One of those films
that more people have heard of than seen, this MGM production was directed in
Japan by Kinji Fukasaku (3 July
1930 – 12 January 2003), a productive and for the most part respected
director who ended his career with the cult fav Battle Royal (2000 / trailer), "a cultural phenomenon […]
considered one of the most influential films in recent decades". A far
cry from The Green Slime, in any
event, which was one of four films Fukasaku
directed in 1968, the best of which is arguably the wonderfully campy Black Lizard (1968 / full film), famous for featuring "Everyone’s
Favorite Homofascist", the hunky Japanese
nationalist novelist Yukio Mishima (below), as a human statute.
The Green Slime is a tender tale of man-eating, one-eyed,
electricity-shooting, rapidly reproducing tentacled monster who hitches a ride
from an asteroid to a space station where it reproduces and kills (6 people in
total) and the end of mankind in nigh…. The love triangle involves the three
leads (below), Commander Jack Rankin (TV hunk Robert Horton, 29 July 1924 – 9
Mar 2016), Commander Vince Elliott (Richard Jaeckel, 10 Oct 1926 – 14
June 1997, of William Girdler's
trash anti-classics Grizzly [1976 / trailer] and Day
of the Animal [1977], not to mention Mr. No Legs [1978 / trailer], Blood Song [1982 / full movie] and so much
more) and Dr. Lisa Benson (Luciana Paluzzi of Jess Franco's 99 Women [1969 / trailer], with Maria
Rohm & Herbert
Lom, Umberto
Lenzi's Manhunt in the City
[1975] and so much more).
The functional,
by-the-numbers script was written by, among others, Bill Finger (8 Feb 1914 –
18 Jan 1974), a man now considered co-creator of Batman (see the documentary Batman & Bill [2017 / trailer]), and also the
man who wrote the turkey Track of the
Moon Beast (1976 / full movie / Frank Larrabee's California Lady).
But we are here for the music. And here it is –
The Green Slime Theme Song:
Great song, it was
used only for the 90-minute cut of the film, the one used outside of Asia. The
Japanese cut, a tight 70-odd-minute affair that jettisons the love triangle
subplot, uses a military march. Charles Fox and Toshiaki Tsushima (22 May 1936 – 25 Nov 2013) are generally
credited as behind the film's score, but it is also generally accepted that
they had nothing to do with the song at hand. The promo single released by MGM
has the song credited to Sherry Gaden and arranged by Richard Delvy (20 Apr
1942 – 6 Feb 2010). Delvy might be remembered by some as one of the founding
forces of Surfer music: as a drummer, he began his career in music with The
Bel-Airs (listen to 1961's Mr. Moto) and The
Challengers (listen to 1962's Surfbeat).
"Sherry Gaden", however, is a pseudonym for a musician named Ed
Fournier, who also worked with The Challengers and later did songs and music
for Saturday morning cartoons. The most recent activity of his that we could
locate is/was the group Eddie and the All-Star Band, which included
former members of The Challengers, like Randy Nauert (1 Jan 1945 – 7 Feb 2019),
who plays the sitar on The Green Slime
Theme Song. Nauert, in his widely
circulated statement online about the song, says that Rick Lancelot a.k.a Ricky Lancelloti (25 Aug 1944 – 7
Apr 1980), who sang leads for the Banana Splits as well as for Zappa, did the
vocals. The theremin is played by former Glen Miller Orchestra bandmate Paul
Tanner (15 Oct 1917 – 5 Feb 2013).
So after that history
lesson, let us here at a wasted
life share a discovery we made while researching the theme song to
The Green Slime (trailer). Over at YouTube, Ed Fournier
uploaded an album he made
years ago as the music group Unkldrt (a name, we assume, derived from the
nonexistent German word "unkleidert", in past tense, which would probably mean
something like stripped or unclothed). Entitled NC-17, the LP features such fine titles as Long as I Got a Face You Have a Place to Sit, Shave the Bush, I'm a Lesbian Trapped in a Man's Body and U Get the Ugly One. It
will surely appeal to the pubescent humor in all of us, and is just waiting for
discovery. ("Rediscovery" doesn't apply here as no one ever knew about
it in the first place.)
Complete album –
Unkldrt – NC-17:
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