The Blob (1988)

I knew for a while after I saw The Blob that there was a remake as well as a sequel. After I was freaked out by the original, I didn't see the remake for a long time. I just happened to catch it on Cinemax one night when I was 14 and it didn't help me get over my fear. If anything, it made even worse. And yet, as much as it terrified me, I became fascinated with it until I sat down and watched it all the way through. As such, I realized what a killer movie it was and it eventually led to me overcoming my terror of the original and see it for the first time in years. While the original is undoubtedly my favorite of the two, this remake helped me become the admirer of it I am to this day.

It's interesting to note that all three of these movies have their own distinct tone. The original is a fairly serious movie with some campy humor thrown in. The sequel is a lame attempt at a horror-comedy. From the opening credits of the remake, you know what kind of movie you're in for: a dark, twisted movie that's going to scare the hell out of you. Michael Hoenig's creepy music slowly builds into a frightening piece as the title THE BLOB morphs onto the screen in black letters surrounded by an eerie purple glow. Each credit is designed that same way as the camera starts in space, slowly pans to Earth, cuts through the atmosphere, and reveals the town. The camera keeps cutting, showing you various parts of the town. Not only is the music creepy and atmospheric, it doesn't look like there's anybody around. Has the blob already come through and devoured everybody? Until the last credit when it's revealed that almost everyone is at a football game, that's undoubtedly what you're thinking if you know what the movie is about. It's an amazing opening.

One of the reasons why this movie is so good is the talent behind the camera. In the director's chair is the severely underrated Chuck Russell, who had directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, one of the best entries in that series, the year before and would go on to directed The Mask with Jim Carrey and Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger. Russell is really good at maintaining a fast, exciting pace with great visual style and effects and this film is no exception. He wrote the film with another great filmmaker, Frank Darabont, who would go on to direct The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and The Mist, all three of which are well made films. Darabont is a big fan of monster movies and that clearly comes through in this movie. It is, at its core, a gory, fun monster flick and one of the best of its type. Just as an added bonus, the cinematographer on the film is Mark Irwin, who'd worked with the great David Cronenberg on many of his flicks so the film looks great as well. With so much talent behind the camera, it's little wonder why this film is so well made.

The actors are really good as well. Kevin Dillon plays Brian Flagg, the lead who starts out as a typical black leather jacket wearing, cigarette smoking punk who doesn't care about anybody but himself. However, as the film goes on, he gets closer to the lead female character, Meg Penny, and as he fends off the blob, he proves to be a pretty decent guy. Dillon may not have the charisma that Steve McQueen did but he still comes across as likable overall. Also, we find out why he's such a punk at first. We hear that his mother often takes off with a boyfriend and nobody even knows who his father was. At one point, when he's going to leave Meg and the town behind, she says, "Take care of yourself. That's the only thing you're good at, isn't it?" Brian simply says, "No one else ever volunteered for the job." That one line tells you all you need to know about the guy without learning his entire backstory. Also, even though I said he cares only for himself at first, he is good enough to try to help the old man when he runs into him. Also, when he, Meg, and Meg's date, Paul Taylor, take the old man to the hospital and the nurse dismisses the man because he has no health insurance, Brian snarls, "I don't believe this shit." He knows something isn't just when he sees it. He's not a bad person; he just has some rough edges.

Shawnee Smith plays Meg Penny, the lead female character. Smith is probably best known to horror fans for her character in the Saw films. In this movie, she's a sexy cheerleader who starts off rather reserved, especially towards her date Paul because her dad, through a misunderstanding, doesn't care for the guy. She's the only one to see the blob when it devours Paul, as in the original when Steve Andrews was the only one to see it when it killed Doc Hallen. Also like Steve, when nobody believes her and she's sent home, she sneaks out because she knows the monster she saw must be stopped. Even though she's afraid of the blob, she goes out of her way to save her little brother from it when it attacks him at the movie theater. By the end of the film, she almost becomes a female Rambo when she sets a trap for the blob and tries to get its attention by shooting it and screaming at it. It's a shame Smith will most likely be best remembered for the Saw films or possibly for the idiotic character she played on Becker because she has the potential to kick ass when she needs to.

Donovan Leitch plays Paul Taylor, Meg's date for the night, who is much closer in line with Steve Andrews from the original: a fairly popular teenager in the town, best loved for being a good football player. He's sort of a red herring because first-time viewers familiar with the original may think he's the hero but he's the first person the blob kills after it devours the old man. His death is quite memorable but we'll talk about that in a second. Jeffrey DeMunn played the sheriff in The Hitcher a couple of years before and he plays a similar sheriff here. His Sheriff Herb Geller is a sympathetic character. When what's left of Paul is discovered at the hospital, he says, "I want the son of a bitch who did this." When Brian is brought in as a suspect, Geller has enough sense to know that Brian didn't kill Paul. He says, "Flagg's a punk, but he's no killer." Unfortunately, he gets eaten by the blob in a memorable scene. Speaking of that scene, Candy Clark plays the kindly restaurant owner Fran Hewitt, who unfortunately gets trapped in a phone booth that's engulfed by the blob. Joe Seneca as Dr. Meddows, part of a biological containment team hunting the blob, first comes across as a good guy but when he discovers the blob, he's intent on capturing it to use as a weapon and doesn't care who dies in the process. He gets his comeuppance in the end. Del Close plays Reverend Meeker, a drunken priest who thinks the blob is Armageddon incarnate and at the end, keeps a piece of it to unleash upon the world at some point. Paul McCrane, who played one of the criminals in Robocop the year before, does a 180 and plays Deputy Bill Briggs, who is not as sympathetic as Geller, clearly has it out for Brian, and has a death as memorable as his one in Robocop. The last character I want to mention is Billy Beck as the old man who's the blob's first victim. He does a fair job, although I didn't feel as bad for him because he simply didn't come across as frightened and in pain as Olin Howlin did.

Great directing and acting aside, a monster movie only truly works if the monster itself is good and they have a great one here. This blob is like the original on steroids. The way it looks is interesting. The original always looked like a mass of red goo, whereas this looks like an organic creature. It still has the gooey look to it, obviously, but resembles an enormous amoeba, which I think is the very basis for its concept. When the old man first discovers the meteorite and it attaches itself to his stick, it does resemble an enlarged single-cell animal like an amoeba or protozoa. When it drops down onto Paul, it spreads open like an octopus, something you'd expect a creature like this to do when attacking. Also, before it attacks Paul, drops of goo from it drop down on the table he's sitting at and burn through, suggesting that it has an acidic nature. When it kills people, it's clearly burning them in some way because you can see steam. The original blob may be classic but design-wise, this one is much more believable. While the original didn't have that much life to it, this monster's actions and movements point out that it's extremely aggressive in ongoing hunt for food. It's very fast as well, able to keep up with its victims even when they're running like hell. While the original blob made no noise whatsoever, this one not only makes slimy gurgling sounds when it movies but it even screams when attacking. It's also able to create tentacle-like appendages out of its body to pull victims into it. In one impressive scene in the sewer when Meg is dangling above it, the blob stations itself beneath her and even forms an enormous mouth to catch her when she falls. It out and out roars at that point. So, while the original film is still my favorite, I'd have to say that this blob is much more frightening.

The kills in this movie are badass, sporting really impressive makeup effects. Unlike the original, you get to see people dissolve when the blob engulfs them. The old man's death is more horrific than simply being absorbed completely. The blob ate his lower half and left his upper half on the table! When the blob engulfs Paul, Meg tries to pull him out but his arms are burned off by its acidic nature. A particularly gruesome shot is of his face by eaten away. The blob's next victims are Paul's sleazy friend Scott Jeske and his date, Vicki. Apparently when Scott went outside his car to make a couple of drinks for them, the blob not only crawled into the car but went underneath her, slowly ate up through her, and when Scott copped a feel, it exploded out of her. Her head implodes and you can see bits of it coming out. Scott's actual death isn't shown but we get a shot of his leg bursting through the window before being sucked back in. Pretty gruesome.

The most outrageous death in the entire film has to be the death of George, the cook at Fran's diner. He's trying to unclog the sink when the blob shoots a tentacle out of the drain, grabs George by the face, and pulls him head-first down the sink! I knew that that scene was in the film before I saw it but it still amazed me by how realistic it looked. How is that even possible? That has to be one of the most creative and insane death scenes in any horror film! It's then followed by another memorable scene, where poor Fran goes into a phone booth to call for help when the blob completely covers it. Fran gets a closeup look at Sheriff Geller being devoured before it finally bursts through the booth and does the same to her. Two unbelievable scenes being in the same film is amazing enough but the fact that they come one after the other is almost unheard of. This is why Chuck Russell should get more gigs than he does. The man has got skills!

Before going on, I must talk about the only real gripe I have about this film and about it's portrayal of the blob in particular. In this film, it's revealed that while it came from the sky, the meteor it landed in is an American military space probe carrying an experimental virus. It's never completely explained but conditions in space seemed to have mutated the virus into this organism. I never liked the fact that the blob is revealed in this film to be a biological weapon gone wrong. Not only is that an overused concept horror and science fiction films anyway, it robs the blob of its mystery. The scariest thing about the original blob was that all you knew about it was that it's a strange alien life form. Not knowing what it really is or where it came from makes it all the more eerie. Since this blob is already much more frightening than the original, the idea of this thing just being a bizarre alien life form would have made it even scarier than it already was.

Another great scene is the recreation of the theater scene. It starts the same way with the blob devouring the receptionist (and the manager as well for good measure) but this time, you get to see all hell break loose. After eating one obnoxious man, the blob goes on a rampage, grabbing everybody it sees. Meg runs in to save her little brother Kevin and his friend Eddie and not only sees people being devoured but comes across the gross sight of a woman with half her face melted off. Unable to get by the front, the three of them are forced to go out the backdoor. One suspenseful moment has Kevin get his coat caught in the door. As Meg tries to get him loose, you can see the screws in the hinges actually getting yanked through the door by the blob! After Kevin is saved, the three of them have no choice but to go down a manhole. You can see the blob smashing garbage cans and piles of trash bags out of its way as it chases them. As I said, this blob is ferocious!

Remember when I said that I wished that annoying little kid Danny had been killed in the original film? Well here, Chuck Russell has Kevin's annoying friend Eddie get eaten. The kid's been an obnoxious little brat since his first scene, getting Kevin into trouble when he talks about the slasher movie they're planning on seeing that night and then acts surprised when Kevin gets mad. He also acts like a little asshole to his brother, who happens to be an usher at the theater. It justifies his not only being killed but in a really awesome way as well. Not only does he gets grabbed and dragged down into a deep part of the sewer by the blob, but you get a glimpse of him being dissolved before it kills him completely. That actually shocked me. You have to admire any movie, let alone a fairly sized budget one put out by a mainstream studio, that has the balls to kill a kid. My hat's off to Russell and Darabont for that one.

The movie goes out with a bang as the blob, after killing Dr. Meddows, erupts out of the sewers and rampages through the town. It swats people with its tentacles, kills one guy by jamming his flamethrower and causing it to explode in his face, and traps everyone in the city hall. The frightened citizens have nothing to do but barricade the doors as long as they can. During the chaos, Deputy Briggs dies a very painful death when he's grabbed and pulled through an opening, getting bent completely backwards when it happens. (I know this has been done in other horror films but this one in particular looks especially painful.) That's when Brian comes to the rescue, using a snowmaker machine to attack the blob. One thing this blob shares in common with the original is that it's vulnerable to cold. But like everything else in this film, it's defeat is much more grandiose than simply being frozen by fire extinguishers. Meg uses a bomb from one of the downed soldiers to explode the snowmaker's tank when the blob covers it, freezing it into a bunch of purple crystals. All they did to afterwards was lock it in the icehouse. Hope nobody leaves the door open!

One last thing I want to mention is the film that's being watched by the characters in the theater. Remember in my review for the original when I said that the scene in that film showed that audiences as far back as the 50's already knew that some horror movies were cheesy and they were laughing at the movie that was playing in the theater? The remake updates that for 80's audiences. The film they're watching is a hodgepodge of various slasher movie conventions. The killer is wearing a hockey mask like Jason Voorhees but is using a hedge-trimmer, similar to Leatherface's chainsaw in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre movies. Behind Kevin and Eddie is a guy who's clearly a fan of these types of movies and can predict who's going to die, who's going to get away, and how the killer is going to murder people. Many credit Scream as being the film that played on the conventions of the genre and the audience's knowledge of it but lesser known films like this had already done so. While this movie's concern isn't about that, it's obvious that even before the 80's had ended, smart guys like Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont were already in on the joke.

While I still personally like the original, The Blob '88 is a very close second. I feel that it's more than a worthy companion piece to the classic original. What makes both films great is that they're two completely different films. They share the same basic plot and monster but the ways they carry them out are different. To me, this is how you remake a classic film and not insult it. I think it's one of the best remakes alongside John Carpenter's The Thing and David Cronenberg's The Fly. It's a real shame that this film failed at the box-office and destroyed any interest in doing a sequel, which the ending sets up for. In recent years, there's been talk of another remake. For a time, Rob Zombie was rumored to be doing it, which I dreaded. (When I review the Halloween movies, I'll tell you why I dreaded it.) But he eventually backed out, leaving the film's future up in the air. Whether or not the blob ever returns to the screen, we'll always have the classic original and its kickass remake.