Cheesy and campy but I’m watching.
Does keep you riveted.
Agreed. Every time I see it on TV, I get sucked in.
An absolutely absorbing film.
Moderator Action
Moving thread from MPSIMS to Cafe Society.
iswydt;)
I’m always impressed by low-budget filmmmakers. “The Blob” is an example of a creepy, low-tech effect. They evidently used a transparent chemical “gel” colored with aircraft fuel dye as the titual Blob (THe real “Blob” still exists in somebody’s collection, sealed up in a paint can. There was a picture of it in the magazine Cinefantatstique many years ago). To make it move, they use simple tricks like tilted parts of sets, running film backwards, undercranking the camera so that it seemed to move faster at normal projection speed, and the like. You can tell that the Blob “attacking” the diner has the jelly gon at a photograph of the building. Some scenes had painted images of the Blob, and some small bits of animation were used when they tried acid or dropping an electric line onto it.
The later remake got more exotic, using stop-motion animation and other, more expensive tricks, but they still resorted to simple effects (like what is essentially a hand puppet for the “blob-in-a-jar” scene near the end.
At the Route 66 Museum in Elk City, OK, they have a Route 66 Drive-In display where you can sit in the back of a Chevy convertible and watch clips from The Blob.
!t’s a fun movie! CO2! Dave, CO2!!!
And Burt Bacharach wrote the very catchy theme song.
The primary drawbacks were the drippy girlfriend, and the very, very bad acting of her little brother.
It was the team of Burt Bachrach and Hal David – I think their first commercial success.
Originally, the movie was supposed to have depressing, brooding, creepy music over that opening title animation, but they changed their minds and decided to go with the anomalously bouncy and upbeat Bachrach/David song. Some people credit that song with the movie’s success.
You know I’ve never seen the original, maybe I ought to check it out. About a year ago I watched the remake with my son, it’s actually fairly gory at times. My son was very concerned and asked me if the Blob was real. He had nightmares that same night about the Blob.
Police lieutenant: “But at least we got it stopped”…
Steve: “Yeah, as long as the arctic remains cold”…
Makes you cringe now in the days of a pandemic and global warming…
You can always celebrate the Blob in my hometown of Phoenixville, PA. The annual Blob-fest is in mid-July. Part of the movie was filmed here, with the iconic Colonial Theater looking pretty much the same as when it appeared in the film.
Steve McQueen…Burt Bacharach…whats not to like?
I think the creepiest moment in the film was when the doctor was looking for his nurse, calling her, and she wasn’t answering. A shadow appeared down the hall, which he thought was her, and didn’t respond when he spoke to it.
Then when the blob rolls around the corner, it creeps me the heck out every time.
The first time I saw it, I was 8 or 10. When the farmer (or whatever the first victim was) has the blob on a stick, and is watch it ooze up and down with gravity, as he turn the stick, just like you’d expect, then he turns the stick again, and suddenly the blob oozes UP, and grabs his hand.
I jumped.
It’s a great movie. Yeah. You don’t need $1billion to make a great movie.
There was a sequel – ,Beware the Blob! made in 1972, directed by Larry Hagman*. It was played more as a comedy, but was consistent with the original movie. The new Blob gets out of control after a piece of the frozen-in-the-arctic original Blob is brought back in a thermos by a pipeline layer who doesn’t know what it is, and it eats Godfrey Cambridge. It eventually is frozen on an ice rink.
The original Blob was also turned into a pretty awful comedy re-titled Blobbermouth in 1991 when the LA Comedy Connection recorded new dialogue, and animating a mouth for the Blob itself to speak. I think a pre-Tonight Show Jay Leno provided one of the voices. I tried watching it, but it’s pretty unbearable. MST3K this ain’t.
There are plenty of Giant blob Creature movies out there, many pre-dating the Blob –
X, the Unknown
Caltiki, the Immortal MOnster
H-Men (Made by Inoshiro Honda, who made Godzilla)
Angry Red Planet
arguably The Creeping Unknown, AKA The Quatermass Xperiment
… and a bunch of others. But I think The Blob was the first one in color.
*Yes, that Larry Hagman – Major Tony Nelson on I Dream of Jeannie and J.R. Ewing of Dallas.
Ahem. Steven McQueen. Playing an 18 year old at age 26.
But the drippy girlfriend was Aneta Corsaut, aka Helen Crump.
I started watching The Blob fully prepared to scoff, but remained, entranced. It’s far better than it ought to be, especially in characterization.