The Blob is a 1958 monster movie starring Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe, Olin Howland, John Benson, and Stephen Chase.
A meteor strikes the Earth near a little town in Pennsylvania as a couple of all-American twentysomethings teenagers (McQueen and Corsaut) are smooching on a lover's lane. They go looking for it, but an old man living in the woods (Howland; the man, not the woods) finds it, taps it with a stick (as one does) and releases a gelatinous mass that promptly latches onto his arm. The teens find him and drive him into town to the doctor (Chase), who was just about to knock off and go to a conference, but winds up being lunch for the blob (after it eats the old man and the doctor's nurse (Lee Payton)).
Meanwhile, our heroes, Steve and Jane, try to convince the police that this is all really happening. One of the cops, Dave (Rowe) is generally a reasonable sort, while another, Bert (Benson) is a dick because a teenager ran his wife down at some point, so there's a kind of tension there as the kids insist that Steve really did see something kill the doctor. Eventually, though, the blob slips into the movie theater, eats an unspecified number of people, and goes oozing out in that famous "everyone runs from the theater" scene. They discover that the blob can't handle cold temperatures, freeze it with a bunch of fire extinguishers, and drop it into the Arctic. Steve notes that it will remain trapped there "as long as the Arctic remains cold," so we've got that to look forward to.
The Blob is one of those movies that you feel like you've seen even if you haven't. The scenes where the old man is poking at the meteor were basically recreated in "The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill" segment of Creepshow, and you can still see the influence as recently as Monsters vs. Aliens. The notion of a creature like the Blob that just eats whatever it oozes over has shown up in movies, TV, cartoons, etc., for decades, so it's safe to say this was an influential movie.
The acting is campy, the effects are OK, and the budget (small) meant that there's not much spectacle involved. But there are some nice touches. The Blob gets redder as it gets bigger and eats more people, the principle cast has some variety (in personality, not appearance, obviously, it's whiter than the Blob's final resting place). I also enjoy the ending scene where the local teens get to stand up and help out by getting fire extinguishers, but then I also love moments in movies where people come together.
I kinda do want to see the 1988 remake, but at the same time I worry that it's going to be a Black Christmas situation where the filmmakers went crazy with the gore.
My Grade: B-
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Creed
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