my understanding that this has been added for Blu-ray and was not included on WAC's 2010 DVD.

The Green Slime Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're a fan of Green Slime (or of bad cinema in general), you should love this Blu-ray. But I wouldn't recommend a blind buy.