Slime City

 

This odyssey that, of course, revels in slime, started as a selfless act of me finding a copy of Slime City for a friend to watch. I never had any initial intention to watch the film, much less give it a thoughtful review. This friend has, for some time, had a growing addiction and it's only right that his path be taken downtown, a city of effervescent and oft-runny ooze. After bestowing upon him a Ghoulies double feature, why, I should have foreshadowed this long ago but now that I'm at this point - I can stop bitching and attempt to mend the mold that Slime City has spread upon every nerve in my brain. Opening with a scene of unspeakable turbulence, a couple glance at an apartment complex but for only the male suitor. Unknown to us, the female is a dedicated full-time cocktease whose occupation borders maintaining chastity and driving the lead male, Alex, mad. This can include many activities as Lori's model is an advanced prototype of female warfare, visiting Alex's workplace, furthering the temptation with her always loaded innocence artillery cannon. Mary Huner portrays both Lori, unloving girlfriend, and Nicole, temptress Goth-Rock man-killer. For reasons unknown to us at the time, the paralyzing performance of Mary Huner digs much deeper into the flesh of Slime City than one would care to realize but for now lets stick to the Satanic scribblings at hand.

After Alex moves into his new apartment, the tenants prove his previous assumption of being among retirees wrong by displaying black leather and chains, clearly the height of 80s NY counterculture. After the stress finally buckles his will too far from the lack of intimacy from his girlfriend, Alex spends his dinner with a fellow tenant, Roman, which includes a strange Himalayan Yogurt and an unknown wine created by a deceased soul. Upon further revelation, the wine is clued to be an elixir created by a Satanic alchemist before his suicide in the very basement of the apartment. Down there, shelves are lined with the stuff and Alex's future transformation is beset in stone. For you see, once you consume this dark combination of questionable origin, you must kill or else the slime will consume you. Your skin puses and boils. Clothes give way to seep slime through your every pore and eventually you rot. This drags in a line of clear inspiration from the aforementioned Ghoulies, that tale of a wandering masculine identity falling at the heels of property horror while a bubblehead bounces around. Not content with just "apartment horror", never in the vein of Polanski, Slime City ups the ante with extremely practical and unnecessary slime, ooze, gunk, and mire, which is more of a monetarily-salvaged helping of Street Trash, if anything. Slime City rolls out the mildewed red carpet at this epiphany and reincarnation, dismemberment, and turgid synth take lead of this true "grindhouse" production.

Whether or not Slime City is of worth to be occupied with your precious time is mainly up to the three key aspects that might make for sparse enjoyment. If promising amounts of seepage, fully clothed sex, and nondescript Satanic occultism seem like any desirable way to spend an evening than Slime City will overcompensate your dwindling taste in filmic luxury. Picking up where I left off, the transformation of femininity in Slime City is a rather quirky one. Nicole plays succubus to Alex's only desire - sex. After all, he is a struggling artist whose hormones were the only unconditional aspect of their seemingly flawless relationship. Refusing to make love, spend the night, or give way from her parents hold, Lori not only sacrifices the life and the will of Alex but also condemns his soul in the process. Striking opposite, Nicole is the gloomy girl-next-door archetype par excellence, especially with her dominating candy stare and the crypt-like apartment that she resides in, complete with wooden boards protruding from doorways. The climax of Slime City reaches a boil all too fast, resulting in an obviously synthetic experience. It feels as if Greg Lamberson forced the script to swallow a bag of pop rocks then wash it down with a spent slug of a .45 to ease the pain and eliminate its coil thus severing expectation. In fairness, I understand his will to want to keep it canon in death. Slime City lives up to its title in some ways, some others, it doesn't. It's not so much a slime city as it is a slime suburb. Either way, Slime City is definitive barf material. Especially in my sickened state did the grueling nature of goop sway me.

-mAQ