Sunday, December 6, 2009

Slime City (1988)

In the interest of "full disclosure", I should mention that my wife and I drove down to Buffalo to appear as extras in Slime City Massacre, the sequel to Slime City, Greg Lamberson's near-classic from 1988 about a young man who has to kill in order to stop himself from turning to ooze after he eats cursed "Tibetan yogurt", which sort of qualifies as man's existential condition, I'd say.

I say "near-classic" because the film came out a bit too late for the mid-80s horror boom and went through release hell, and so it really wasn't as well-known among horror fans as movies like Street Trash and The Toxic Avenger. It played some midnight showings in NYC and was available on video, where I saw it, but in very tiny releases. So, there was never quite the cult around Slime City that there should have been. Seriously: a movie about a guy who melts and decomposes if he doesn't beat street people to death because he's possessed by a dead cult leader via poisonous wine and yogurt should at least have some cult.

Obviously (okay, well maybe it's not that obvious) the subtext of all this is sexual frustration: our hero wants to fuck his girlfriend, who won't put out. He's also seduced by the leather tramp across the hall and wined and dined by an 80s stud, but he keeps oozing when he gets frustrated, and so has to beat someone to death. It's sort of like any number of 80s teen sex comedies, just with a scene in which a mouth in someone's stomach eats a dude's hand.

Does this sound a bit ridiculous? Sure, in a campy B-movie sort of way. But, who cares? The requirements with a movie like this is that it shouldn't take itself too seriously, it should have gooey latex gore, and it should go out on a bang. This one ends with Alex's girlfriend cutting him up to no avail, until she's finally chasing his animated brain across the floor! I would say a minor clause requires these films to have some sort of nudity, and clearly, they couldn't convince anyone to get naked on film. But, otherwise, it's good for a viewing with beer and friends.

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