Cheap The Slime People (DVD) (Robert Hutton) Price

Related Products

Customer Reviews of The Slime People

An enjoyably bad ultra-low budget sewer monster movie
"The Slime People" are subterranean, spear-carrying, lizard-like, hunch-backed humanoids who come out of the L.A. sewers and take over with a deadly wall of fog (which helps to cover up the titular creatures for the most part, along with most of the film's "action" sequences). Reporter Tom Gregory (director Robert Hutton) manages to fly in through the fog when he learns what has happened to his hometown from Professor Galvin (Robert Burton) and his daughters, Lisa (Susan Hart) and Bonnie (Judee Morton). Gregory tends to be skeptical, but then the report about large, monstrous creatures roaming about the fog of the city and committing mass murder is confirmed by the media (plus Gregory sees them). Cal Johnson (William Boyce) is a Marine who provides this group with some needed muscle (and gives Bonnie somebody to fall in love with) as they try to take back the city from the Slime People, which has already defeated the U.S. Army, so they tend not to feel too threatened by this little group. Fortunately, Cal's Marine training does not stop him from taking Bonnie outside to be alone, at which point she is captured by the Slime People, because without that turn of events L.A. might still be controlled by sub-humanoids.

"The Slime People" is truly an ultra-low budget movie that is so bad it is somewhat enjoyable, a judgment codified by the fact that this was the 8th film ever to receive the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" treatment. Besides, the film is instructional, teaching kids that sodium chloride is table salt, which is often useful knowledge in fighting monsters. This was Hutton's only directorial effort, for obvious reasons, although he did go on to play roles in "Trog" and "Tales from the Crypt."

---

There's a movie in there somewhere behind all that fog
Here's my take on The Slime People. There's a group of guys sitting around the studio trying to come up with a movie idea, one that won't be rejected like all of their previous submissions. From out of nowhere, the fog machine goes haywire and won't shut off, and the studio has to send everyone home. Before a tech can get there to fix the thing, though, these would-be filmmakers decide that this is the chance they've been dreaming of; they have to move quick, though, before someone fixes the machine. They quickly decide to make a monster movie; naturally, since this is the early 1960s, atomic testing will be used to explain how the whole mess is really our own fault and not the monsters'. But what kind of monster should it be? Someone yells out - "I know, let's make it slime people." Since the repairman is on his way and no one has a better idea, they go for it. This is what they came up with: these slime people have been living underground and in our sewers for a very long time; nuclear testing has put a burr in their collective saddle so they have come up top to take over our world - well, Los Angeles, anyway. They've got this machine that makes fog, and this fog lowers the temperature enough so that they can survive above ground; then there's a wall, a wall somehow made out of the fog, which seals the whole city within an impenetrable barrier. Brilliant, they all say - all but one - and get right to work. Mr. "Rain On Our Parade" keeps asking questions: What are we going to use to make the wall? Why do these Slime People all look strangely like Bigfoot? Why is there no slime actually involved here? You know the type. Look, they explain, it doesn't matter how dumb the monsters look, and we don't even have to build a fake wall at all - there's fog all over the place. People won't even be able to see the heroes half the time, much less the crummy sets and ridiculous monster outfits. Mr. Pessimist nods and then asks how apparently reptilian creatures, being cold-blooded, could survive beneath the earth and why, if they came aboveground, they would want to lower the temperature rather than raise it for their own comfort and survival. Don't worry about it, kid, they say; one of our characters is going to be a professor; when you have a professor in your film, you can say and do whatever you want. If the professor says it's so, the audience will believe it. The rest, as they say, is bad movie history.

Maybe this isn't exactly how The Slime People came about, but it might as well have been. In many respects, it's your typical old monster-type movie, only this one has extra helpings of fog hiding a lot of what is supposedly happening. The whole thing is rather silly, really, yet The Slime People proves somewhat entertaining in spite of itself in a B horror movie sort of way.

---

Where is the soundtrack???
Beware! The Rhino DVD does not include the soundtrack. Let me qualify that statement; it has an incidental sound effects track, but not the dialogue track.

I sent it back to Rhino, but they only sent along another silent copy. I asked them to check it out before they replaced it, but ...... I'm not going to ship back to Rhino; I already spent more than this turkey is worth and am not going to pay the shipping charges again.

It's a shame as someone had done a great job on cleaning up the video-excellent clear and crisp visuals. A lot of effort for nought....a movie that appeals only to the lovers of bad films and rubber-suited monsters (you know who you are).

If Rhino ever fixes their mistake, will someone please let me know?