USA science fiction
1958
color 82 min.
Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.
CLV: $49.95 - available
           1 disc, catalog # CC1165L
The Blob on laserdisc? Oh, come on. Isn't it just a '50s, black
and white, small screen, cheesy horror flick? Wrong. If you only saw
The Blob twenty years ago on your parents' old Zenith, you're
in for a surprise. The Blob is wide-screen, The Blob is
in color, and The Blob is a hoot. It is the only movie ever
made where the first thing you have to do in order to sing the theme
song is stick your finger in your mouth, blow, and make a popping
sound while plucking it out of your cheek. It's also the only film in
which Steve McQueen is billed as Steven McQueen, and it's the only
movie in which he plays someone named Steve. But more important,
The Blob is the definitive '50s film about a town that won't
listen to the kids until it's too late.
It takes place on one night in one town -- almost in real time. At
the start of the story, The Blob is out there "hot-rodding
around the universe" when it crashes to earth. An old man finds it in
a ditch and doesn't know what it is (even though everyone knows that a
meteorite looks like a bowling ball covered with teeny craters). He
pokes it with a stick, it cracks open, and soon the hills are alive
with the sound of mucus as the hungry raspberry jelly from across the
universe starts assimilating the flesh of all who dare to draw near.
Steve and Jane (Aneta Corseaut, who later appeared as Andy's
girlfriend on The Andy Griffith Show) are two teenagers out
necking who follow the trail of a shooting star till they discover the
horrible truth. Soon, the immortal line is spoken, "We'll go to the
police. They'll know what to do." Sure they will. Police academy
training includes how to deal with killer gelatinous protoplasms,
doesn't it? What follows is a quaint portrait of teens vs. adults in
Anytown, U.S.A., a portrait that immediately entered the annals of
clichedom.
Though it was an immediate hit, it took 14 years for there to be a
sequel, Beware! The Blob (directed by Larry Hagman), and
another 30 years for a remake (which wasn't nearly as good). It also
spawned dozens of oozing imitators, all the way from The H-Man,
an Oriental version of The Blob, to Larry Cohen's recent The
Stuff.
Aside from its reasonable amount of tacky thrills, The Blob
is best remembered as the film that gave Steve McQueen his first
starring role. He expressed indifference towards a project in which he
got to play a teenager at the age of 27, and where "the main acting
challenge was running around bug-eyed, shouting, 'Hey everybody, look
out for The Blob!' I wasn't too thrilled when people would
tell me what a fine job I'd done in it." McQueen secretly wished the
film would never see the light of day. He made only $3,000, preferring
to get his payment in cash rather than in profit participation. Bad
move. The Blob grossed 30 times its original investment. By the
time The Blob was actually released, Wanted -- Dead or
Alive had just come on the air, and McQueen was well on his way to
being a genuine star. In any case, his image as an intense loner,
lover, and reluctant hero started here.
The Blob seems made by people unfamiliar with other horror
films of the day. What was the matter with those screenwriters, Ted
Simonson and Kate Phillips? What were they doing giving actual
psychological motivation to so many characters? Steve isn't just a
wild reckless macho hotshot out to score with Jane in the back seat,
he's sincere and brave, with everyone's best interests at
heart. Officer Jim isn't just a dumb cop who hates teenagers, he's a
dumb cop who hates teenagers because "one smacked into his wife on the
turnpike." Jane's father isn't just a concerned parent, he's a high
school principal who is worried about it "getting all over town." (Not
The Blob, but the fact that his daughter spent an hour in a
police station.) Didn't Simonson and Phillips know that they were
dealing with a genre where everyone is supposed to be a clichˇ?
These characters became stereotypes, but at the time they were
miracles of depth.
In many other ways, you have to picture the time of the film's
original release to understand why audiences went bonkers. The scene
where The Blob oozes out of the projection booth at the
midnight spookie show would have been particularly effective at the
time, since the audience in the theater on the screen would have
perfectly mirrored the audience in the actual theater.
Of course the original critics didn't see it that way. "A lethal
lump of intergalactic plum preserves" declared one critical grump of
his day, and "a crawling roomful of jello that eats you instead of the
other way around" said another. Cue magazine blasted the film for
promoting emotionally disturbed kids, Arthur Knight said it was "not
so much horror as horrid," and most other reviews were equally
disdainful. Only the New York Herald Tribune went overboard in the
other direction, calling it "a minor classic in its field."
The director, Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr., was a minister in the small
town of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where the film was shot. Yeaworth
built his special effects in a room of the church building, where,
presumably, God oversaw the disappearance of matte lines. At many
points in the finished film, The Blob is blatantly oozing on
top of photographs of the previous scene. During the shuddering
climax, The Blob gurgles its way over what looks like a
postcard of the Downingtown Diner (the only diner on earth with a
basement). I guess God let Yeaworth down. He (Yeaworth, not God)
eventually went on to make The 4-D Man and Dinosaurus,
about which the less said the better.
Producer Jack H. Harris, who also made John Landis' Schlock
and John Carpenter's Dark Star, put up $150,000 of his own
money to make The Blob (working title: The Molten
Meteor) -- an investment that was immediately doubled when
Paramount picked up the completed film for $300,000. (Eventually, the
rights reverted back to Harris, who reissued the film many times
himself.) Paramount then spent another $300,000 on an ad campaign that
was so effective, the film brought in $1.5 million in rentals in just
one month.
This was particularly amazing considering the fact that The
Blob was released at the height of a low-rent horror film
craze. The screens of America were virtually inundated with bug-eyed
monsters conjured up from the mysterious secrets of the new nuclear
age. Fans of subtext can rationalize that The Blob was an
allegory of the public's sincere anxiety about the scientific
unknown. The rest of us can just sing along with the theme song. Ready
now? Okay, stick your finger in your mouth . . . .
-- MICHAEL
DARE
Credits
Director: Irvin S. Yeaworth, Jr.
Producer: Jack H. Harris
Screenplay: Theodore Simonson, Kate Phillips
Based on an idea by: Irvine H. Millgate
Photography : Thomas Spalding
Editor: Al Hillman
Art Direction: William Jersey, Karl Karlson
Special Effects: Bart Sloane
Music: Ralph Carmichael
Transfer
This edition of The Blob was transferred from the producer's
reconstituted 35mm master print, on which all of the lab work was
redone. The sound was transferred from the finest source known to
exist.