Slime City is a Gory Guilty Pleasure
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Slime City’s DVD jacket boasts simply the word ‘repulsive’ from Variety. They’re absolutely correct, and kudos to this movie for being just that.
Written by BHM Contributor James “Crypticpsych” Lasome
September 7, 2009
Watch the Slime City Horror Movie Trailer!
Release: May 13, 1988
Written and Directed by: Greg Lamberson
Starring:
Robert C. Sabin as Alex
Mary Huner as Lori / Nicole
T.J. Merrick as Jerry
Dennis Embry as Roman
Dick Biel as Det. Irish
Alex (Robert C. Sabin) is an average twenty- or thirty-something artist looking for a place in downtown New York City alongside his slightly prudish girlfriend Lori (Mary Huner). He finds a semi-rundown apartment building run by two eccentric old ladies, Ruby (Bunny Levine) and Lizzy (Jane Doniger Reibel). After giving the place a quick rundown, they find it to be pretty shoddy, but a palace compared to what they had previously seen, leading Alex to move in. Lori won’t move in with him however, further sexually frustrating our lead. As Alex gets situated, he becomes acquainted with his neighbors: a woman named Nicole (played by Huner as well in a hilariously over-the-top black curly wig) who wanders around in black leather, fishnets, and what we will refer to as ‘hooker boots’; and Roman (Dennis Embry), a punk-beatnik hybrid. While Nicole lightly seduces Alex, Roman invites him to dinner…consisting of a strange, very strong dark green liquor and bowls of ‘Himalayan yogurt’ that look like Day-Glo Play-Doh that was rejected for being too pudding-like.
That evening, Alex dreams of a strange cloaked man and wakes up oozing slime from every pore. He attempts to go out and live his daily life, but continues degrading, his skin turning yellow and decayed and himself vomiting dark-green fluid. A homeless person (who Alex had turned away earlier on) makes fun of him and tries to get him to leave. This only gets him clubbed to death with a (surprisingly flexible) lead pipe by a homicidal Alex. The instant the man dies, though, Alex realizes his face and body have returned to normal. He returns home but finds himself growing addicted to the drink, the yogurt, and Nicole. As his oozing grows worse and his personality becomes more violent and angry, Lori starts to find herself dragged into the mix as their relationship becomes strained. What’s happening to Alex, and will Lori be able to stop it before it’s too late?
Slime City, in many ways, is a movie made with a tremendous amount of heart that defies description. Much of Slime City, taken on its own, should literally be terrible. The acting of almost every character with the exceptions of Sabin and Huner are either too hammy or badly read (and even they tend to go off the deep end acting-wise on occasion). Some of the gore will literally make the viewer laugh out loud. My personal favorite: Alex kills a hooker (Eva Lee) in his apartment by slashing her in the face with a straight razor. The problem is that Alex is a good foot to two feet too far away to actually hit her which makes both the ludicrously huge gash in her face that appears and the fact that she actually says ‘you crazy bastard’ after the fact utterly laughable.
The movie’s most glaring flaw, however, is easily the cinematography. While rewatching this for this review, I had to actually stop the movie at one point and yell at the screen ‘why did you go for that shot?’ Throughout�the movie, Director Greg Lamberson has a borderline annoying tendency to film dialogue by first filming one
character, then another. Some of the�blocking of his shots is atrocious, to the point where, in the Slime CityDVD’s commentary, he is actually heard to describe a scene as ‘one of the few shots where I actually like the framing’.
All of that being said, however, the strange thing is that this movie is incredibly entertaining, whether intentionally or otherwise. The makeup effects on Alex as he undergoes his transformations are well-beyond the standard set forth by the rest of the movie (not shocking given the SFX team also worked on Toxic Avenger and Street Trash). Also, while I did call out one laughable gore effect, most (unintentionally funny or not) are surprisingly ambitious, particularly the insanely gory final 10-15 minutes in which we learn, among other things, that the human intestinal track is apparently made of scrambled eggs and sausage. The Slime City script is admittedly pretty bad at times…but the worst lines of the film are mostly just hysterically funny rather than headache-inducing. It is also important to note that Huner, though at times giving bad line reads, does do a serviceable enough job making her dual role effective and believable that one is interested in seeing her in further work. The film score is sparingly used and feels a bit out of place with the events happening in the film…but it’s also very much synth-based and surprisingly unique and catchy, grounding the movie right in the eighties camp style it seems to strive for so heavily.
In the end, despite its flaws, what makes Slime City great is its heart. Made on the cheap by a New Yorker in his own apartment with a cast of relative unknowns, some of whom thrust into greater roles than they were originally cast for by necessity, the movie has a distinctive rebel style that almost comes as a result of its flaws and makes it a unique viewing experience. Variety was right – it is repulsive, both because of its ooze/gore and its indie feel. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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