Halloween Countdown: October 26 – will you believe it when you’re dead

The Green Slime are coming, and they cares not for your subject-verb agreement rules, pitiful humans!

This is where I’m supposed to extol, in true cult cinema dilettante fashion, the virtues of Kinji Fukusaku’s 1968 film, The Green Slime, and justify its role as an influential cinematic landmark. You know what, though? I’m not feeling it. It’s a cheapjack sci-fi horror film with an American cast (with many off-duty servicemen serving as extras), involving big chinned guys fighting silly rubber monsters on a space station that makes the original Enterprise set look like something from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

How is it that Japan is so ahead of the curve when it comes to personal technology and animation, but when it comes to live action sci-fi, seems hard pressed to compete with the special effects wizardry of the 1930’s Flash Gordon serials? A Kamen Rider episode filmed in 2006 is about as visually convincing as a 1954 installment of Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. It has to be a cultural thing, some ritualized aspect of kaiju theatre that only someone born into the culture can hope to understand. The rubber suits and visible strings serve similar roles in the proceedings as the floral arrangements and incense do at a Japanese tea ceremony, I suppose.

One thing I can appreciate is great garage rock, and the movie’s theme song delivers a powerful dose. Here’s the original version by Richard Delvy and a not-as-good but decent enough cover by The Fuzztones:

Richard Delvy – Green Slime

The Fuzztones – Green Slime (from The Battle of the Garages, Vol. 1, 1994)