Saturday, October 04, 2008

The Blob

(1958) **

A meteor falls from the sky. An old-timer shuffles out to the crater, pokes at the meteorite within, pokes at the black ball inside the cracked meteorite, and is rewarded with a slimy, painful, adhesive Blob glove. Steve McQueen and his teen date pass by and give the suffering old-timer a lift to the local doctor, whereupon the Blob slowly but surely consumes the old timer and gains in size and appetite.

Since this is such a classic fifties monster movie I expected The Blob to be better than it was. The story is really slow until the last reel; the dialogue and acting are mediocre; the special effects laughable (as in, I laughed whenever I saw the strawberry-jam looking blob, no matter how big it got). At no point was I scared in the slightest.

No, I haven't given up on ol' Hannibal the Cannibal; I'll return to him tomorrow. Part of my goal for this October is to throw in some Horror 101, since prior to participating on the blog I was never a big horror fan and therefore I've missed a lot of basic horror movies. Watching The Blob was part of this endeavor; hopefully some of my other "missed classics of horror" will be more worth watching.

9 comments:

JPX said...

Yeah, the original is a stinker, but the remake they did in the 80s was pretty fun, check it out for comparison.

AC said...

absolutely, i kind of have to! there's also (sigh) son of the blob.

50PageMcGee said...

not that i'm disagreeing with jpx, but i can't believe we're saying that a movie that stars steve mcqueen is subordinate to a movie that stars kevin dillon.

miko564 said...

Wow, a truer statement has never been made 50...

I haven't seen either Blob, but in my darkest imaginings I can't imagine anything with "Drama" in it could be better than anything with "Bullitt" in it...then again, this was two years before Magnificent Seven, and ten before Bullitt, maybe he sucked at age 28.

Julie said...

I'm new to the whole horror genre as well. I was thinking about trying to check out JPX's five star rated films just to get a sampling of the best.

I don't know why I stayed away so long, since most of the films really aren't that scary. I think it's because I started out a few years back with The Ring, which scared the mother loving crap out of me. Actually, Octo is over at 50's house now, and I wish I hadn't even thought about The Ring. It's too freaky to think about alone in the apartment.

Yeesh!

But from what I hear, that's about as scary as it gets.

DKC said...

I am similar to you Julie. Never really sought out horror flicks.

The Ring is a doozy, I think I'm going to watch it again for this year's Thon.

AC said...

50p and miko, there's only one way to find out... you gentlemen need to check out both movies yourselves.

julie, i bet we watch some of the same classics this year. i can't think of a scarier film than the ring, but i haven't watched the exorcist yet.

Whirlygirl said...

Movies with ghosts are what usually scare me. I'm all right if I watch them with someone, but if I’m alone then forget it, I'll be hiding under the covers shaking at every little sound.

Octopunk said...

The Blob remake is great! I am an unabashed fan of that movie.

The original is an amazing dud. A lot of the shots of the blob coming into a room are just a blob of goo on top of a picture of a room. Suck.

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 2018  ***1/2 It's 1986 for some reason, and a team of paranormal investigators are making a big name for themselves all over Scotland. ...