The Blob

(1958) ***

Okay, let's just get this out of the way right off the hop.



So like, we're not taking ourselves *too* too seriously here. This theme song is a frikkin fishbowl-party unto itself, and allows us to take whatever doesn't work in the film that follows in stride -- little things like how distractingly old Steve McQueen is for a high school student. Or how there's a 30 minute lull in the middle of the movie that could have been shortened to a 15 minute lull. Or how much talktalktalking there is, and how not that great any of the dialogue is. None of these are criticisms that anyone writing about the movie when it came out in 1958 was unprepared to write.

Another universal critique of the film, even at the time, is that the effects are bad. Funny thing is, my eyes so seasoned by years of watching VFX get more and more sophisticated, I don't have any more objection to the VFX in The Blob than I would to even the best of what was being done in other movies of the era. All of that stuff looks fake to modern eyes. I don't bother parsing different levels of shittiness when it comes to pre-artisan VFX work, so it's actually easier for me to embrace the goop on the screen for what it's *trying* to look like.

To tell the truth, I kinda feel that way about the acting and the dialogue too. I just expect, going into a 50's popcorn flick, that it's going to be kinda shitty somehow, so I found nothing about The Blob disappointing. And by the time I got through the opening credits, I was already feeling like a swinging, space-age sex machine -- so who cares?

In defense of the writing, there is one aspect that could have been a total downer and *wasn't*, and that bears recognition. For the better part of the movie, Steve McQueen's character (conveniently named "Steve") is the only character to have seen the blob in action; and if the script had been primarily about nobody believing him, this would have gotten real tedious. But that's not what happens. "Steve" is able to recruit, with almost no fuss, a bunch of his goofy classmates to help spread the word, and even the one stick-in-the-mud cop that's complaining about the antics of all these hooligan kids -- even he falls completely in line with the rest of the go-team when he realizes the kids aren't kidding. Takes a while for us to get there, but we get there.

I also want to make special mention of something I read in IMDb trivia that had never dawned on me before.

So it's red because of crushed-people blood?? That's fucking gross. I LOVE IT!!!

Which brings me to the most important point. The color in this movie is delicious. The reds and blues pop like crazy on the print and it makes the whole movie, whatever else may be wrong with it, look stupendously good. So check your high expectations at the door, get high and make some popcorn. The Blob is nothing but good, clean, stupid fun; and it only takes 50 minutes or so of nothing happening to get there.

Also, speaking from my position as a living human on a rapidly warming Planet Earth in the year 2020, the answer to the last question "Steve" poses at the end of the movie is a resounding, "yeah. about that..."

SLUT?