- Original theatrical poster - image courtesy of Wrong Side of the Art
SPOILER WARNING IN EFFECT.
The titular threat of The Blob has always struck me as the ultimate movie monster: an insatiably hungry, amoeba-like mass able to penetrate virtually any safeguard, capable of--as a doomed doctor chillingly describes it--"assimilating flesh on contact."
Snide comparisons to gelatin be damned, it's a concept with the most devastating of potential consequences, not unlike the grey goo scenario proposed by technological theorists fearful of artificial intelligence run rampant. Intelligent or not, the blob is like a zombie virus manifest, the threat growing--quite literally--with every living thing it consumes. Even as a family-friendly film produced by a religious production company, The Blob is appropriately terrifying, and it didn't take much updating to turn it into an all-out slasher movie in the excellent 1988 remake.
Those behind the making of the original film must have known their subject matter would be up for easy ridicule and parody. All the more props are due, then, for their refusal to execute the matter with an entirely straight face. An effectively simple opening credits sequence establishes the sly yet sinister tone. Hypnotic red blotches radiate outward from an infinite horizon, all set to the instantly catchy jingle of Burt Bacharach's theme song. It's the perfect precursor to the film's pop culture complexity--an alluring, deceptively cheery facade for darker territory to come.
The movie proper commences with an awkward date night moment, which proves an effective means of bucking conventions and establishing the central characters right out of the gate. Steve McQueen (in his first movie role) and Aneta Corsaut (ditto) are Steve and Jane, two well-mannered teenagers who catch sight of and subsequently seek out a falling meteor (thus setting a trend for countless horror movies to come), the impact of which also prompts the inquiry of a nearby recluse.
The old man (veteran Olin Howland, in his last movie role) who discovers the meteor also becomes the first victim of the small life form contained inside, one that, upon disturbance, seemingly defies gravity and attaches itself to the unlucky individual's hand, quickly turning red from the flesh it consumes, impossible to remove without amputation.
Finding the old man howling in agony on the side of the road, Steve and Jane take him to the local doctor, who, as fate happens, is just on his way out of town when they arrive--the first of several circumstantial snafus that keep the threat of the blob in the dark during the pivotal early hours of the evening. A nurse is called back to the office to assist, to no avail.
When Steve and Jane return from an errand to check on the old man, it is only Steve who sees the doctor in his final moments of assimilation within the digestive mass, the old man and nurse having already added to its form. As a teenager in a town ruled in part by a kid-hating cop, Steve's efforts to spread the word fall on initially deaf ears, allowing the monster sufficient time to consume several more townsfolk under cover of darkness.
Much has been written about The Blob's subtextual meanings, with many seeing it as a thinly-veiled commentary on the then-potent fear of spreading communism, an easy comparison to make given that the monster is, indeed, a red scare. That being said, that allegory seems forced onto the film's agenda-free template, which tastefully sidesteps the party line in favor of a more down-to-earth brand of social consciousness.
Aside from the blob itself, the true antagonist of the film is the generation gap. The youth of the picture, finding themselves scoffed at by the police and short on time, have to assert themselves forcibly, ultimately resorting to basic anarchism so as to call attention to the very-real threat in their midst. The doubts, routines and assumptions of their parents' generation must eventually bend to the reality around them, and when a high school principle decides to break a school window at a pivotal moment, one senses the tectonic forces shifting inside of him.
It's amusing to note that the teenager roles of the film were filled by actors in their mid to late twenties, an anachronism expertly compensated for by the uniformly skilled cast. The Blob lacks in showy performances, instead trading in exquisitely rendered archetypes and grounding the events in a quotidian plainness that's complemented by the leisurely pacing of many scenes. Produced on a micro budget and with limited film stock, many sequences needed to be completed in single, unbroken takes, a trait that helps the film--even at a compact hour and a half--feel as though its events are unfolding in real time.
The effects that went into the making of the blob are a masterstroke of common sense wizardry. The illusion was achieved twofold: with a weather balloon, carefully positioned and lighted, and red-dye infused silicone. Footage played in reverse allows for several instances of tricky blob mobility, while the majority of its appearances were achieved with the simplest tool possible: gravity. Model sets were built with attached cameras on a rotating axis, and the controlled descent of the silicone replicated the voluntary movement of the hungry mass.
If The Blob is a film with more on its mind that monsters and mayhem--and I believe it is--it's of a far more subtle breed than even the majority of anti-nuclear parables common to the 50s era. Fear of the unknown permeates the film, albeit not that of inflammatory, media-fostered McCarthyism, but that of the inexorable change of time, culminating in a creepy final shot in which the blob, frozen solid, is dropped into the arctic. The threat has been neutralized, says Steve, "as long as the arctic stays cold," and the final "The End" credit morphs in a foreboding question mark.
With all manner of technology changing the shape, and pace, of the world at that time and what was thought to be possible for humankind, this "what if?" assertion was a profound one, and far more than a mere tongue-in-cheek gimmick. The world in which these characters must live and adapt, young or old, will continue changing, and anyone who doesn't think that the cumulative impact of advanced weaponry, the industrial revolution, billions of vehicles burning through fossil fuels, catastrophic nuclear meltdowns, the BP oil spill, the larger destruction of the environment, and a human population doubling every four decades (among other travesties) isn't something that could alter world climate to dangerous effect, sooner or later, well, they deserve whatever comes after them when the ice thaws.
These points of interest, however delectable, are mere icing on the cake. As far as genre films go, few have surpassed this one for both efficiency and entertainment, a rare example of a production as artistically relevant as it is perfectly structured for maximum crowd-pleasing effect. Its (self conscious?) status as a pinnacle of monster movies is hit home when the blob, having attacked the projectionist at a midnight movie, descends on the hapless theater occupants. It's exuberant and extraordinary, and just nasty enough, and few films can hope to rival it. Beware of The Blob.
The Blob is available in its entirety on YouTube ( click here for part one).
The Blob. Dir. Irvin S. Yeaworth. Perf. Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, John Benson, Olin Howland, Elbert Smith, Hugh Graham. Paramount Pictures, 1958. Running Time: 86 min.
