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1958 - USA Directed By: Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. Starring: Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, Steven Chase, John Benson, George Karas, Lee Paton, Hugh Graham, Elbert Smith and Vincent Barbi.
Current Available
Available in a top notch US R1 release as part of The Criterion Collection. This release not only features a nice looking anamorphic widescreen print but also features two seperate audio commentaries and a massive stills gallery. The UK R2 DVD from Village Entertainment is identical in terms of both content and quality to the R1 Criterion disc, as is the Australian R4 DVD release from MRA Entertainment.
Recommended
I would say so. Although time has not been especially kind to The Blob it still remains an entertaining popcorn drive-in flick for those who can tolerate its campy, kitsch flavour.
Review
Although by no means the first of the fifties fusions of science fiction and horror, Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr’s classic 1958 drive-in cheesefest The Blob stands out as arguably the most singularly iconic. If ever a film had seemed an unlikely candidate – initially at least – for lasting success it would have been The Blob, given that it was shot on a micro-budget of just $240,000 outside of the Hollywood system in small-town Pennsylvania by a crew who had previously cut their filmmaking teeth on religious and educational shorts.
The Blob was eventually picked up for theatrical distribution by Paramount, who originally planned to release it as a support feature for Gene Fowler Jr’s now largely forgotten obscurity I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958). When this double feature was exhibited to test audiences reaction proved to be so strongly in favour of The Blob that Paramount promptly opted to promote it to main feature and relegated the Fowler picture to support status. This proved to be a shrewd move on Paramount’s part as The Blob was an immediate success which set its star Steve McQueen on the road to big screen icon status.
The Blob opens with young Steve Andrews (McQueen) out on a date with his girlfriend Jane (Corsaut). When the pair witness what appears to be a shooting star crashing down to Earth close to where they are they drive off to investigate.
In the meantime an old man (played by screen veteran Olin Howland) has also witnessed this shooting star. Upon investigating he discovers what appears to be a meteorite which breaks open exposing an evil looking glob of brightly coloured goo. When he pokes at the goo it promptly leaps onto and envelops his hand.
Arriving at the scene Steve and Jane discover the man in agony with the goo slowly enveloping more and more of his body. Steve and Jane rush to man to local physician Dr Hallen (Chase) who is baffled and can only watch as the gooey mass gradually swallows up the mans body completely. After having antagonized the local police with his reckless driving Steve returns to Dr Hallen’s surgery only to be greeted by the horrific site of Dr Hallen being consumed by the now animated blob of extraterrestrial goo.
Steve relates his eye witness account of Hallen’s grisly demise to the town’s police who dismiss his wild tale as a teenage prank. In the meantime the blob slimes its way through town gradually claiming more and more victims, its mass increasing to humungous proportions as it feeds. Realising that the police will not believe them Steve and company eventually resort to desperate measures in order to get the town to face up to the danger that the blob poses to their existence.
Watched now with the gift of retrospect The Blob is a film of two distinct halves. As a drive-in creature feature The Blob still shines, but on the other hand the films prevalent “teen interest” content and plot devices have aged terribly, featuring a deluge of laughable cornball dialogue plus teenage and authoritarian stereotypes which must have been considered trite even for the time of the films original release. The real sticking point in this respect though is the casting of Steve McQueen as the allegedly teenage hero Steve. At the time of production McQueen was 28 years old and to be quite frank looks as if he might be anything up to even ten years older than that. As a result Steve’s romance of Jane (played by the 25-year old but younger looking Aneta Corsaut) comes across as a horny thirty-something moving in on a piece of teenage skirt and is actually pretty (unintentionally) creepy to watch. By contrast scenes of McQueen “hanging out” with and attempting to look cool around his drag racing teenage “peers” are just plain embarrassing due to the fact that McQueen looks old enough to be their father. Fortunately McQueen is at least very engaging in his leading man role which goes some way towards redeeming his hilarious miscasting.
Much tedium also arises from the town’s more or less completely incompetent police force who refuse to believe Steve and companies talk of a monster in town. The plot device of wet behind the ears teens trying to convince disbelieving authoritarian cops of the impending danger feels as if it has appeared in just about every film of this ilk and watched now feels crushingly predictable. At times during this film I felt like I was really watching an episode of Scooby Doo. In fairness however, the kids versus cops premise is at least granted a satisfying payoff as nice guy officer Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe with arguably the films best performance) eventually comes to believe the kids’ version of events leading to police and youngsters battling the menace of the blob together at the films conclusion.
One area in which it is hard to fault The Blob is in the special effects department. The rather innovative blob effects while knowingly goofy are actually very good by the standards of the time and still hold up respectably enough when viewed today. There is something oddly endearing about the sight of a gigantic glob of red extraterrestrial jam slithering across the screen in an attempt to gobble up all and sundry. The blob effects were achieved using a partially inflated weather balloon in the early scenes whilst the later scenes were achieved through the use of scaled down miniature sets and silicone gel. Also working strongly in the films favour is its excellent all-action final half hour which offers a couple of memorable set-pieces starting with a masterful extended suspense sequence in which Steve and Jane are stalked through a dark and deserted grocery store by the gelatinous monster. Yeaworth shortly after one-ups the grocery store sequence with The Blob’s now famous attack on the town cinema house (in the middle of a Bela Lugosi “spookfest”!) as the creature devours the hapless projectionist and sends the cinemas patrons fleeing for their lives. Of course no discussion of this films merits could be complete without at least a mention for its gloriously camp and insanely catchy, toe-tapping theme song composed by an uncredited Burt Bacharach, sung by “The Five Blobs” (actually studio singer Bernie Knee) and consisting of the hysterically inane lyrics “Beware of the Blob! It creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor”.
Although it is easy to make fun out of a film such as The Blob it would certainly be foolhardy to downplay its massive influence. Indeed, it is not exaggeration to say that The Blob redefined the template for its genre becoming the film cheap B-Movies sought to emulate or in some cases outright plagiarize. The Blob eventually spawned an unremarkable sequel entitled Beware! The Blob (1972) which is only really notable for being the only feature directed by Larry Hagman – legendary for his acting role as J.R in the hit TV series Dallas. Slightly more noteworthy was a 1988 remake of Yeaworth’s original directed by Chuck Russell, which sensibly abandoned the originals camp trimmings and if truth be told is pound for pound a more satisfying film than its predecessor. As of the time of writing a second remake of Yeaworth’s film is currently in production courtesy of Paramount.
All in all The Blob is not a film that has aged particularly well, its hideously hackneyed and outdated teen and cop stereotypes and camp, goofy tone feeling seriously out of place these days. All the same The Blob is still a film that it is vefry hard to dislike, possessing a certain unnamable yet irresistible something that makes its eighty-odd minute running time fly by in what seems no time at all even when the titular jelly itself is offscreen. Say what you will about The Blob, but as a snapshot of OTT fifties cinematic kitsch culture there is no film greater. The film is executed with an engagingly wide-eyed sense of innocence that is completely alien to anything found in modern cinema and offers plentiful amusement – both intentional and otherwise – for those prepared to tolerate or embrace its fluffy, camp eccentricities. In these more jaded times The Blob surely cannot be looked upon as a film to shout from the rooftops about any longer, but it is one that will more likely than not leave the viewer happier for having spent an hour or so in its company once it has ended.
Also Try… The Blob (1988, Chuck Russell) / Beware! The Blob / The Green Slime / Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes / The Stuff / I Married A Monster From Outer Space.
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