THE BLOB normally would have been just a blip on the horror movie landscape if it weren't for a young actor making his feature film debut in the film. Steven McQueen (who would soon shorten his name to the cooler sounding Steve McQueen) is the lead in THE BLOB. McQueen is very good and believable as a high school student who tries to convince his small town that there's an alien creature in their midst. It's hard to believe that just five years later, McQueen would be starring in the classic World War II POW adventure THE GREAT ESCAPE (1963) directed by John Sturges with an all-star cast including Richard Attenborough, James Garner, James Coburn, and Charles Bronson.
If there was ever a film that was crying out to be remade in the modern era with the advent of makeup and special effects, it was THE BLOB. What a talented director like Ridley Scott who made ALIEN (1979) or John Carpenter who directed his own excellent remake THE THING (1982) based on the 1951 original could do with THE BLOB would be mind blowing. But THE BLOB remake released in 1988 came and went with very little fanfare. I had not seen it but I recall when it came out I was not impressed with the cast (Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith) or the director Chuck Russell whose previous work included A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS (1987). The new BLOB did not discover the next Steve McQueen. Would it come close to its cult classic original source? CrazyFilmGuy has thrown down the gauntlet in this original THE BLOB vs remake THE BLOB cage match to find out.
Directed by one hit wonder Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr. from a screenplay by Theodore Simonson and Kate Phillips (later Kay Linaker) from an idea by Irvine H. Millgate, the original THE BLOB takes place over one night in 1957 in a small American town (the movie was filmed around Valley Forge, Pennsylvania). Teenagers Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen billed as Steven) and his girlfriend Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut) are parked up on a lovers peak when they witness a meteorite blaze across the sky and crash land nearby. An Old Man (Olin Howland) finds the alien rock on his property. When he pokes at it with a stick, a small gooey creature shoots out of the rock, grasping onto his arm. Steve and Jane drive up to investigate and nearly hit the Old Man crossing the road, clearly in pain. Steve and Jane race the Old Man to the office of Dr. Hallen (Stephen Chase) speeding past classmates Tony Gressette (Robert Fields), "Mooch" Miller (James Bonnet), and Al (Tony Franke) who are in another car. While Dr. Hallen examines the creature attached to the Old Man's arm, Steve is forced to drag race against Tony and his buddies until Lt. Dave Barton (Earl Rowe) shuts down their antics and lectures Steve on his driving.
Steve, Jane, and the three boys team up and return to the Old Man's cabin to inspect the cracked meteorite, picking up his stray dog along the way. Back at Dr. Hallen's, the Blob devours both the Old Man and Nurse Kate (Lee Payton) who had arrived to help the good doctor. Dr. Hallen tries to shoot the gelatinous creature. Steve and Jane return to Hallen's office. Steve witnesses the Blob kill Dr. Hallen through the blinds of his office window. Steve and Jane go to the police station to report Dr. Hallen missing. Officer Dave and Sgt. Jim Bert (John Benson) are skeptical of the kids' story. Officer Dave goes out with them to investigate. The Blob moves on from the doctor's office to the local car garage where it kills a mechanic (Ralph Roseman) working under a car. Officer Dave and the kids find no sign of Dr. Hallen. His cleaning lady Mrs. Porter (Elinor Hammer) shows up, tells them Hallen's off to a convention.
Officer Dave calls Steve and Jane's fathers to come pick them up at the police station. The kids promise to go to bed. Jane sneaks out of her home, bribing her kid brother Danny (Keith Almoney) not to squeal with the promise of a new dog. Jane reunites with Steve at his house. They roll Steve's car out of the garage. Steve and Jane go to the Midnight Spook show where DAUGHTER OF HORROR is showing at the Colonial Theater and recruit their friends to help. The teenagers spread out to warn the town, but no one believes them. Steve and Jane notice the Old Man's dog barking next to the local supermarket owned by Steve's father. It's supposed to be closed but Steve and Jane walk in. The Blob almost grabs Jane. Steve and Jane hide in the meat locker. The Blob tries to ooze under the door before retreating. Steve and Jane convince their friends to all honk the horns of their cars and set off air raid alarms to get the town's attention. The locals, police, and fire department show up. Everyone still refuses to believe Steve and Jane.
The Blob sets its sights on the Colonial Theater and all the tasty humans inside watching the horror film. It squeezes through a vent and consumes the projectionist. The movie screen goes black as the Blob oozes out into the theater. The midnight crowd flees nearly causing a riot. Jane's little brother Danny has snook out from home to see what's going on. Steve and Jane grab Danny and run inside the local diner as the Blob drapes itself over it. The police shoot at a powerline above the Blob trying to electrocute the creature with no luck. Steve, Jane, Danny, and the diner's occupants move down into the cellar. When the Blob attempts to squeeze under the cellar door, Steve sprays it with a fire extinguisher. The Blob retracts. Steve realizes the Blob doesn't like the cold, just like when it tried to reach them in the chilly meat locker. Steve calls out to the police and citizens to grab every fire extinguisher they can find and spray it at the Blob. The town is able to neutralize the Blob by freezing it. Officer Dave calls the military for assistance. He suggests they transport the Blob to the coldest climate possible. The film's final shot is a large crate dropped by parachute onto the snowy tundra of the Arctic. We can only hope a polar bear doesn't try to eat its contents.
From the colorful title sequence and catchy title song Beware the Blob (co-written by a very young Burt Bacharach) to the casting of future film icon Steve McQueen in the lead role, the original THE BLOB captured lightning in a bottle for an independent film. THE BLOB uses two tried and true horror formulas within its plot. First, the filmmakers utilize the Boy Who Cried Wolf angle. Steve has seen the gelatinous Blob up close and personal, first attached to the arm of the Old Man and later, absorbing Dr. Hallen through the blinds of the good doctor's office. But he can't convince any adults or authority figures of the danger they're all in. They all think Steve's just the typical teenager, trying to call attention to himself. Later, THE BLOB uses the effective small town under siege by malevolent forces mentality that we've come to love from Don Siegel's INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1956) to Wolf Rilla's VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED (1960) to Alfred Hitchcock's THE BIRDS (1963) to John Carpenter's THE FOG (1980). The town has to join together to destroy the giant interstellar membrane.
THE BLOB'S success was dependent on how realistic the filmmakers and their special effects department could make the Blob appear. For the most part, the original THE BLOB passes the test. The film's best sequences are at the beginning of the film. The neophyte Blob jumping onto the Old Man's arm is a terrifying start, a silicone like gelatin engulfing his arm (ALIEN would take this one step farther with the face hugger alien attaching itself to John Hurt's face). Dr. Hallen's death by the Blob is well staged, Hallen pressed up against his blinds, a pink mass behind him. Miniatures are used cleverly when the Blob squeezes through vents and under doors later in the film. An inflated weather balloon is used sparingly but effectively for some brief shots of the Blob as it begins to grow and move around town. It's only when the Blob becomes larger that the effects become strained by its limitations especially in the climactic diner scene. A matte painting of the Blob is used to show the monster covering the diner. THE BLOB remake would also run into special effect limitations when making its Blob larger.
One theme THE BLOB doesn't pursue is the communist paranoia that many other horror and science fiction films probed during the 1950s. The alien or giant insect was an allegory for Communist Russia or North Korea lurking in the shadows and sewer drains, trying to infiltrate the hearts and minds of everyday American citizens. This BLOB will have none of that Commie BS. This BLOB'S target audience is teenagers. The film has its teenagers doing what all teenagers liked to do in the late 50s: taking your sweetheart to an out of way location to make out, driving around in your parents' cool car, and catching a late-night horror film at the local cinema. The adults are portrayed as old fashioned and stuck in their own ways. The teenagers are out of control and making up stories. When Steve and Jane are finally validated by the existence of the Blob to all the adults, director Yeaworth Jr. pokes some fun at the grown-ups. A group rush to the high school to grab more fire extinguishers. The doors are locked. It's Jane's stern father Henry Martin (Elbert Smith) who has to act like a teenager and smash a window to let everyone inside. Mr. Martin's pause as he looks around at the teenagers looking at him before having to commit an act of vandalism is priceless.
Although director Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr is not a household name, THE BLOB would be Yeaworth's CITIZEN KANE (only because no one remembers his next two and final films 4D MAN or DINOSAURS!). Yeaworth's first love was making religious films which he did both before and after THE BLOB. Yeaworth had talent. Like any good horror film, Yeaworth keeps the Blob out of sight for most of the film, showing the viscous growing goo at short intervals, building suspense as to when it might jump out next. Yeaworth's staging of the panicked moviegoers racing out of the Colonial Theater to escape the Blob is the highlight of the film. The filmmakers must have made the whole town extras and urged them to flee as fast from the theater as possible. Watch for several collisions and near collisions amongst the locals during the sequence. It's an intense set piece for a low budget sci fi/horror film (THE BLOB'S budget is estimated to have been $120,000).
Most young teenage actors or young adults portraying a teenager in horror films are forgettable (see most FRIDAY THE 13TH films excluding Kevin Bacon who broke that rule). They are a dime a dozen. The same holds true in the 1950s. Young male and female actors and actresses were all fresh faced, good looking, and trying to become the next star. Their performances rarely stood out. That's what makes Steve McQueen feature film debut different. There's an intensity about McQueen even in a low budget horror film like THE BLOB that separates him from his peers. McQueen doesn't have a lot to work with (although the cast is uniformly fine if not a tad bland). McQueen makes us believe as teenager Steve that he's seen something literally from out of this world. It's easy to see how he got the nickname "the King of Cool." Whether he's getting lectured by Officer Dave for his driving habits or his exasperation with the adults who won't believe him, McQueen stays calm and focused. Many young actors would have acted tough or belligerent. McQueen uses his matinee idol face and eyes to say it all.
Hollywood is big on remembering anniversaries, so it was only a matter of time, say 30 years to be exact, before director Chuck Russell and Tri Star Pictures came up with the idea to remake THE BLOB (1988). It seemed like a good idea with special effects make-up and technology breaking new ground every year. Does THE BLOB remake live up to the spunky little independently made THE BLOB? THE BLOB remake pays homage to the original THE BLOB in many aspects: the Old Man finding the Blob first, the movie theater chaos, and the siege on the diner. But any remake needs to expound on the original. This new THE BLOB has some good additions and some cliche additions plus an interesting Stephen King vibe perhaps brought in by one of the co-writers.
Directed by Chuck Russell with a screenplay by Russell and Frank Darabont (who would go on to write and direct THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION), THE BLOB remake takes place in the fictional Colorado mountain town of Arborville (actually filmed in Abbeville, Louisiana) where the town is giddy after a Saturday afternoon high school football victory. Cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith) prepares for an after-game date with football player Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch, Jr). Sheriff Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn) asks diner owner Fran Hewitt (AMERICAN GRAFFITI'S Candy Clark) if she'd like to go on a date. Just outside town, rebel teenager Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon) tries out some motorcycle stunts and crashes his bike. Brian heads into town to get a tool to fix his motorcycle. Can Man (Billy Beck), the local hobo witnesses a meteorite crash in the woods. When Can Man goes to investigate the space rock, a baby Blob shoots out and attaches itself to his arm. Brian stumbles upon Can Man in pain upon his return. As Meg and Paul head out for their date, they nearly hit Brian and Can Man on the road with Paul's car. Brian urges Meg and Paul to take Can Man to the hospital.
Meg and Paul bring the hobo to the emergency room. Paul thinks he sees the Blob consume Can Man. When the doctor (David Lynch regular Jack Nance) pulls off the sheet, Can Man's lower half of his body is missing. This Blob has an acid component to its repertoire. Paul tries to call the Sheriff. The Blob drops from the ceiling onto Paul, killing our young hero. The Blob moves on to kill teenage couple Scott Jeske (Ricky Paull Goldin) and Vicki De Soto (Erika Eleniak) making out in their car in the woods before dropping into the town's sewer. Sheriff Geller sees Brian on the road and picks him up briefly as a suspect to Paul's death before releasing him for lack of evidence. Meg asks the rebel Brian to help her solve what's going on. They're now the only two people to have seen the Blob. They knock around ideas at Fran's diner before she closes for the night. The Blob kills Fran's cook and then crushes Fran in a phone booth as she tries to flee. Meg and Brian duck into the freezer. The Blob briefly tries to reach them before retreating back to the sewer.
Reverend Meeker (Del Close) witnesses the Blob seep back into the sewer. He finds a sample of the Blob and places it in a jar. Meg and Brian return to where the meteorite landed and run into a swarm of government scientists in hazard suits led by Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca), leader of the Biological Containment Team. Seemingly friendly at first, the government team quickly places the town under quarantine and forces Meg and Brian into a van, headed back to town. Brian overhears Meddows say that the Blob is actually an experimental biological warfare weapon created by the government. At the local cinema showing a slasher film (with the tongue in cheek title Toolshed Massacre), Meg's underage brother Kevin (Michael Kenworthy) and friend Eddie (Douglas Emerson) sneak in to watch. The Blob shows up in the projection booth and blobs Hobbe (Frank Collison) the projectionist. The Blob moves into the theater, gobbling up patrons. Brian escapes from the van while Meg stays onboard. When Meg arrives back in town, moviegoers are racing from the theater. Meg runs into her parents and learns her brother Kevin is in the theater. Meg rescues the young boys. The Blob chases Meg and the boys down into the sewer.
The Blob grabs Eddie and pulls him underwater, killing him. Meg's about to get blobbed when the biological team distracts the Blob enough to buy some time for Meg and Kevin. Brian finds Meg and Kevin. They start to climb up onto the street when Meddows orders the manhole sealed. Brian borrows a bazooka from the Bio Agents and blast a hole through the manhole. On the street, Brian and Deputy Bill Briggs (Paul McCrane) have a Mexican standoff with the government biological team. One of the Blob's tentacles grabs Dr. Meddows and pulls him into the gaping manhole. The biological team turns its weapons against the Blob. They believe they've killed the creature when it explodes up through the streets, starting a fire. Reverend Meeker is partially burned but escapes. Meg grabs a fire extinguisher to put out the fire. The cold foam touches the Blob causing it to retract. She discovers the Blob is allergic to cold. Brian borrows the snow blower from the local garage and sprays the Blob with cold snow. Meg ignites a conveniently nearby liquid nitrogen truck, freezing the Blob as an artificial snow falls on the town. The remake THE BLOB ends with a the disfigured Reverend Meeker now preaching at a revival tent about the Rapture aka the End of the World. He holds up a jar with a tiny Blob particle he collected moving around.
Let's see what the remake THE BLOB got right. The filmmakers get the color of the Blob perfect, a cotton candy like pink with translucent purple overtones. The body count is higher in this BLOB and the deaths more spectacular. The special effects (as you would expect in 1988) are superior to the original. The special effects work best with individual deaths like Scott's demise at the hospital, Fran's death in the phone booth, or the projectionist at the movie theater. When the Blob grows and attacks the town, the creature's believability suffers. This BLOB touches on all the original BLOB'S highlights and locations while breaking its own ground. We have the set pieces at the movie theater and the diner, their appearances flipped from the original. The Old Man becomes the transient Can Man in the remake, the unfortunate first victim of the Blob. Dr. Hallen's office becomes the town's hospital, a bigger set to unleash the Blob. The town's sewer system becomes a new location for the Blob to move around.
The new BLOB writers play around with the characters a bit. Football player Paul would seem to be the likely heir to Steve McQueen's Steve only to be killed early in the film by the Blob. Instead, outcast Brian and cheerleader Meg become the new Steve and Jane protagonists of the film. In the tradition of strong female characters in horror films like Jamie Lee Curtis's Laurie Strode in John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN or Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in ALIEN, Shawnee Smith's Meg is transformed into a heroine as she battles the otherworldly giant mucous. There are no high school friends to back up Meg and Brian in this BLOB. These two totally different teenagers on the opposite spectrum of high school have to team up together to fight the evil that has come to their mountain town.
What do the filmmakers of the new BLOB get wrong? Introducing the government and military as the bad guys may seem like a logical new addition to THE BLOB storyline but it's a cliche that has been used many times before (see Steven Spielberg's E.T. THE EXTRATERRESTIAL). The farthest leap is that the government somehow created the Blob in outer space as some kind of germ warfare project and was waiting for it to return. How Dr. Meddows and his team pulled this off is never fully explained. Having the Blob move around the town via the sewers works initially. But director Russell comes back to the sewers one too many times. There are too many convenient coincidences. Brian finding Meg down in the sewers after he's chased on his motorcycle by the government. Meg running into her pharmacist father (Art LaFleur) and mother (Sharon Spelman) just as she gets out of the government van and tell her Kevin is missing and might be at the movie is a bit of a stretch.
I mentioned earlier I wasn't crazy with the lead casting for THE BLOB remake when the film was released. Neither lead actor inspired me to see the film originally. Director Russell makes sure we know it's the 1980s and not the 1950s as both Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith have thick, feathered long hair (which were actually wigs). I have to admit that Dillon surprised me with his performance as outsider Brian Flagg. He's a heavy metal looking loner, rough on the outside but vulnerable on the inside when he realizes there are bigger forces in play than antagonizing the local police. Dillon (who is Matt Dillon's younger brother) broke into movies in Oliver Stone's Vietnam war drama PLATOON (1986) as the psychopathic Bunny and would have a successful run with HBOs hit cable series ENTOURAGE (2004 - 2011). THE BLOB was probably a nice role change for Dillon who could have been typecast in murderous roles after PLATOON.
Shawnee Smith who plays Meg is an actress I had never heard of before. She's spunky and athletic as the cheerleader turned Blob killer. She's required to run around and swim throughout a good chunk of THE BLOB. She's definitely not a weak horror film heroine. Smith (who I still haven't seen in anything else) has gone on to have a long career in films and TV most noticeably in James Wan's horror film SAW (2004) and four of its sequels. One of the only other recognizable actors in THE BLOB is Jeffrey DeMunn (THE GREEN MILE) who plays Sheriff Herb Geller. If you blink, you'll miss DeMunn. In an interesting plot choice by THE BLOB filmmakers, DeMunn is killed offscreen early in the film. We only find out when Fran (played by the other familiar actress Candy Clark) is about to get squashed in a phone booth and she sees Sheriff Geller who had flirted with her earlier in the night floating in the Blob's digestive system. It's a gruesome, effective image.
Even though the remake has no relation to horror novelist Stephen King's novels, this new BLOB has some interesting connections and references to other King stories most notably King's apocalyptic novel The Stand. possibly in part to co-writer Frank Darabont. Darabont (who also co-wrote with Chuck Russell A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 3: DREAM WARRIORS) would direct three films based on Stephen King novellas and novels including THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION (1994), THE GREEN MILE (1999), and THE MIST (2007). Kevin Dillon's character Brian Flagg has the same last name as Randall Flagg, the dark villain in King's The Stand. The homeless Can Man who becomes the Blob's first victim in THE BLOB is a reference to Randall Flagg's most ardent follower in The Stand called Trash Can Man. In The Stand, a genetically created flu engineered by the U.S. Government wipes out most of the planet. In THE BLOB, we learn the Blob was not some species from outer space but a result of a bio warfare experiment unleashed by the government. The U.S. Government would also be responsible for a radioactive fog that would create havoc in THE MIST written and directed by Darabont based on a novella by Stephen King. The doomsday/end of the world themes from King's The Stand and The Mist would permeate Darabont who would go on to develop the popular AMC zombie series THE WALKING DEAD about a virus that turns most of the planet into zombies. The last scene n THE BLOB with Reverend Meeker spouting Rapture like prophecies with a tiny Blob in a jam jar seems like a final nod to the Godfather of Horror Stephen King and his dire vision of the future of mankind.
The new THE BLOB has the luxury of better special and make up effects. There's something to be said for the ingenuity of the original THE BLOB filmmakers (including Jack H. Harris who would be a Producer on both the original and the remake). Working with less money and mostly inexperienced actors, the original THE BLOB caught everyone by surprise, even moving up from a second feature on a double bill to the feature film at theaters when it was discovered how popular the little film was. What the new BLOB can never match is that a Hollywood legend by the name of Steve McQueen was discovered in of all places a low budget sci-fi/horror film. The new BLOB treats the original story with respect and tries to separate itself with some success. I still lean to the original THE BLOB for its freshness. The new BLOB will satisfy horror film fans who love good special effects. Take your pick with either BLOB but remember to watch out for falling meteorites when you're out on a date or camping in the woods.
