In the mid 80's home video was booming and it gave the opportunity for lesser-known, lower-budgeted B-movies to try and find a market. It was a great time for indie filmmakers like Greg Lamberson and his 1987 film, Slime City. However, thanks to bad distribution by video label Camp Video (who released a handful of pleasingly titled horror flicks like Gore-Met: Zombie Chef From Hell and Death Row Diner before folding quite abruptly) his debut feature would languish in obscurity until being picked up by EI Cinema and re-released on video in 1999. Now, six years later Slime City finally comes to DVD and while it hasn't aged that well it's still a film fans of campy horror should see at least once and you can't complain when the outrageous finale contains a cleaver decapitation, headless body hacking, and a crawling brain.

Young artist Alex (Robert C. Sabin) goes apartment hunting with girlfriend Lori (Mary Huner) and gets quite the deal on a place in Manhattan that he quickly moves into due to it being clean and affordable. Everything seems to be okay apart from the fact his neighbours seem to be odd, punk rockers who spout off about Alex being welcome "fresh blood" and generally acting odd - especially neighbour Nicole (Huner, in a dual role), the vampy, lingerie clad neighbour.

He's invited over for dinner at one of said punkers apartments and after eating a meal of unappealing looking green "yogurt" and booze he starts to drip slime and generally look like a complete mess. Turns out the apartment dwellers are resurrected followers of cultist Zachery and that the seemingly innocent dinner invitation was a chance to feed him a concoction that will allow Zachery to try and take over his body, but before any of that can happen Alex tries to fight off his changes and also wanders around New York wrapped in slimy bandages occasionally killing the odd hobo, hooker, and gangbanger when Zachery's murderous urges take over.

While the acting is pretty amateurish, the effects are a little bit sloppy at times, and it's a little slow to get rolling, Slime City is a completely acceptable B-flick that sports enough gore and goofiness to be a mildly entertaining timewaster. The musical score has a chintzy low-budget 80's vibe, there's many amusing death scenes (like when Alex bites off a would-be muggers hand with his stomach), and Lamberson even throws in a scantily clad dance number just for the Hell of it.

If you want to see a movie in the same vein of Troma and various other sleazy 80's amalgams of slasher and monster movies you could do a lot worse than Slime City. There's enough gruesome (and cornball) effects by J. Scott Coulter, an entertaining finale, and generally steady acting/directing to make it worth at least a watch.

Visit Shock-O-Rama for more info - Streets on October 11th. (Chris Hartley, 10/6/05)

Directed By: Greg Lamberson.
Written By: Greg Lamberson.

Starring: Robert C. Sabin, Mary Huner, T.J. Merrick, Dennis Embry.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Remastered under the supervision of director Lamberson, Slime City has never looked this good. While it suffers from quite a bit of scattered grain this low-budget production sports solid colours and clarity, it certainly doesn't look almost twenty years old.

Extras: The main extra you get here is the inclusion of Lamberson's 1999 film, Naked Fear. There's also Shock-O-Rama's "Year Of Shocks" retrospective, the "Making Slime" featurette narrated by Lamberson, a trailer (plus trailers for Satan's Black Wedding, Criminally Insane, and Women's Prison Massacre), and commentary tracks for both films courtesy of Lamberson and Sabin (with Tommy Sweeney joining the Naked Fear one). They've also packed in liner notes written by Lamberson. So if you're a fan of this movie you're getting your moneys worth.