Slime City

I’m shocked that I’ve never even heard mention of this one until now. It epitomizes everything I love about 80’s horror. It’s a movie that’s completely aware of its tongue-in-cheek cheesiness, never holding back on the blood, guts, and oozing pustules. In all respects goes as far over-the-top as a horror movie can go – prime 80’s excess. Big thanks to blogger and fledgling filmmaker Emily Tomasik, who introduced me to this treasure. Check out her blog, it’s full of neat animation ideas and kooky/adorable monsters that are at the very least tangentially related to this blog.

When we meet Alex, our hero, he is prissy and unlikable. This probably isn’t meant to come through in his character, but I want to make it clear this dude is a total nancy. Everyone in his new apartment building seems to think he’s on the up and up, though. He’s a young artist in a happy relationship with a sweet, wholesome girl; he’s good to his friends, well-mannered; he’s an all-around straight shooter. His new neighbors are taken verbatim out of the book of 80’s stereotypes: We have Nicole, a leather-and-fishnet clad metal chick and Cher’s doppelganger, and Roman, a new wave poet who could easily be recast without notice by a corpse in a Flock of Seagulls haircut. From the get go, they exhibit strange habits: They take their trash out at bizarre hours, and the occasional blood-curdling scream rings out from inside the building.

They seem nice enough however, if a little quirky, to Alex. Roman, who occupies the loft above him, makes nice with our hero and invites him over for dinner. Always open to new experiences, Alex eats the questionable looking green goo that’s set out in front of him and polishes it off with a tall glass of iridescent elixir brewed by a long-since-dead alchemist. Later on, in an elixir induced stupor, he slips out of Roman’s, shuffling toward Nicole’s apartment. Approaching her, he succumbs to lust and engages in a few seconds of really uncomfortable looking dry-humping before slipping into unconsciousness. He awakes from a lucid dream state confused, irate and covered in mucus. After stumbling out of bed and wandering through the city, his mood only intensifies and the mucus situation worsens. Urine-colored slime oozes out of pulsing blisters on his forehead and chin, his body is entirely glossed over.

The make-up and effects are top-notch. To reiterate a point I keep making: you can argue that the style of this era’s gore movie make-up doesn’t look realistic, but then you’d be missing the point. Ultra-real CG gore ends up looking more sterile, less stylized and certainly less obscene, so what’s the point? It’s utterly tame compared to the vomit-inducing splendor of Slime City. When done right, gritty make-up driven gore can turn obscenity into an art form: this is achieved in the film’s totally fucking gross final scenes.

The other aspect of Slime City which I adored was its humor. Whether you believe it to be an unintentionally botched attempt at making a proper horror movie or a well-executed camp masterpiece, you can appreciate the off-beat humor the movie offers. I’m more toward the latter; I’m certain the film crew were fully aware of the cheese, whether you’re talking about the fumblingly awkward acting in every murder scene, or the obvious use of hot dog links as intestines. In a similar vein to Street Trash, Re-Animator and the Troma legacy, Slime City features so much low-brow grit and repulsiveness that it ironically becomes high-brow, esoteric humor. It’s certainly something to appreciate - this brand of humor is exclusive to these kinds of “serio-comic gore sagas”.

The green substance and the elixir turn Alex into a psycho killer; they’ve caused him to enter into a vicious cycle of depravity, murder and slime. Alex is hopelessly hooked on the stuff, though – in fact, he reveals with a wicked grin “I like what’s happening to me.” When watching, it’s easy to see that on a deeper level this movie is making a statement on drug addiction and the dark avenues it can rapidly send a perfectly good person down. And though it makes sense, just as Friday the 13^th can be seen as a statement on abstinence, it’s not necessary to consider. These kinds of movies are generally pretty light on the deep messages - rather than ending in intervention, Alex’s addiction ends with decapitation and brain-mashing. Slime City is less about morals and more about tongue-in-cheek goo and gore. Personally, I wouldn’t want it any other way.