The Blob (1958)

This slick and mostly harmless monster movie from the 1950s is one of those cult classics that live on in infamy (for good or bad). Despite falling victim to oversimplification, some corny dialogue, and effects that look horribly dated, The Blob ages surprisingly well.

Right off the bat, you should know that cinematic greatness should not be expected from this film. Designed for little more than cheap thrills and laughs, The Blob is a popcorn flick in the truest sense of the word. Yes, it has its fair share of shortcomings, but if you focus on them too much, you will miss out on half the fun. Leave your inhibitions at the door and just take The Blob at face value. It won’t be your greatest movie going experience ever, but it will be far from your worst.

Everyone knows the story of The Blob- a mysterious glob of goop falls to earth and begins oozing over and eating everything in its path, growing larger with each victim. The inhabitants of a small town struggle to find a way to stop it and, in the end, discover a simple yet effective way to dispatch the gelatinous foe. It’s pretty cut and dry and straight to the point. It’s an easy plot to follow and one that has been mimicked and replicated countless times over the years (instead of The Blob, insert any unexpected terrifying foe and add an equally simple solution to the problem and you have an instant popcorn monster flick with moderate success). Everything else that comes with The Blob is purely frosting on the cake, but it’s good frosting for sure.

For a movie made in 1958, I was impressed by some of the special effects. Some of the initial scenes with the Blob attaching itself to an old man’s hand and moving itself across the floor were actually pretty good. It’s hard to make a hunk of what looks like strawberry jelly look very menacing, but the Blob’s bland appearance actually does serve to spook you a few times quite well. Perhaps it’s the faceless killer aspect of the Blob’s nature, or perhaps it is because you never know how quickly the thing will strike and what its strike range truly is.

Truth be told, I always thought the Blob was green. Needless to say, I was quite surprised to learn that it is in fact red. I don’t know if they intentionally did this to mask any potential gore inside the Blob (as its red appearance would block out or blend in with any blood swirling inside from its last victim) or not, but it was a good choice. The red really helps the Blob stand out. The smaller the Blob is, the better it looks. Later on I the film we see rear projected, miniature scale or animated versions of the Blob. None of these look all that fantastic and show how some movie effects just haven’t aged well.

But for a 50 year old movie, The Blob gets the job done pretty well. Film fans will get a kick out of Steve McQueen unrealistically playing a teenager. His character has gotten himself in enough trouble in town that nobody believes him when he starts warning people about some kind of monster that’s going around eating people. Naturally, this rough around the edges guy pairs up with a sweet innocent girl, who is forced to go behind her parents’ back in order to help McQueen out.

The ending of the film is somewhat amusing as well. The words “The End” morph into a large question mark, implying that the Blob could very well return to ravage society. It’s a very 50s kind of thing to do- it was the era of growing fear as the Cold War between the US and the USSR began intensifying and the question mark serves to set the film up for a sequel if it did well enough.

While The Blob isn’t anything too remarkable, it is a fun and easy movie to watch. There’s a lot of history surrounding this movie (it did help re-popularize monster movies) so it’s more interesting to watch from a historical perspective than anything else. The Blob is a pretty good display of how movies changed at the time and serves to remind us how much they have changed since then.

RATING: 2.75 out of 5