This is one I've been meaning to get to ever since I started doing this blog and that's for one very specific reason: this movie terrified me when I was a little kid. I know most of you will probably burst out laughing when you read that but it's the God honest truth. I saw this movie one night when I was eight years old and it got to me. I was terrified to take a bath after it was over and when I went to bed, I was still petrified. It would be years before I finally saw the movie again. I wish the film's director, Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., was still alive so I could tell him what this flick did to me.
The very simplicity of it is what made it scary to me: one night, a small meteor falls to Earth in the woods outside an American town. An old recluse goes out to investigate and when he finds the meteor, it cracks open to reveal a strange, jelly-like life form that immediately latches onto his hand. It eventually completely absorbs him and goes a killing spree, devouring any poor soul that gets in its path and growing larger with every meal. A teenage boy and his girlfriend are the only ones that know about the creature but they can't get any of the adults to believe them. Can they do so before the monster wipes the town off the map?
The movie is straight and to the point. After a delicate kissing scene between our two heroes, this thing just comes. Other than its being from space, you have no idea what the blob is or where it came from. Also, the entire film takes place in just one night, another thing that surprised me. I often wonder what would have happened had Steve Andrews and Jane Martin, the two main characters, had just done what the authorities and their parents told them and went to bed. Would anybody have been around the next morning?
The blob itself is definitely a unique movie monster just for its sheer simplicity. It's nothing more than an oozing mass. When its meteor cracks open to reveal it, it looks merely like a sphere of jelly. It doesn't even seem to be alive. The old man pokes it with a stick and when he holds it up, it still just acts like a mere substance and slowly drips down the stick. But when the old man turns the stick back over, the blob proves it's a living creature by quickly attaching itself to the man's hand. The poor guy is slowly eaten alive after Steve and Jane find him and take him to the local doctor. One creepy moment is when you can see the blanket covering him move, indicating that the blob is spreading to other parts of his body. By the time the doctor and his nurse get ready to operate, the blob has completely eaten the old man and proceeds to devour both of them. This is when it begins to turn from fairly colorless to a bright red, no doubt from the blood of its victims. (For some reason, I thought it was purple for the longest time.) Things that start out small and grow ever larger in a short amount of time frighten me and the blob does exactly that. Strange thing though: after killing the nurse and the doctor, the blob eats a mechanic, apparently a bar full of people from what one police officer discovers, and a grocery clerk. And yet, when Steve and Jane encounter it again as his father's store, the blob is still basically the same size as it was after eating the old man. But then, after it eats the projectionist at the movie theater and proceeds to ooze out of the projection booth, it suddenly appears to be gigantic. After the crowd runs screaming from the theater, it pours out of the building and is now big enough to cover a restaurant. How did it suddenly get so big? Maybe it ate a lot of the people in the theater but most of them seem to make it out okay. This continuity error doesn't ruin the movie for me but I've always wondered about it.
The scariest aspect of the blob itself to me was its oozing nature which allows it slip under doors, squeeze through any opening no matter how small, and hide just about anywhere. When I saw it come out of the air vent in the projectionist booth, I nearly had a fit. The vent looked exactly like the air vents in my own house and when I took a bath after the movie was over, I kept staring at the air vent next to the tub! It's also completely silent. Only once does it make a gooey, sloshing noise and even then it's so faint you probably can't hear it. It could come right of your air vent or your faucet and you'd never know it until it was too late. And to add even more to my terror, this is one of the few 1950's monster movies where the monster isn't destroyed at the end. Unable to kill the blob with bullets, electricity, or acid, all the characters can do is subdue it by freezing it with fire extinguishers and have the army drop it in Antarctica. Steve says it's been stopped as long as the arctic stays cold. Even seeing the blob dropped into an ice field isn't comforting because the THE END title morphs into a question mark, suggesting that the blob may return. Made sure that I would have a sleepless night!
This is the 1950's monster movie I can relate to the most. Most of these movies take place in foreign countries, in big cities, or little towns out in the middle of nowhere. The town in The Blob feels like a regular American community, with reckless teenagers, old-town cops, and protective parents. I just happen to live in the woods outside a town very similar to that one! My house is a lot better than that old man's run down cabin but it hit a little too close to home for my eight-year old sensibilities. And while the town I live near isn't as sophisticated as the one in the film, it felt like it could be my town. On Friday nights, I'm sure there are teenagers doing reckless stuff on the back-roads and the empty streets. (In this day and age, though, they're probably getting high.) It just felt the most authentic of any of these types of movies. The town of Santa Mira in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers is pretty close to it but there were no kids in that one except for one very young one. The presence of teenagers in The Blob made it realistic and in retrospect, this is probably one of the first movies of this type to make teenagers the main characters and heroes. Finally, I feel that this film is a perfect look at small town life in the 1950's and what the baby boomers were up to. The vehicles, the clothes, the way the teenagers act and talk, etc. It's so obviously the 1950's. And what are the kids up to? Watching horror flicks at the local theater. And they're laughing at how cheesy and ridiculous it is! Many feel that some movies from the 30's or 40's are dated now but teenagers in the 1950's were already aware of how silly some of them were.
Steve McQueen's character of Steve Andrews is the best thing about the movie by far. Some have said that they feel McQueen's acting in this film is wooden but I disagree completely. From the moment the film starts, he comes across as a charming, funny, kind, and completely likable teenager (even if he was almost 30 at the time). At the beginning when Jane asks him to her by her real name instead of "Janey Girl" as he does at first, he does so from then on out. He also promises Jane that he's never brought any girl up to the Lover's Lane they're parked at before and he feels sincere. When they come across the old man, Steve offers to help him get the blob off his hand and then takes him to the doctor as quick as he can. When the doctor tells him to go see if he can find anyone who knows what happened and he runs into the other teenagers who want to challenge him to a race, he makes it clear that he has no time for this nonsense. He tricks them in a funny way and prepares to leave but gets stopped by an officer. He also proves to be courageous when others are in danger, like when he saves Jane from the blob in the market and later rushes to save her little brother from it as well. A likable guy all around.
Aneta Corsaut as Jane Martin doesn't quite do it for me though. She comes across as warm and kind but otherwise, she feels like a typical heroine of the times. One thing she does that annoys me is when denies knowing of the blob when questioned at the police station. She may not have seen it devour the doctor like Steve did but she obviously saw it on the old man's hand. She obviously does so because she doesn't want her overbearing father to scold her but it doesn't help Steve's case at all. She later admits that she believes what Steve saw. Maybe I'm being too hard on her but that part always kind of annoys me.
Earl Rowe plays Dave, the lieutenant of the local police department. Of the three officers in the film, he's the most sympathetic and likable. Unlike his partner Sergeant Bert, who clearly has it out for teenagers and is ready to throw Steve in jail the minute they discover the state of the doctor's office when they get there, Dave is more willing to listen, even if he doesn't entirely believe him. When Bert accuses Steve of messing up the doctor's office, Dave comes to his defense, knowing that he couldn't have done so because the door was locked. Late in the film when Steve tells him that he and Jane encountered the blob again at the grocery store, he believes him just by looking at him. Another stand-up guy, very similar to the sheriff in the 1988 version of The Blob, as well as the one in The Hitcher (both of which are played by the same actor, I might add).
Olin Howlin, who was a prominent character actor in scores of movies dating back to the silent age, made his last movie appearance as the unfortunate old man who becomes the blob's first victim. While he's not in the film long for obvious reasons, he's very good at displaying pain and fear when the blob attaches itself to his hand. Stephen Chase plays Doc Hallen, the doctor who tries to save the old man but ultimately becomes another victim. Again, not much to say but he is a sympathetic doctor who does what he can to help his patient. As Sergeant Bert, John Benson comes across as cranky, disbelieving, and, according to Dave, has an unfair grudge against teenagers because one hit his wife with a car. But when it looks like they aren't going to be able save Steve, Jane, and several other people from the cafe that the blob has covered, Bert sees that Dave is taking it hard and comforts him, proving he's a decent guy after all. The only other notable characters are Steve's reckless friends Tony Gressette, "Mooch" Miller, and Al, played by Robert Fields, James Bonnet, and Anthony Franke respectively. Tony is the one that has most personality. At first, he seems like a blowhard but when Steve tries to warn the other teenagers about the blob, he's the one that tells the other disbelievers to listen to him. One final character: Jane's little brother, Danny. I can't stand that little fart! He has one of the most annoying voices I've ever heard and when Jane tries to meet up with Steve, he wastes her time by wanting to go with her. When Jane tells him that she'll bring him a little dog if he'll go to bed, he asks if he can name the dog William. When Jane says that's a nice name, Danny suddenly says, "I don't like William!" Geez, just get up there and shut up, you little pest! Moreover, he's the reason Steve and Jane get trapped in the diner by the blob because he was stupid enough to try to kill it with his popgun. He even has the gall to say, "I almost got him!" I wish the blob had gotten him! (Something that the 1988 version rectifies, I might add. We'll get to that later.)
Lastly, let's talk about the music. The music score itself is nothing special. It's fairly standard music but it serves its purpose. However, the first thing you hear is a really silly song called Beware of the Blob. The credits sequence itself is bizarre. It's just a bunch of wavy lines circling across the screen with that cheesy song playing. As a little kid, I was like, "What is this? Am I watching the right movie?" Then the lyrics are sung, which perplexed me even more. This song lulls you into a false sense of security that the film is going to be silly when in fact it's quite creepy. Some people really like it. I personally have mixed feelings about it. I think it's the reason most may view the movie as just another cheesy monster movie and when they hear it, they'll probably turn it off. On the other hand, it's a catchy tune. I just don't know.
The Blob was made outside the Hollywood system by a group of independent filmmakers who merely wanted to make the best film they could with almost no money. So just like its title character, the film was an alien that slowly crept into the American consciousness, ended up making a fortune (over $4 million, which was a lot in the 50's), and became a favorite among fans of the generation. It sort of did the same to me. I'd heard about it before I saw it but never understood what it was until I did see it. It terrified me and for years, I couldn't watch it or even see an image of it without getting frightened. But eventually, I overcame my fear and it's now one of my favorite movies ever. One day I hope to go to Blob Fest, a yearly celebration of the film in Phoenixville, PA, the very town it was shot. Among other things, you can meet the actual blob! A film memorabilia collector has the actual silicone mass that was used in the film. It'd be interesting to come up close and personal with the very thing that terrified me years ago. I think it's about time the blob and I actually meet! How many can say they got to actually meet one of their favorite movie monsters; not the actor that played them or the effects designer that created them or a stand-in but the actual one? Not too many. So I eagerly await that day. Until then, I'll always have this great flick to look back on.
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