Oozing Charm Redux

With the theme song to “The Blob” now stuck in your heads, and the permanent psychological damage that might accompany such unholy knowledge fully underway, I’m afraid that’s not the end of the story. A dear friend of mine who quietly follows the goings-on around here was kind enough to point out that I missed another connection between B-movie horror and the origins of the “clean-up crew” from the LBBs.

In 1968, a movie titled “The Green Slime” was released. While I have never personally seen “The Green Slime”, it has been on the periphery of my awareness, being much lauded by friends of mine who are connoisseurs of crappy and campy cinema. The Internet Movie Database bears the following plot synopsis:

A giant asteroid is heading toward Earth so some astronauts disembark from a nearby space station to blow it up. The mission is successful, and they return to the station unknowingly bringing back a gooey green substance that mutates into one-eyed tentacled monsters that feed off electricity. Soon the station is crawling with them, and people are being zapped left and right!

Judging from that description, I think it’s safe to say that the green slime from D&D has no direct correlation to the entity in the movie. However, since the release of the film does roughly coincide with the developmental period of the game, it could possibly have served as inspiration for everyone’s favorite dripping ceiling monster if in name only. I leave this to better scholars than myself to elaborate upon. Anyone in need of an off-beat Master’s thesis, please feel free to pursue this venture.

There is one thing regarding “The Green Slime” that I can state with confidence, it also being the reason that this film is embraced so warmly by fans of campy cinema:

Like “The Blob”, it has a pretty hip theme song.