The Blob
1958 Directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr.
Synopsis
It crawls. It creeps. It eats you alive!
A mysterious creature from another planet, resembling a giant blob of jelly, lands on earth. The people of a nearby small town refuse to listen to some teenagers who have witnessed the blob's destructive power. In the meantime, the blob just keeps on getting bigger.
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"Beware of the blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of the blob"What a way to start a movie. Where most science fiction B movies of this time period would start with an ominous score, this movie starts with the upbeat, jaunty, tongue-in-cheek song "Beware the Blob." From there the movie doesn't take itself too seriously and I dare anyone to not watch this film with a smile on their face throughout. The practical creature effects make the Blob look like a killer pile of silly putty with no remorse. It's very charming in a campy way and some…
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McQueen injects so much cool into it. Unfortunately, he is the bearer of all the cool this film has to offer.
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I was totally on board for the first act because, even when nothing was happening, watching Steve McQueen be cool is a lot of fun.
Then nothing really happened in the second act, either. I mean, they had about five minutes of plot that was stretched out for thirty or forty minutes. And instead of Steve McQueen being cool, he was more just reciting crappy dialog. Plus, there was no blob for a really long time.
But the effects work is great and Steve McQueen is so cool he transcends the material. All in all a solid, if not mind-blowing, drive-in creature feature.
Also, Steve McQueen is super cool.
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Loads of fun! Gelatinous ooze falls from space and gives Steve McQueen and his friends a shitload of problems. Coming in at a budget of just over $100K, it grossed well over $4 million. This film has been remade, parodied, and loved by sci-fi fans for decades. It also has the damndest, catchiest, theme song in sci-fi film history...
Beware of The Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The Blob -
Sure, you have to wonder if this film would have warranted inclusion in Criterion's catalog if it wasn't Steve McQueen's breakout vehicle, but "The Blob's" influence has been felt far and wide in genre cinema, from "Creepshow" to "Spider-Man 3" and beyond, and the movie itself is not without its low-budget charms.
As a Technicolor relic of America's past, the film tackles Cold War paranoia while offering sympathy to the ranks of misunderstood youngsters who filed into the cinema on a weekly basis back in 1958. A 27 year-old Steve McQueen plays his teenage character as a strange mix of James Dean and Jerry Lewis, and yet somehow comes across as endearing. It's evident even here that the actor was destined for greatness.
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26/100
All downhill from the title song. I'm not an aficionado of bad genre films, but this seems insufficiently cheesy/fun even by those limited standards; comparatively obscure pictures like The Colossus of New York and The Space Children (both made the same year) offer much more in the way of low-budget sci-fi frissons. McQueen was always a limited actor but he's simply inept here, alternately reciting his lines with the wooden faux-intensity of a soap star and fumbling them with a sheepish, shit-eating grin. And a gelatinous mass is neither genuinely scary—its early kills in the doctor's office depend entirely on the victims standing there like morons rather than simply walking away at .0004 miles per hour—nor especially funny (like,…
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A film so terrifying they had to give it a ridiculously jaunty theme tune.
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June Challenge film 25. This was kinda neat for me to see how some of the local Philadelphia area suburbs looked 50+ years ago. While it wasn't amazing, it definitely was more enjoyable than most of the monster movies I have seen from this era. I did have a hard time suspending my disbelief that Steve McQueen was supposed to be a 17 year old delinquent. He had more forehead wrinkles at that time at 28 than I have at 34. While it dragged a bit in the middle, I thought the payoff and tension at the end of the film made it worth while. Maybe one of these years I will have to drive out to one of the Blobfests they have out in the area it was filmed.
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Fun! Fun! Fun! Run, don't walk...
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For the first two-thirds of this film, it was, well... quite dull. There were some interesting moments here and there but it was mostly just a little boring with the pace trudging along, never really seeming to build.
The last half hour is where things really start to pick up and the story actually gets going and the stakes seem higher. Unfortunately, it's not quite enough to save it.
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Week 8 of the Criterion a Week project: Spine #91
Sure the acting's rough. Sure it's poorly paced. Sure it's nowhere near as good as the remake.But the special effects are so damn good. Call me shallow, but it was a fun watch.
And when you consider when it was made, the film's overall message - that adults shouldn't be hard on teenagers - is really ahead of its time, and surprisingly deep.
Plus, if we didn't have this, we wouldn't have Steve McQueen OR the amazing remake.
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"I don't know what it is or where is came from"
I walked away from The Blob not knowing whether it was pure horror cheese or satirical genius, either way I liked this film.
The story follows the then 28 year old Steve McQueen playing a rebellious teenager names Steve Andrews who's discovered an alien that consumes everything in its path to grow bigger. The only problem is, no one in the town believes him.
Steve McQueen and Earl Rowe (as Lt. Dave) gave the only two genuine performances, everyone else were just plain terrible. While it's harsh, there's no other way of putting it. Every actor who looked like they had any potential were either given a minuscule amount…
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Would have been way better with a little more blob and a little less dialogue.
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My expectations were a bit too high for this. Damn expectations. The only reason I would re-watch this one is if I watched it with a group of my friends, we would have a good laugh.
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'I don't know what it is, but we have to destroy it!'
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'I don't think it can be killed, but at least it can be stopped.'Rebellious teens (all of whom sadly seem to suffer from Progeria) are pitted against some salt water taffy with an attitude. Sorry if I can't suspend my disbelief for this one, it just didn't age well.