THE SLIME PEOPLE (1962)
Article #641 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 12-16-2002
Posting Date: 5-11-2003

Five people trapped in Los Angeles try to do battle with invaders that come up from the sewers known as the Slime People.

This movie does for fog what THE FLYING SAUCER does for snow, and that is not a compliment. There are some interesting ideas here; the wall that forms out of the fog and the fact that the slime creatures need to be killed with hollow poles to keep their wounds from closing up and healing are both entertaining concepts. Unfortunately, the movie has a major problem in tone; every scene feels like every other one, so the movie is distressingly lacking in variety (the repetitive soundtrack only makes it worse). This is especially a problem when Les Tremayne’s eccentric goat-loving writer appears; he is far and away the most interesting character here, but the movie’s total inability to treat his scenes any differently than the other scenes makes his character feel less like a breath of fresh air and more like an incongruous intrusion from another (and more interesting) movie. But the worst culprit is the fog that takes over many of the scenes here. Though fog can be used effectively for atmosphere and mood, here it just obscures the action on a regular basis, making many of the scenes hard to see (not to be confused with making scenes hard to watch). Thus, watching the movie ends up requiring more work than is necessary, and the movie just isn’t interesting enough to merit that extra work. Consequently, despite the potential for interest here, the movie is no fun.