11 December 2024
The Slime People (1963)
76 min.
Directed by Robert Hutton.
With Robert Hutton, Les Tremayne, Robert Burton, Susan Hart, William Boyce, Judee Morton, John Close.
Christopher Robinson

Robert Hutton stars and directs this early-sixties horror, often ridiculed as ‘Grade Z’ fare. The fun begins when underground ‘slime people’ emerge from the ‘bowels of the earth’ to terrorize Los Angeles, sealing off the city with a wall of smog, thick even by L.A.’s standards.

At the vortex are earth’s only ostensible survivors, a crash-landed pilot, a scientist, his hat and his two lovely daughters who despite mounting crisis, manage to romance the nearest bachelors under the nose of their ambivalent daddy (He keeps a tighter grip on the aforementioned hat).

Along the way they encounter a doomsday fanatic who taunts them, claiming he’ll write a novel about them. There is even a humorous exchange where he blows them off, referring to them as “characters”.

Also of note is the creative method with which one needs to kill a ‘slime person’ (if that’s the right term). Spearing or shooting them is futile as their flesh gels together instantaneously. One needs to fashion a hollowed weapon or pipe to scoop or dice them apart. This ain’t Monstercide 101.

Quick and quirky, it’s among the last in the great double-bill creature feature era.

Also known as Tomorrow You Die.

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