GREEN SLIME

US/Japan, 1968, 90 minutes, Colour.
Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel.
Directed by Kinji Fukasaku.

The Green Slime is quite a good science-fiction film, Saturday matinee kind of material but well done. There are plenty of special effects and the kind of outer space adventure that everybody enjoys. Exploration, danger and menace from the unknown are to the fore. The film is of interest as an American-Japanese? co-production - basically American stars with a Japanese director.

1. How enjoyable a science fiction film was this? Was the story at all plausible? Possible? Does this matter?

2. How much of a Saturday Matinee film was it? Why? In what features? Are matinee films enjoyable?

3. A successful adventure? Was it action-packed or was it too talkative and slow?

4. Were the characters well-defined or were they merely one dimensional? characters of leader, hero, part villain, heroine, bad doctor?

5. How convincing were the special effects- especially the initial catastrophe with the asteroid coming towards earth? The final escaping from the green slime? The Green slime itself and the figures it created? How horrifying were these? Humorous?

6. How conventional a hero was Jack? How conventional a foil to him was Elliot? How inevitable was their clash? Did it make sense within the film? Jack's heroism and his past? Eliot's feeling that he was always second? Hist need to assert himself? Is this credible?

7. Did the heroine add anything to the film besides an alternative to the heroics? Her challenging of Jack? And her part in the danger?

8. Was the mission to stop the asteroid exciting? Was the time element effective?

9. How effective was the slime itself and its effect? The gradual oozing? The curious doctor? The destructive aspects of the slime? Its return to the spaceship?

10. How effectively filmed were the growths of the slime? The dramatic of the threat to the safety of the people?

11. Which sequences showed best the havoc that the slime caused? Was the fear of the people well communicated?

12. The reactions at the start to try to stop the slime? The sequences in the infirmary? The doctor and his clinging to his scientific discovery and the poetic justice of his death? How horrifying was the fright and the deaths?

13. Was the jealousy of the two men credible in such moments of decision? What had happened to Elliot? Why did he crack under the strain?

14. How important were the decisions to be made? Of Jack’s controlling the situation? Of abandoning the spaceship etc.? 15. How exciting the abandoning of the spaceship? Gettinng everyone aboard? The scenes of the people on earth and their control?
16. How effective were the tensions and the heroism at the end? Jack's coping with the situation and Elliot’s death?
17. Why are science fiction films always enjoyable? This kind of encounter with things from outer-space? What myths about life on earth and life outside earth do these films perpetuate? Do people really believe them. Should they?