directed by Kenneth Zollo
runtime: 60 mins
“Well, I am the slime from your video
Oozin along on your livinroom floor”
-Frank Zappa
I’ll review anything with “Toxic,” “Slime,” or “Massacre” in the title, and this one almost had the holy trinity. In truth, it had me at “Slime.” Slime is the symbol of all things awesome. There’s a reason I tell you all to “Stay slime” at the end of each review. It’s my way of saying “be cool,” or “be excellent to each other, and party on dudes!” Slime is inching, creeping, squirming ever nearer. Slime sticks and slime slips between the cracks, and so should our excellence. The Toxic Slime Creature has no slime in it, but its shot-on-Super 8, DIY attitude is slime as all hell.
The movie takes place in a Dunder-Mifflin style office/warehouse. Let’s just say this is Dunder-Mifflin to make things easier. Rather than being a schmuck like Michael Scott, the boss is a grade A asshole that shouts at all of his peons. Especially Jimmy (Dwight). It’s annoying and makes him easy to dislike, but it’s not very pertinent to the story.
What happens then, is a train transporting chemical tankards crashes nearby and the air becomes toxic. This means they are trapped inside the warehouse. But they’re not alone.
FUN FACT: According to the US Department of Transportation, there are about 5,800 train-car crashes each year in the United States, most of which occur at railroad crossings causing 600 deaths and injure about 2,300 annually!
The creature, if you even catch one of the few half-second glimpses, is either a big piece of rubber, or a slug held in front of the camera to create forced perspective. I honestly can’t tell. The creature is a garnish and not the main course of this one.
Workers walk around the warehouse, and they meet and talk about what is going on. They react to something off-screen. Some die. It’s not graphic. The picture looks like diarrhea, the dialogue may as well be coming out of yogurt-filled kazoos, and the titular creature has less than ten seconds of combined screentime, but despite The Toxic Slime Creature not having any legs, it still has heart dammit. At least, it has my heart.
The music is a chill 60 bpm with mesmerizing noodled piano and plodding, fuzzed out space bass. I loved it to the point where just watching a man that looks strikingly like Joe Lo Truglio walk around a well-lit warehouse with a flashlight was a treat. It’s the little things! You won’t find this in your blockbuster feature while your popcorn butter-soaked fingers tweak your flaccid nipples! No, this is special.
This movie, like so many others like it, ends with little fanfare. Does anyone survive? Does the creature die? You’ll find yourself not caring.
Okay, so this movie is. bad. But for fans of no-budget, shot-in-a-day, backyard creature features, this will be a hit, even with creature not included.
FUN FACT: A human’s normal resting heart rate is 60-100 bpm. Caffeine can increase this value. Also, when applied to their soil, the stimulant causes snails and slugs to writhe uncontrollably. At the proper dose, these mollusks succumb to the neurotoxin in short order.
2/10
Stay SLIME, and be rad at all times!
-Rat
Personally, I loved the “What doesn’t have legs?”, “Well, fish, snakes.”.Solid dialogue.
I have to admit, I jumped on this one as soon as the video popped up on Youtube. Such an obscure film (and it seems like even now, not much is known about it). I enjoyed it, personally, but obviously, a film of this quality would have a hard time being taken seriously by many,
Great review, by the way. Happy to have ran into you.
– Jiggy
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Oh I enjoyed the hell out of it. Thanks for the kind words, friend!
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