It’s traditional at 31 Days of Gore to feature a melt movie. This year’s selection is Slime City, in which twenty-something Alex Carmichael moves into a mediocre apartment in New York City. Upstairs is the penniless poet Roman, who only writes one line of his poem every year, and down the hall is Nicole, a baddie who likes to wear black lingerie. Shortly after settling in, Roman invites Alex up to his place for dinner, which consists of a gelatinous snack vaguely resembling green pudding and an “elixir” that looks suspiciously like absinthe.
From Roman’s place, Alex stumbles over to Nicole’s apartment, has sex with her, then has a black and white dream I can only describe as “playfully avant garde.” The following morning he wakes up with a helluva hangover and wanders the streets in the beginning stages of meltdown mode. A rockabilly soundtrack punctuates his descent into a melting killer (think: the chunky makeup effects in Nightmare City) as he murders a bum in an alleyway in a fit of rage. Following the murder, he discovers his skin has returned to normal and he later assumes it was all a hallucination from green stuff Roman served him the night before. It won’t be long, however, until he begins melting down again, which can only be alleviated by more killing.
Slime City is an acquired taste that I can only recommend to a certain type of moviegoer—those who already know if they could stomach such a thing—and to them I wholeheartedly recommend it. Do you like normal movies? If so, this movie isn’t for you. The acting, the camerawork, the special effects—none of it is what I would call good, but for my tastes, it’s pitch perfect. There are even scenes in which they failed to shoot the setup, such as when Alex shows up at an as-of-yet introduced character’s apartment with “the video tapes your mom wanted.”
Despite the fact the aforementioned special effects are more charming than technical, they are absolutely gross. In fact, this is probably the grossest movie I’ve ever featured for 31 Days of Gore, the phlegm scene in House IV notwithstanding. Your mileage may vary, but I must iterate that I don’t say this lightly: I can count the number of times I felt even remotely nauseated while watching a movie on one hand… hell, maybe even two fingers. This… this is something else. Something about the colors they use and the consistency of the slime… when a hooker slowly removes Alex’s Invisible Man bandaging, his face oozing the entire time, I couldn’t help but cringe in giddy anticipation.
This is bottom-of-the-barrel exploitation at its finest. There are no redeeming qualities, no forced edginess, and it has no agenda other than to entertain. The flaws, if you can even call them that, are what make the movie so endearing. It’s just a sloppy, gooey, lovable mess and I vibed like hell with it.
The Goug' Blog 