The Blob
Liner notes for the Criterion Laserdisc
by michael dare

    The Blob on laserdisc? Oh, come on. Isn't it just a '50s, black and white, small screen, cheesy horror flick? Wrong. If you only saw The Blob twenty years ago on your parent's old Zenith, you're in for a surprise. The Blob is widescreen, The Blob is in color, and The Blob is a hoot. It is the only movie ever made where the first thing you have to do in order to sing the theme song is stick your finger in your mouth, blow, and make a popping sound while plucking it out of your cheek. It's the only film in which Steve McQueen is billed as Steven McQueen, and it's the only film in which he plays someone named Steve. But more important, The Blob is the definitive '50s film about a town that won't listen to the kids until it's too late.
    It takes place one night in one town - almost in real time. At the start of the story, the blob is out there "hot rodding around the universe" when it crashes to earth. An old man finds it in a ditch and doesn't know what it is, even though everyone knows that a meteorite looks like a bowling ball covered with teeny craters. He pokes it with a stick, it cracks open, and soon the hills are alive with the sound of mucus as the hungry raspberry jelly from across the universe starts assimilating the flesh of all who draw near.
    Steve and Jane (Aneta Corseaut, who later appeared as Andy's girlfriend on The Andy Griffith Show), are two teenagers out necking when they follow the trail of a shooting star till they discover the horrible truth. Soon, the immortal line is spoken, "We'll go to the police. They'll know what to do." Sure they will. Police Academy training includes how to deal with killer gelatinous protoplasms, doesn't it? What follows is a quaint portrait of teens vs. adults in Anytown, U.S.A., a portrait that immediately entered the annals of clichédom.
    Though it was an immediate hit, it took years for there to be a sequel, Beware The Blob (directed by Larry Hagman), and another 30 years for a remake which wasn't nearly as good. It also spawned dozens of oozing imitators, all the way from The H-Man (an oriental version) to Larry Cohen's The Stuff, about killer yogurt.
    Aside from the reasonable amount of tacky thrills, The Blob is best remembered as the film that gave Steve McQueen his first starring role. He expressed indifference towards a project in which he got to play a teenager at the age of 27, and in which "the main acting challenge was running around bug-eyed, shouting 'Hey everybody, look out for the blob.' I wasn't too thrilled when people told me what a fine job I'd done in it." McQueen secretly wished the film would never see the light of day. He made only $3,000, preferring to get his payment in cash rather than profit participation. Bad move. The Blob grossed 30 times its original investment. By the time The Blob was actually released, Wanted - Dead or Alive had just come on the air, and McQueen was well on his way to being a genuine star. In any case, his image as an intense loner, lover, and reluctant hero started here.
    The Blob seems made by people unfamiliar with other horror films of the day. What was the matter with those screenwriters, Ted Simonson and Kate Philips? What were they doing giving actual psychological motivation to so many characters? Steve isn't just a wild, reckless, macho hotshot out to score with Jane in the back seat, he's sincere and brave, with everyone's best interests at heart. Officer Jim isn't just another dumb cop who hates teenagers, he's a dumb cop who hates teenagers because "one smacked into his wife on the turnpike." Jane's father isn't just another concerned parent, he's a high school principal who's concerned about it "getting all over town." (Not the blob but the fact that his daughter spent an hour in a police station.) Didn't Simonson and Philips know that they were dealing with a genre where everyone's supposed to be a cliché? These characters became stereotypes, but at the time they were miracles of depth.
    In many other ways you have to picture the time of the picture's original release in order to understand why audiences went bonkers. The scene where the blob oozes out of the projection booth at the midnight spooky show would have been particularly effective at the time, since the audience on the screen would have perfectly mirrored the audience in the actual theater.
    Of course the original critics didn't see it that way. "A lethal lump of intergalactic plum preserves" declared one critical grump of the day, and "a crawling roomful of Jell-O that eats you instead of the other way around" said another. Cue Magazine blasted the film for promoting emotionally disturbed kids. Arthur Knight said it was "not so much horror as horrid," and most other reviews were equally disdainful. Only the New York Herald Tribune went overboard in the other direction, calling it "a minor classic in its field."
    The director, Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., was a minister in the small town of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania where the film was shot. Yeaworth built his special effects in a room at the church building where, presumably, God oversaw the disappearance of matte lines. At many points in the finished film, the blob is blatantly oozing over photographs of the previous scene. During the shuddering climax, the blob gurgles its way over what appears to be a postcard of the Downingtown Diner, the only diner on earth with a basement. I guess God let Yeaworth down. He (Yeaworth, not God) eventually went on to make 4D Man and Dinosaurus!, about which the less said the better.
    Producer Jack H. Harris, who also made John Landis' Schlock and John Carpenter's Dark Star, put up $150,000 of his own money to make The Blob (working title - The Molten Meteor), an amount that was immediately doubled when Paramount picked up the completed film for $300,000. (Eventually the rights reverted back to Harris, who reissued the film many times himself.) Paramount immediately spent another $300,000 on an ad campaign that was so effective the film brought in $1.5 million in rentals in just one month.
    This was particularly amazing considering the fact that The Blob was released at the height of a low-rent horror film craze. The screens of America were virtually inundated with bug-eyed monsters conjured up from the mysterious secrets of the new nuclear age. Fans of subtext can rationalize that The Blob was an allegory of the public's sincere anxiety about the scientific unknown. The rest of us can just sing along with the theme song. Ready now? Okay, stick your finger in your mouth.
 
 

Return to Criterion Liner Notes