Absorbing the Good and the Bad of The Blob

The Blob was just plain horrible. The first half to two-thirds of the film threw silliness, cheap thrills, stinking dialogue meant to be witty, absurdities, and story discontinuities at the reasonably intelligent viewer, forcing him to feel astonishment, contempt, hilarity that induced laughter, and other such emotions.

And yet The Blob had a few moments. They didn’t redeem the film, but they hinted at what might have been. Cheerleader Megan, played by acne-afflicted Shawnee Smith, went Ripley at the end of the film, blazing bullets and curses at the gelatinous blob, drawing its attention away from bad-boy Brian, and deftly planting an explosive atop a nitrous oxide-carrying truck. Her actions would end the giant bio-hazard’s absorbing roll through town.

The movie offered mostly scareless, tension-deficient development, but the scene where Meg’s little brother’s jacket gets caught in the movie theater exit door pumped up the suspense and tension for me. It was one of the few, credible moments in the film and did the work the whole film was meant to do as Meg frantically tried to unzip the jacket so her brother could get out of it and escape.

The film scored a point for its morality tale indicting the U.S. government’s involvement in biological warfare as the monster came not from outer space per se but began as bacteria stored on a government satellite. The bacteria’s genetic structure becomes altered before the satellite crash lands back on Earth.

Because of our current world situation, The Blob strikes a chord when we view it today. The government of Red China bears blame and responsibility for the outbreak of the virus from the laboratories it ran and in which the virus originated, but the United States has its own laboratories, and its citizens, and the citizens of the rest of the world, sit one mistake or bad intention away from another pandemic. The Blob isn’t the first film to raise red flags about biological warfare and certainly not one of the films that did it well, but it is part of the collection of films that “prophesied” a bacteriological or viral catastrophe.

The Blob takes on too many opponents. It guns for law enforcement, the church (used loosely and referring generally to those of what might be called a fundamentalist bent), the U.S. military, and clueless adults as opposed to insightful, investigative teenagers. A cursory glance at our public education may suggest that “investigative teenagers” is an oxymoron. The film takes its opponents on not by raising serious issues but by trying to tear down its targets with oversimplistic, cartoonish scenarios and dreadful dialogue that peddles a cache of clichés and stereotypes to viewers. Cops are Neanderthals who just want to beat up smart-assed juvenile delinquents. Parents don’t know how to deal with sex. Sophisticated teens stash wet bars and perfumeries in the trunks of their cars so they can get some action. Actually, it was just one teen, but I’m naming the principle. That scene in particular, where a teen is getting his date drunk so he can get to first base and beyond, disturbed myself and my friend who watches a lot of these films with me. He articulated it first: “Nothing like a little date rape.” One could argue the film punished the perpetrator of the attempted date rape when its monster consumed him; however, the monster also consumes his innocent intended victim, so there is no force to that claim.

The Blob bombs with its effort to make leather-jacketed Brian the bad boy. Brian doesn’t do anything bad in the film. He fails a dangerous motorcycle leap from one side to another on a broken bridge, but that was just stupid. In an incredible blunder that induced out-loud laughing, the script has the sheriff and his lone deputy accuse Brian of a crime in the death of a homeless man struck by a car driven by another teen (the homeless man being the blob’s first victim)! The homeless man dies in the hospital, eaten, but only halfway, by the hungry blob. The cops claim they have witnesses to Brian committing the crime on the lonely road at night in the middle of nowhere. Who? The car driver is absorbed by the blob almost immediately after the homeless man. In an earlier scene, the sheriff tells his deputy they aren’t going to get anything out of Meg because she is too hysterical, so they will interview her tomorrow, which will be the day after they have accused Brian of committing a crime.

I could go on, but there isn’t any point.

Lastly, the monster disappointed. The effects were, well, cheesy at times. A viewer could tell there was a lot of matte photography being used. The blob changed colors instead of remaining pink. It had added to it powerful grappling tendrils or tentacles, similar in look to what we saw in The Thing. I don’t remember such appendages in the original, but I could be wrong. The blob moved with a speed that did not seem justified by its bulk and it’s thick, gelatinous matter. I think the idea for the monster was great. The thought of being absorbed, essentially eaten alive, horrified me. The execution of the idea fell short except in some instances. 

Yet the manner of the deaths created a discrepancy and discontinuity. The homeless man died because the blob burned away the lower half of his body as with acid (even though it attached itself to his hand!). Others died by absorption. Still others were killed by breaking up and compressing the body (the cook) or by snapping (like the deputy).