The Green Slime (1968)

directed by Kinji Fukasaku, Katsuhiko Taguchi

Japan, USA

90 minutes

4 stars out of 5

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Is it just something in your head?? Will you believe it when you're DEAD??? GREEEN SLIIIME!!!

I think I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've rewatched a movie and had my opinion of it change as much as it did when I watched Green Slime for the second time last night. What I remembered watching three or so years back was a movie with fun SFX that was bogged down by a love triangle subplot that the Japanese cut of the film had the right idea in shortening. What I watched last night, though, was a well-paced, rollicking good time, with characters who aren't actually that annoying if you can make peace with the fact that their roles are more or less perfunctory.

I am going to skip right into talking about the film's visual effects, because they are frankly pretty stupendous. Especially its color palette. It's so intense and in-your-face that it almost shouldn't work: the reds aren't just red, they're the deepest, bloodiest, almost glowing scarlet that you've ever seen; the greens aren't just green, they're visceral, chlorophyllic, vegetal. The choice to contrast the two and have the rogue planetoid that the green slime is native to be so pervasively red is really striking. For about the first half-hour of Green Slime, the foremost thought on my mind was The Color out of Space. Film adaptations of the story seem to unanimously agree that the titular color should be visually depicted as a kind of violet-reddish-purple, but to me, no movie has ever (unintentionally) captured what I think the color should look like better than Green Slime. Although it's dated, the film does an excellent job at making the alien planet look like how an alien planet in a sci-fi movie should: not realistic, but visually arresting.

It's not just the slime and the alien planet, either: the Gamma-III space station is also a masterpiece of late-1960s interior design, with many set-pieces that look to have been fully ornamental. It reminded me of spaceships in the Gamera series, how they look absolutely ridiculous but pleasing to the eye, like little art sculptures flying around in space. Even the Gamma-III crew compliments the film's overall aesthetic with their understated uniforms, in a narrow selection of solid, off-primary colors, and the way the film stock captures their hair color and complexion.

And then there's these weird little shuffling one-eyed alien babies who scream and wave their arms around all the time. You can't overlook how inherently ridiculous the Green Slime are (it does seem to be plural; the aliens are never given a name in-universe and the tagline announces that "the Green Slime are coming"), and maybe that's okay. Their silliness feels right at home with how visually elaborate everything else about this movie is. That there are so many of them has always been interesting to me: usually a kaiju movie will have one suit and perhaps a maquette version and/or a cruddier alternate suit for use in underwater scenes, but there's a whole plethora of these guys just kicking it on the space station, traveling everywhere in small herds like schoolchildren crossing the street. They're honestly really cute. I felt bad every time one of them got poked in the eye, which happens much more often than you might think. I guess when your head consists almost entirely of eye, it makes for an easy target.

The movie is, as I said, much better-paced than I remembered it being. It introduces us to the slime fairly quickly, and once the slime is loose on the spaceship, the action pretty much never stops until the end credits roll. If there's anything I mildly dislike about this, it is that love triangle. Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi) is unfortunate enough to be aboard the station with both her fiancé and her former lover, who are intent on making their mutual involvement with her a big deal while she, meanwhile, seems pretty much fine with it and just wants to do her job. It is frustrating to watch Dr. Benson repeatedly be the voice of reason, only to have her level-headed suggestions and observations met with either of the two male leads going "No, I'm gonna do something really stupid instead".

But, all in all, it's great stuff. At a tight 90 minutes, I no longer feel like the Japanese cut, with its lopped-off runtime, is the superior one. It may not be the most cerebral science fiction out there, but it knows what it's doing and the people making it were at the top of their game in terms of visual effects. Weird that this was directed by the same guy who did Cops vs. Thugs, but that's how it is sometimes.

Harakiri (1962)

directed by Masaki Kobayashi

Japan

133 minutes

5 stars out of 5

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This is one of many movies that I've feared to approach for a while because I considered that I might not be smart enough to really get it. As it turns out, this is an excellent movie to watch not only for myself but also for others who might be putting off the "classics" for any number of reasons - despite its age and the accessibility barrier (for some) of subtitles, this is a movie that definitely still resonates and tells its story in a clear, masterful, and absolutely ruthless way.

And it really does feel like being told a story. The narrative here is laid out a bit unconventionally: we're presented with nothing at the start, nothing except for what we see on the screen: a ronin named Tsugumo (Tatsuya Nakadai) appears at the gates of the House of Ii, claiming that he wishes to commit seppuku in their courtyard, being in a state of financial and social ruin and having nothing else to do to restore his name but die honorably. He is invited in, but cautioned that this is not the first situation of the like that the House of Ii has seen. He's told about the ronin who preceded him, and the fate that befell that man; not truly intending to die, but hoping to be given some dispensation, the previous ronin was instead forced to make good on his claim and commit seppuku with a dull bamboo sword, without even the mercy of a second to relieve his suffering.

Slowly, the layers of the story begin to peel away. We find out that the preceding ronin was Tsugumo's son-in-law, who lived with him, and that his wife and their son were both sick and, lacking money for a doctor, he chose to beg for aid from the House of Ii - a true last resort from which there would be no coming back. His gambit failed, and Tsugumo pursues the same path, hoping to get answers if not justice. But there are still more layers than that, and this is where I'll stop going into detail because there are aspects of this movie that are really best experienced for yourself.

Saying what I'm about to say sounds crazy, and I know it sounds crazy, but I fully believe Tsugumo would kill a health insurance CEO in the street if this movie was set in the present day. That sentiment is what this movie is about, to me. It is a critique of justice without mercy, of any man who follows the letter of the law rather than the spirit, and of men who, gaining enough power to do so, define those laws themselves. Tsugumo repeatedly decries bushido as a façade. So too democracy. It's remarkable that a movie made in different circumstances in a different time can have such universal relevance.

Not to mention that it's a visually arresting movie, every shot hitting with what feels like palpable weight when accompanied by Toru Takemitsu's masterful score. Yoshio Miyajima, the cinematographer, also worked on Kwaidan, as did one of the two art directors, Shigemasa Toda.

A story depends a lot on the person telling it, and in this case the narrative is conveyed through the person of Tsugumo, as played by Tatsuya Nakadai in one of his most reserved but also one of his best performances. You wait the entire movie to see him really let loose, but he's as good before the payoff as after. The film builds steadily into an incredibly satisfying climactic swordfight with clearly impossible odds - the impossibility of victory less the point than the fight itself. As a noted swordfighting expert (this is sarcasm, I don't know what I'm talking about), to my discerning eye, the swordplay here looks deliberately showy: as with everything else in the film, its visual aspect does not feel like it's designed to be realistic; it's designed to have impact, to convey the story that it's telling in a fashion that is memorable and sometimes even darkly, brutally beautiful.

Sometimes renowned films are renowned for a reason, and this is an example of that. I will likely be revisiting this one from time to time now that I've accepted it into my life.