For most movie buffs, there are a few films that fascinated and scarred us in childhood, only for us to grow up and love them for entirely different reasons as adults. While there are a few such films for me, perhaps the first was 1958’s The Blob, a rather novel little film that introduced the world to a slimy, protoplasmic, and ever-growing, all-consuming and cold-phobic extraterrestrial.

What I remember best about the film is just how much it scared me as a kid. One of many titles my dad taped onto a blank VHS copy after picking up the original at a video rental store, so he could watch it later when he got the chance, it was the second title down on a tape that had It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). After first watching it, I avoided having to do so again for a second time until my early teens.

Of course, the original version of The Blob is many things. It’s a voice for the teenage rebel of the 1950’s; a cheap sci-fi B-movie made outside the studio system; a horror film that marked a peak for the genre, playing on the audience’s McCarthy-era fears of Soviet communist invasion; a vehicle for its talent on and off-screen; and of course, a social commentary that would set the benchmark for future horror offerings. With a remake reportedly in development under director Simon West (Con Air, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) and Samuel L. Jackson slated to star among its cast, it’s a good time to discuss how far that splotchy, blotchy mass from space has come.

The Blob (1958)

The Blob was just one of many paranoid alien invasion movies that were quite the rage during the 1950’s. Following the knock-out 1951 trio of Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, the Christian Nyby-Howard Hawks version of The Thing, and Edgar G. Ulmer’s The Man From Planet X, aliens were a common force dominating the silver screen. 1953 saw two standout films emerge during the communist blacklist hearings of Senator Joseph McCarthy. William Cameron Menzies’ Invaders from Mars was the tale of a kid observing the Martian takeover of his hometown, and Jack Arnold’s 3D-venture for Universal-International It Came from Outer Space, which inverted the usual premise by making the aliens benign visitors greeted with hostility by humans. The subgenre would reach its height with Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), which tapped into the fears of both those who embraced and were appalled by McCarthyism, as well as the first two Hammer Films productions, The Quatermass Experiment (1955) and Quatermass II (1957). But for the most part, a great majority of these films were lowbrow, conforming to the fears felt by the American masses while providing tacky escapist fare for audiences.

As a result, The Blob proved to be a far more serious-minded work than most audiences expected. Granted, it was produced and advertised as a B-movie, released on a double bill as the second feature following the nifty and decidedly more adult cult classic I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958. In that film, suburban marriage was presented as a possible front for a secret alien invasion. That film, shot in nourish black & white, certainly broke ground by tapping into the rise of concerns related to gender equality.

But it was The Blob that ended up proving to be the most popular film in the double feature, eventually displacing Monster as the main feature and going on to gross an impressive $4 million in returns on a budget of $110,000. Its impact still influences American pop culture; Seth Rogen’s character B.O.B. from Monsters vs. Aliens (2009) is one recent example; and the film was one of the 400 nominees for the American Film Institute’s 100 greatest Heroes and Villains. Even astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has gone on record as saying that the Blob was his favorite of all the aliens to come from Hollywood.

Back in 1958, however, most critics were not kind to the film, including The New York Times, which decried the special effects as “pretty phony” and failed to list rising 28 year-old star McQueen’s performance as one of its few positive aspects, calling the acting in general “terrible.” Variety was no kinder. Steve McQueen himself, having taken on the role to pay for food and rent, didn’t think much of the film at the time, rejecting an offer of a smaller up-front fee in exchange for 10% of the return profits.

Putting aside the negative reviews, The Blob is an impressive piece of work, the result of imagination and teamwork triumphing over budget. The film’s deceptively simple plot involves a race against time as one individual rallies his peers to take action and save their hometown – and eventually the world – from the Blob after it arrives via a meteorite and proceeds to devour any living being in sight. The individual is Steve who, while on a date with Jane (Aneta Corsaut), witnesses the meteorite landing and discovers the body of the Blob’s first victim, an elderly hermit (Olin Howland). Rushing the patient to the town doctor, Steve later watches in horror as the Blob devours the doctor alive. Steve begs the police to stop the menace, only to be scoffed at. Eventually Steve and Jane decide to take matters into their own hands, searching for the creature without police aid and rallying up their teenage friends to alert the town.

The Blob was not simply low-budget Hollywood-financed studio production. Rather, it was an independently financed work by several emerging and established filmmakers from New York and Pennsylvania whose work had been mostly in television and radio. One of those was producer Jack H. Harris, who started as a vaudeville performer at age six and later became a theater usher before eventually moving up to producer. The story idea was Harris’ own conception. Following The Blob’s success, he would prove himself capable of discovering and talent in and outside of Hollywood. He went on to aid director John Carpenter (Halloween) and writer Dan O’Bannon (Alien) in kick-starting their careers with Dark Star (1974), as well as special effects artist Dennis Muren (Equinox, 1972), and makeup artist Rick Baker and director John Landis (Shlock, 1973). He also worked on Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone and Sherwood Schwartz’s It’s About Time, eventually earning a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2015.

Most unique about The Blob were the backgrounds of the co-writer and director responsible for making it happen. The screenplay was largely co-written by a woman, Kay Linaker, who shared writing credit with Theodore Simonson under her married name Kay Phillips. The Arkansas native and former Broadway actress starred in many B-productions for Warner Bros. – most notably The Girl From Mandalay (1936), the Charlie Chan films and Kitty Foyle (1940) – before turning to writing. The film’s debuting director, Irvin Shortess “Shorty” Yeaworth Jr., also had a fascinating history in the arts. A native of Germany who moved to America with his family prior to World War II, he started as a child singer for Pittsburgh’s KDKA, the world’s first ever radio station, later became a radio producer, and would eventually go on to direct more than 400 commercials and religious shorts, for a time collaborating with Billy Graham.

The Blob is also notable for elevating the “cheap teen” exploitation fare of the 1950’s to a higher status, creating a sci-fi variant on Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause (1955). Steve McQueen’s teen hero represented a growing generation who were coming to realize that there was something wrong with post-WWII America, something that would eventually explode into nationwide anti-establishment protest in the mid-1960’s. The 1950’s, while being a growth period in America’s history following the end of WWII, was struggling with it’s shift to becoming a consumption-based economy rather than a production-based economy. It was a homogenous, rigid, and conformist period, in which a supposedly democratic white majority were in a state of deep opposition to communism in the Soviet Union, and in which conformity was usually associated with American freedom. All of which was further emphasized during the anti-communist witch-hunts of Senator Joseph McCarthy.

The studios followed a similar formula, owning the theaters and deciding what the audiences would see, with the Hays Production Code from 1933 still in effect and usually “Americanizing” foreign film imports. Enforced complacency and unfounded optimism were the norm, particularly given the beginnings of the Space Race with the launch of Sputnik, and the now very real threat of nuclear annihilation. The American government resorted to futile attempts to calm the American public during this era of heightened tensions and repression, and any progressive measure taken against the system would be therefore judged as subversive or communist. It was the practice of doublethink from George Orwell’s novel 1984 made all too real, and those who dared protest would be persecuted.

The Blob is probably the best celluloid representation of the aforementioned consumption-based mentality of America at the time, an all-consuming force that devours everything, driven entirely by instinct and without the exigency of intellect to justify its intent and actions. While it turns “red” from the blood of its absorbed victims (an obvious communist metaphor), it’s also pretty much enhanced by the continued practiced ignorance and supposedly moral practices of the authoritarian figures in the film, just as American repression and conformity were bloated by the consumerist practices of a largely conservative “Christian” nation as opposed to the “Godlessness” of communism in the USSR. And just as the alien protoplasm largely remains undetected and ignored prior to its hair-raising attack in the movie theater, so the problems with 1950’s American society would remain repressed and ignored prior to the social revolution of the 1960’s. Which is why, when the Blob invades a grocery store owned by Steve’s father, none of the inventory is consumed.

It was a change in pace from the usual cinema fare that the genre was straddled with. Most sci-fi films of the 1950’s were dominated by middle-aged government agents, scientists and soldiers as the leads, and any teenagers present were usually a nuisance, getting in the way of the heroes’ struggle to destroy the monster. But McQueen’s hero was a misunderstood individual, perhaps a more modern variant on the outsider hero in classic folklore who stands apart from the “regulars”. He is destined to become the archetypal hero who would rise against all odds, including the disbelief and intimidation by the institutions he’s been told to trust, to save his home and the people he cares for most. In the film’s most impressive monologue, , Steve, after sneaking out with Jane to find the Blob and warn the town, looks up at the sky at one point and remarks:

“You know, plenty of people in their right minds thought they saw stuff like flying saucers. The light was just right in the angle of the imagination. And oh boy if that’s what this is, this is just an ordinary night, and you and I are going to go home to sleep, and tomorrow the sun will shine just like yesterday… good old yesterday.”

Steve has the support of a mature and well-understanding love interest in Jane, who risks her own life to aid him in protecting their families. Both McQueen and Corsaut have a chemistry and warmth that stands in contrast to the coldness of the townsfolk – and in particular by the local police officer Sergeant Bert (John Benson) – which is further elevated by the support of their more understanding fellow teenagers, and eventually Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe) following the Blob’s movie theater attack.

The Blob also presents an interesting look at a flawed justice system, the reality of which would become more apparent as the 1950’s ended and the 1960’s commenced. Here we see three types of police officers working the system: one being the “honest cop” as represented by Rowe’s Dave, who demonstrates critical thinking but is usually reserved in his judgments; the bad cop, exhibited by Benson’s prejudiced Bert, whose wife we learn was the victim of a teen-driving accident; and the cops who, like the teenage heroes’ parents, do their best but don’t know what to think or which side to take. Both Dave and Bert seem to be engaged in some mildly hostile battle of nerves regarding their positions and performances as public servants whenever things get tense. Dave remarks at one point “I don’t care what Bert thinks, he acts like we’re still fighting a war!” In a separate scene, Bert notes that “We’ve got to stop being a babysitting service and start being a police department… every criminal in the world was a kid once, what does it prove?” It’s all too clear who we root for when, during the investigation of the wrecked doctor’s office, Bert assumes that the whole scene was an attempt by Steve and the teens to make a fool out of the local police.

Technically, the film’s special effects are still pretty impressive, given the low budget. The Blob itself was largely created by using gallons of red-dyed silicone, which was moved using gravity by FX artist Bart Sloane while diorama mattes and miniature sets were tilted and cinematographer Thomas E. Spalding shot from certain angles to present the illusion of the Blob’s movement, whether going under the door or through an air duct grating in the movie projector booth. There are some flaws, but the resourcefulness of the crew and the simplicity of the Blob prove that it is possible to create movie monster magic without a bloated budget. From the moment the Blob moves up that downturned stick and attaches itself to the Old Man’s hand, we are hooked. Money isn’t everything.

The Blob’s aforementioned invasion of a movie theater during a midnight screening, oozing through the projection portal windows seconds after a reel to the horror flick Daughter of Horror (1955) has finished unspooling is one of the most memorable scenes in sci-fi horror film history. This scene certainly anticipates future “attack-in-movie-theatre-within-a-movie” scenes such as those in William Castle’s The Tingler (1959), Peter Bodagnovich’s debut feature Targets (1968), and Lamberto Bava’s Demons (1985). It also added a new ironic trope to the horror genre, paying homage to an older horror film screening in the cinema, whilst contrasting it’s timid frights with those being faced in the “real world” of the movie.

Music has also been a part of the film’s enduring success and appeal. Although Ralph Carmichael composed the score for The Blob, the film is primarily remembered for the catchy pop title song, composed by Burt and Mack Bacharach and Hal David, and performed by The Five Blobs (actually one man, singer Bernie Knee, who overdubbed himself)! With its simple guitar and brass intonations and repeated lyrics (“Beware of the Blob! It creeps, it leaps, it glides and slides across the floor, right through, the door, and all around the wall! A splotch, a blotch, be careful of the Blob!”), the song shot to #33 on the Top 40 Billboard charts of that year, launching the careers of David and Bacharach in the process.

Beware! The Blob (1972)

The Blob would eventually get a sequel in 1972, Beware! The Blob! (aka Son of Blob), played strictly for laughs, even if there are some genuinely unsettling moments. Executive-produced by Harris, who also wrote the story, it was directed by co-star Larry Hagman, who had seen fame on TV with I Dream of Jeannie and Dallas. It’s essentially a parody rehash of the original, most notable for having the creature’s name mentioned onscreen for the first time, in a campy sting-in-the-tale ending. More people (and animals) are devoured onscreen than in its predecessor, and at one point it even goes metafictional, with the original film showing on a television screen at a pivotal moment.

A frozen fragment of the Blob, discovered in the Arctic and preserved in a canister, is brought down south – this time, to Los Angeles – by an oil pipeline lawyer (stand-up comic Godfrey Cambridge) for analysis, and is accidentally thawed out, devouring hippies (Cindy Williams, later Shirley Feeney on Laverne and Shirley, and singer-songwriter Randy Stonehill), cops, a barber (comedian Shelley Berman), several elderly folks (including Burgess Meredith!), and even a Scoutmaster (Dick Van Patten of Eight is Enough). As usual, the teens are the heroes, with the lead couple, Lisa (Gwynne Gilford, mother to Chris Pine) and Bobby (Robert Walker, Jr) in an interesting gender role change. Lisa discovers the Blob during its first attacks and has a hard time convincing anyone of its presence, even her boyfriend Bobby, until the Blob, having consumed an entire farm full of horses and chickens, drops right onto their car. Meanwhile, Sheriff Jones (Richard Webb), is trying to deal with the growing number of “missing persons” reports, just as the ever-growing Blob invades a packed bowling alley and ice skating rink…

It’s not a bad film, and I certainly did watch this one as a teen. The problem is that it’s often neither funny or seriousness enough when it needs to be. It has some moments of genuine wit, and some that are even suspenseful, but it lacks originality. A lot of the jokes tend to fall flat while trying to be socially conscious (a jab at the death of hippie culture at one point is only partially successful), and the numerous celebrity guest appearances tend to distract from whatever story there is, as each pops up briefly before becoming Blob food. Also, the music by Mort Garson doesn’t quite strike the same chords as the original

It doesn’t help that this production’s budget was not that much higher than the original ($150,000), and while there were some interesting effects techniques used, they are not as consistent, or as imaginative as the original’s were fourteen years ealirer. Some, including those involving a blue screen, are actually laughable. Interestingly, though, it did feature the early off-screen talent of Dean Cundey, as one of the effects technicians, who would go on to fame as cinematographer for John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and The Thing (1982), Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future Trilogy (1985-1990), and Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993).

The Blob (1988)

Fortunately, in 1988, exactly three decades after the original, and during the slew of grisly, graphic re-imaginings that came out during the 1980’s, including The Thing and The Fly (1986), The Blob got its own remake. This time it was a worthy re-imagining, with Harris returning as co-producer; director Chuck Russell (Dreamscape, Eraser, The Mask) at the helm; and co-writer Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile). With a $19 million budget at their disposal, both Harris and Russell went for broke, resurrecting that massive munching mass for a horror-hungry crowd during America’s last year under President Ronald Reagan, during a period in which the horror genre was at its full gore and glory. It may not be perfect, but in a genre often filled with shameless and pathetic remakes, this one is worthy of note. I have to agree with John Stanley of the Creature Features Movie Guide when he says that this one is “a monster movie with a capital M – a wonderful send-up of the original.”

The cast is quite an ensemble in itself. Starring in the lead teen roles were Kevin Dillon (fresh off his role in Oliver Stone’s Platoon [1986] and Shawnee Smith (Becker, Anger Management). Rounding out the cast as both Blob fighters and victims are, again, a slew of cult film and TV talents, comedians, and genre icons that include Candy Clark (Q – The Winged Serpent), Jeffrey DeMunn (The Walking Dead), Joe Seneca (Kramer Vs. Kramer), Paul McCrane (RoboCop), Beau Billingslea (Cowboy Bebop), child actors Douglas Emerson (Beverly Hills, 90210) and Jamison Newlander (The Lost Boys), and Del Close (Beware! The Blob). Even Bill Moseley (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, House of 1000 Corpses) has a bit part as a soldier.

There were changes to the original story to match the trends of the period. Whereas the original Blob was an extra-terrestrial entity that emerged from a crashed meteorite, in this version it was an answer to Reagan’s proposed but never initiated Star Wars space-based warfare project. Here the Blob is a dangerous biological warfare experiment launched into space, only to crash outside the small woodland town of Arborville, Colorado. Local biker punk Brian Flagg (Dillon) and blond high school football cheerleader Meg Penny (Smith) witness the Blob consume and dissolve its first two victims, an old hobo and Meg’s first date (Donovan Leitch). Again, no one will believe them… that is, until a military unit headed by Dr. Meadows (Seneca) shows up to try and contain the Blob while keeping the town quiet and quarantined. Brian and Meg, formerly flames, have the daunting task of trying to rebuild their relationship while exposing the truth of the Blob’s design. Meanwhile, the Blob has made its way into the sewer system and is slithering towards the local cinema…

Given that so many changes had occurred in the thirty years since the original, it was necessary to make both the teen leads more in keeping with the times, and both of them have believable arcs with a believable background. Dillon’s Brian Flagg is no longer as white-bread cool as McQueen’s Steve, a true rebel who feels he doesn’t belong, only to end up revealing that he cares for both Meg and the townspeople. Meg is a sweet teen, but not so naïve as she appears, gradually changing into a tough gung-ho heroine in the Ellen Ripley mold. There’s a real humanity here, and both Dillon and Smith deliver believable performances in roles that, in less talented hands, would come off as clichéd, stilted and unconvincing. They also have some funny moments. At one point, Brian remarks, following a soldier’s vain attempt to blow up the Blob just before it erupts in a geyser of pink muck, “I think you pissed it off.”

For that matter, there is not one false performance in the film – director Russell and co-scribe Darabont manage to create a film that feels truly authentic. In its own playful way, the film attempts to highlight the nature of a 1980’s America under the Reagan administration, and its attempts to revert to the conservative values of the 1950’s while pouring taxpayer dollars into the biggest military buildup in American history. Here the Blob’s origins function as a satire of the ugly truth beneath that mode of power, as a creation of man’s abuse of science and power that threatens to engulf the nation, whilst the government attempts to put itself “years ahead of the Russians” in terms of technology and weaponry. During the course of the film it becomes clear that both the ideology of the military and their weaponized creation represent a dual threat to the people of this American town, and the world.

Given the budget, it’s no surprise that the film’s special effects are truly top-notch. Hoyt Yeatman, who would later win Academy Awards for his work on James Cameron’s The Abyss and Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall, and Lyle Conway (Little Shop of Horrors [1986]) give the protoplasmic mass all the respect it deserves, imbuing with animal-like characteristics and a personality of its own. Tony Gardner (Zombieland, Army of Darkness) headed most of the FX crew and supervised gruesome victim-dissolving or body-scarring makeup work in the Rob Bottin or Tom Savini tradition.

While some of the effects have not aged well (one blue-screen effect in the sewers, and some back-screen work when the Blob goes rampant in the streets), and while the elemental simplicity of the creature is abandoned for a more complex look that includes mouths, tentacles and other appendages, this Blob nonetheless is a Blob. It does not choose favorites, it does not let barriers get in its way, and it even has an acidic effect, stripping the flesh off its victims. In the film’s main show-stopping standout, following a janitor’s attempt to “plunge” the Blob in the kitchen sink, it explodes out of the drainer, clogging the janitor’s face, entering his body through his gastro-intestinal tract, dissolves the body from within, pulls the entire skin down into the drain – and then immediately erupts out of the sink drainer like a volcano onto the ceiling. In another scene, it dissolves a victim from within while sucking her date into her body. There are plenty of grotesque acts to mention: limbs detach from enveloped bodies, a movie projectionist is pasted to the ceiling of his own projection booth, and in the remake of the famous movie theater invasion scene, audience members are whisked right out of their chairs into the Blob’s body. All of this ultimately leads to an all-out-battle for survival in the streets, complete with a snow-blowing truck battle. All in all, it’s a total visceral fest that is just as brilliant as it is bloody.

When the Blob was first unleashed on audiences in 1958, no one could have imagined that both the film and its eponymous, all-consuming extra-terrestrial would help shape both the horror genre and independent cinema in general. It played on both the fears of the public during the Red Scare and the desire of young, misunderstood rebels to rise against a rigid, complacent post-WWII society and point out that there was something wrong.

With yet a second remake on the horizon, we can only hope that it’ll do justice to the legacy set forth by The Blob.

The Blob (1958)

Beware! The Blob (1972)

The Blob (1988)

This article is written in memory of Jack H. Harris (1918-2017).