The Blob

Blob, The

Released: 1958

MPAA Rating: None

Genre: Alien

Nuts and Bolts: A big red festering pile of snot threatens to consume the entire town! Run don’t walk from…the BLOB!

Summary: Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and his girlfriend Jane Martin go on a date. As this is the 1950s, Steve is legally obligated to take her to inspiration point. As they sit up on the hill, they see a shooting star. Jane thinks the only reason Steve took her up there is to get down her pants. Dumb bitch. Why ELSE would he take her up there! Anyway, they notice that one of the shooting stars lands pretty close to where they live and they go to check it out.

Now we cut to a scene in the woods. A smelly old man walks out of his cabin to investigate the meteor. He finds it sizzling in a patch of burnt Earth. Poking it with a stick, the thing cracks open revealing a round black glob of shit. The crap slides up the man’s stick and begins gnawing on his arm. He runs out of the woods howling in pain.

Stumbling across the street, the old man is nearly run down by Steve and Jane. The two stop and decide to take the man to see ole Doc Hallen. They race past a car full of greasers and the group is none too happy about someone who would dare to pass them on the road. (???) They drive on down to Doc’s and the old man is put in a waiting room. Hallen asks them to go back to Old North road to see if they can find more evidence of the shit-crater.

As they walk out they encounter the greasers, Tony Gressette, Mooch Miller and Al. The three challenge Steve to a hot rod race and like an idiot, Steve agrees. (I’m starting to think that this was all people ever did back in the 1950s; race cars and go to the Malt Shoppe. Thank god for the sixties. I cringe at the notion of what people did to pass the time before the advent of drugs.) The two race their cars backwards to the stoplight. Steve is pulled over by officer Dave who is more or less the Roscoe Coltraine of this picture. Dave gives Steve a firm warning and a severe finger wagging before sending him on his way.

At this point, we find out that Steve is actually FRIENDS with the greasers, and he asks them to come with him to check out the site where the meteor crashed. They go down to the old man’s house and find nothing but his yapping dog. Jane decides to adopt the pooch.

Meanwhile back at Doc Hallen’s place, we find that the blob has completely consumed the old man and has tripled in size. Doc Hallen and Nurse Kate take defensive positions against the wall. Nurse Kate tries stopping the mini-blob with a jar full of Trichloracidic acid but this doesn’t seem to stop it one bit. Doc orders Kate to ‘be still’ while he goes to fetch his shotgun. (Why a doctor would have a shotgun is beyond me.) Kate does the exact OPPOSITE of what Hallen told her to do and thus she is eaten by the booger from Hell.

Steve and Jane arrive back at Doc’s just in time to see the guy slimed up against the window. Steve swears that he saw a monster. Jane was too busy fucking around with the old man’s dog that she stole and missed the entire thing. Steve drives down to the police station to warn everyone.

The cops think that Steve is nuttier than a pile of squirrel shit. They take him back to Doc’s to investigate the scene. There is no evidence of Doc’s body and the blob is gone. The secretary Mrs. Porter arrives and explains that Doc had left for Johnstown on business (Hallen DID make plans to leave town but he never got around to doing it). This makes Steve’s claim look very hollow and the cops take him back to the precinct. Steve and Jane’s parents are called in to take them home. Meanwhile, the Blob is across town munching on a mechanic.

Later that night, the two sneak out of their respective houses and meet up outside. They find Tony, Mooch and Al at the movie theatre and ask them to help look around town for evidence of the monster. The three goons as well as their goonette dates agree and everyone scans the neighborhood looking for big growing piles of gelatin.

Steve and Jane go over to his father’s grocery store. He notices the door has been left unlocked and he enters to investigate. The Blob attacks them between the potato chip rack and the shelves containing the marshmallow fluff. Steve and Jane race to the back of the store and seal themselves up in the meat locker. The Blob tries squeezing its fat ass under the door, but the extremely cold temperature drives it away.

Steve and Jane leave and manage to get everyone in town including the cops and fire department to gather around the grocery store. Steve tries to warn them that a slobbering pile of meteor shit is threatening all of Downingtown. Officer Dave is finally convinced and promises to help Steve out.

Across the street, the Blob has invaded the Colonial movie house. People come running out in droves, screaming and crying and blubbering like a flock of little Nancies. The Blob is now a big-ass pile of doo-doo and it practically consumes the entire theater.

It moves on to a small diner on the end of the street. This is a diner that Steve and Jane just HAPPENED to have run in to. For some reason, Jane’s baby brother ended up in the mix at some point too. The Blob covers the entire diner and no one can get in or out. Steve takes the shop owners down into the basement. Outside, Officer Dave comes up with a plan. Using his shotgun, he fires a bullet at a suspended power line. The line drops down on top of the Blob sending arcs of electricity all throughout it. This trick seems to do nothing at all to the Blob but it does succeed in starting a fire inside the diner. (What a dick-wad.)

In the basement, Steve and Jane use fire extinguishers to put out the fire. This is where we learn that cold CO2 can destroy the Blob. Steve manages to radio the info to officer Dave and the entire town collects together hundreds of fire extinguishers. Spraying CO2 all over the place, they finally render the creature inert. Steve and Jane climb out of the basement through a small window.

The National Guard is called in and the Blob is taken to Antarctica where it will remain inert forever.

Acting/Dialogue: There really is only thing that can be said when taking in the magnitude of the performances provided to us in this cinematic miracle. THEY FUCKING SUCK! Steve McQueen is such a whiney little geek that he makes Ritchie Cunningham seem macho by comparison. After watching this, I have a hard time believing that he became this big-time movie star of the sixties and seventies. Everyone else is pretty God awful too. The three goons jibe their way through every scene with trite bits of dialogue and vacuous facial expressions. The only one who really impressed me to any degree was Sergeant Jim Bert who thinks that all the kids in the neighborhood are out to get him because of his war record.

Gore: There’s no gore here, although the scene with the old man was kind of cool. We see his hand getting swallowed by this crud and its red snot-like consistency makes the whole affair look rather gruesome.

Guilty Pleasures: No nudity. Hell, I’m surprised that they showed Jane Martin’s ankles!

The Good: This movie is campier than a birthday party at the Voorhees house! There is zero opportunity for this flick to be mistaken for a serious movie. Within the opening credits we have this bouncy, corny shopping mall jingle entitled ‘Beware of the Blob’ sung by Burt Bacharach. This pretty much sets the stage for the cheese that is to follow.

Conceptually, this is a pretty vibrant and ultra-wacky idea for a movie. I like the fact that the Blob is more like a force of nature than an animal. No one seems to know what it is or even why it needs to consume living organisms. It kills fairly indiscriminately and then goes on its way. There is enough mystery inherent in such a creature that it keeps the viewer’s interests. Is this thing an alien? Is it sentient? Is it a spore? Is it male? Female? Does it have a pecker? These are the questions that we need answered.

When I watch a film like this, I always try and envision what exactly the director is trying to tell us. Is there some hidden metaphor to be gleaned by the Blob’s actions? Is the Blob meant to represent some aspect of our society? It comes to earth where it grows, matures and tries to eat people. Hell, isn’t that what Steve was trying to do in the first five minutes of this flick? Ahhh, I’m probably looking too deep into this. Sometimes a glob of shit is just a glob of shit.

I once read a review on the Blob where someone tried to spin a political interpretation onto the film. They sighted the allegory of how the innocent All-American youth movement was being consumed by a large overwhelmingly red foreign power. Damn. Not only do we have to deal with a three-ton booger, but now we have to worry about those damn commies as well! I don’t know how legitimate his theory is, but it’s an interesting viewpoint nonetheless.

The Blob itself actually looks kind of cool. It’s convincing looking enough to make one dubious about coming into physical contact with the thing. Although it is never stated in the film, we are led to believe that the Blob secretes some sort of acid from its pores. I like watching it squeeze under doorways and through ventilation shafts. We really don’t get to see the Blob in all of its Bill Cosby inspired glory until the end when it pushes its way through the air vents of the movie house. From there it pretty much takes over the whole fucking building. I also liked watching it cover up the diner. Pretty cool scene.

The Bad: The Blob is often regarded as being the king of the B era Sci-fi Horror flicks. Now while I can appreciate a director’s right to make a cheesy film, I really have to disagree with how this one was handled. Despite the fact that we are talking about a big pile of flesh eating gooey fat, this film proves to be rather dull.

There are a lot of ‘pointless banter’ sequences that appear to serve no purpose at all whatsoever. Each scene extends about three minutes beyond the acceptable time allotment. Steve stumbles through his dialogue with Fonzi, Potsy and Ralph Malph, and right about the time when we get to hear our third “Well, gosh!” the audience begins falling asleep. His scenes with the cops are no better. Steve can’t seem to talk to these guys for a minute without saying their first name 500 times. When you watch this, count how many times Steve says the name ‘Dave’ throughout the course of one conversation. Even the Hal 9000 wasn’t THAT repetitive.

The Blob itself (as stated) is pretty fucking cool. But I wish we could have seen more of him. We see him in the first twenty minutes and we see him in the last minutes. The entire middle portion of the film contains about as much Blob as Jennifer Love Hewett’s waistline.

I also have issue with the archetypes. If you notice, Steve easily gets every teenager in town to believe his story about a mutant blob without ever having to provide a shred of evidence. Are the kids in this town REALLY that fucking gullible? This guy should go into politics. However, the adults (authority figures) all roll their eyes at him and think he’s just some dumb kid trying to play a prank on them. (Hey, he can’t be THAT dumb! How many other twenty-eight year old men can get away with playing a seventeen-year-old?)

There are only a few female characters in this movie and all of them are about as useless as tits on a bull. Jane Martin is more concerned about finding a home for the old man’s pooch than she is over the fact that there is a 3-ton tub of shit threatening to swallow her entire neighborhood. Nurse Kate is equally useless. She probably would have lived had she just done what Doc Hallen told her to. That’s what you get for going against Doctor’s orders. Then there are the three token girlfriends. They don’t have any speaking parts, but all three of them bounce around with their vapid giggling and their glazed over empty eyes. Now I realize that this is the 1950s and that the old man’s dog is likely to get more respect than a woman will, but holy shit could they have at least PRETENDED that one of these bimbos was capable of birthing a coherent thought in their head. We need some independence up in here! Where’s Aretha Franklin when you really need her? I bet Aretha would have taught that Blob a thing or two about respect. Come to think of it…Aretha is actually a fair sight scarier than the Blob is.

Great Lines:

“It glides, it slides, it crawls, it rolls like jelly.” --Burt Bacharach’s title theme ditty.

“Well gosh Fonz! I reckon we better get down to the Regal Beagle right quick before Jughead and Veronica decide to leave the Malt Shoppe in order to go rescue Timmy from the well!” --Okay, nobody actually says this. I just really hate this cornball 50's shit. Grease is the WORD yo!

Overall Rating: 4 out of 10 severed heads. Classic my fat ass.

Back to Movie List

Back to Contents

Back to Home Page