Are you a fan of oozy, gooey B-movies? If so, you will definitely be a fan of the underrated and little-known 1988 movie Slime City!! Filmed on the seedy and shady streets of New York in the 80’s, Slime City can best be compared to Street Trash with its putrescent and neon-colored gore. It revels in grossing you out, but also has an entertaining story.
You see, Alex (Robert C. Sabin) is looking for an apartment all his own…one where he can have a little privacy with his girlfriend, Lori (Mary Huner). He and Lori find a reasonably priced apartment that is close to both Lori’s house and Alex’s work. Alex decides to take it and soon meets the interesting tenants of the place. Across the hall is a Goth prostitute named Nicole (Mary Huner again) who likes to parade around in scant yards of chain, black leather, and fishnets and doesn’t leave much to the imagination. Downstairs is Roman (Dennis Embry), a punk poet who is quick to befriend Alex and invite him over for dinner. Dinner turns out to be blue and green glop that Roman calls “Himalayan yogurt” and a green alcohol that Roman tells Alex was created by the alchemist that used to live there.
After eating the green goop, Alex ends up giving in to Nicole’s wiles. Later, he wakes up covered in a slick, wet slime. Soon, his whole body is oozing and dripping with the stuff. He loses control and kills a homeless man on the street, whose spilled blood manages to turn Alex back to normal. Still, Alex cannot get enough of the green goop that Roman fed him, so he avoids his girlfriend Lori and chugs the stuff whenever he gets his hands on it. He also learns that the alchemist, named Zachary, was also a Satanist and committed suicide in the basement, along with his followers who also lived in the apartment complex. Alex keeps turning into a walking open sore, and takes to wrapping himself in bandages (a la The Invisible Man) before he relieves himself by killing someone.
Pretty soon, we learn that Nicole, Roman and the rest of the tenants just aren’t themselves…their bodies have actually been taken over by the spirits of Zachary’s followers. Zachary is also trying to come back…by invading Alex’s body!
Slime City is a fun and deliciously disgusting (and gut-busting) piece of splatter cinema! If you like your blood splatter mixed with gangrenous greens, lurid yellows and bloated blues, that is! The movie is like looking at a piece of splatter art, you know the kind you used to do when you were a kid? You spun the paper around and around and splattered all different kinds of colors on it? Imagine that and you’ve got Slime City!
For a low-budget film things work beautifully. Director and writer Greg Lamberson knew his limitations and worked within them to bring us this picture. I imagine the bulk of the budget was spent on paint and fake body parts!! Everything looks the way it should, and the grainy, low-budget look of the film only adds to the ambiance of the movie. There are some odd close-ups of characters speaking dialogue, but either I missed the director’s intentions or it is just an amateur’s mistake.
The acting is serviceable and the actors do their jobs quite well. Of course there are some scenes of over-acting, but for the most part everyone plays their characters well. Mary Huner does a wonderful job playing both Lori and Nicole. She gives such impressive performances that I didn’t even realize the same person was playing two different characters.
As for the “slime” in this City…oh, it definitely delivers!! The wet, oozing and sore-infested Alex is gross to look at and we get some impressive limb decapitation via Alex’s deformed body, along with copious amount of Technicolor bodily substances (blood, ooze, pus and so on). The end of the film is where the big payoff is, though, and I’m not giving any of it away.
If you are looking for a good time with some slime, I highly recommend the underrated, underappreciated Slime City.
Just don’t drink the green goop if it’s offered to you…and stay away from Himalayan yogurt!
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