Slime in Cinema

Join us on a journey through the moving pictures as we countdown our top 5 Slime-filled films (say that three times fast!).

#5 THE FLY

Before discussing slime in The Fly, let’s first talk about Jeff Goldblum.  When I think about Jeff Goldblum, I often wonder where his shirt is.

The Fly is a 1986 masterpiece about a mad scientist (Goldblum) making a teleportation device.  As he is showing off his findings to a science journalist (Geena Davis), he accidentally teleports with a fly.  Throughout the movie, Goldblum slowly becomes a giant man-fly while Geena Davis falls in love with him.  Romantic, right?

Slime makes some terrifyingly amazing appearances in this film when Geena Davis gives birth to fly-man’s giant maggot baby and then hatches in a sea of clear slime.

#4  A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET

The brainchild of Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a classic slasher film.  Set in Ohio, a group of teenagers who live on Elm Street begins to suffer nightmares that start to kill them in real life.  With some investigation, the protagonist discovers Freddy Krueger, a vengeful ghost, is behind these dream attacks.  Turns out, he was a child murderer who was released from jail on a technicality.  After returning home, his neighbors burned him alive in his house– you guessed it, a house on Elm Street.

Slime has its moment when Freddy Krueger is sliced open, and he bleeds bright green slime and maggots.  I’m seeing a theme with maggots.

#3 POLTERGEIST

Poltergeist, based on a story by Steven Spielberg and released in 1982, tells the tale of Steve and Diane Freeling, a nice normal couple with three regular children living in the suburbs. When Carol, their five-year-old daughter, starts talking to the TV one night and then a ghostly hand emerges from it, things maybe aren’t so picture perfect anymore.  At first, the ghost is a little friendly and does some cool party tricks like bending a spoon, but it goes a little too far when it sets up a portal in the family closet and sucks Carol in.  The family devises a plan to get Carol out of the portal, and when she spits out, she’s covered in– you guessed it– bright red slime.

#2 GHOSTBUSTERS

Do I even need to explain this? Ghostbusters is an occult classic.

When a group of scientists loses their university gig, they go into business clearing the city of the supernatural. It’s a battle of low-budget technology and wit and really gross supernatural bodily fluid.  When the team discovers a gateway to another dimension, they assemble to save New York City from utter destruction. Also, Sigourney Weaver.

Shoutout to Ghostbuster for the direct mention of slime.

“He slimed me!”

“That’s great!”

We think so, too.

#1 THE BLOB

1958 was a wild time. I’m sure it was especially wild for Steve and Jane who were just trying to enjoy a good ol’ fashioned necking at Lover’s Lane when an alien amoeboid in a meteor crash lands in front of their car.

Instead of leaving the meteor alone, they open it and the weird red blob finds its first host.  Slowly devouring person after person, the blob grows bigger and redder and meaner.

Eventually, it is the size of a building, but the team discovers it doesn’t like CO2 in fire extinguishers.  They control it and cart it off to Antarctica where it will hopefully live out it’s days frozen.

Even though its reception at the time was not so great (one reviewer called it “chortle-worthy” and “phony”) The Blob lives up to the B-Movie occult-classic drama with a capital D that we all know and love.