The Blob
Classic horror movies are amazing, aren’t they? If you head over to the fifties, you’ll find a whole array of monster movies and B-Movies collections; giant lizard attacking towns as well as humungous bikini clad women. Whatever you could think of, there it as. Birthed from King Kong and leading up to Pacific Rim, our love for monsters and invasions destroying our planet with only a plucky man or group of people fight against them. And in all cases, the monsters are metaphors for some kind of political tension that is happening around them (in most cases: communism or capitalism if you aren’t American.)
The Blob, the 1958 movie starring Steve McQueen, is one such movie about a red carnivorous blob that consumes everything in its path (communism.) When Steve and his girlfriend Jane are cruising the town on a date, they stumble upon the thing attached to the hand of an old man (who found it in a rock from space.) As they watch the thing devour the man inch by inch, they get panicky and try to tell the town that a big gelatinous blob is eating everything up. What is worse, is that nobody believes them…that is until the blob is towering in an unstoppable but incredibly slow threat.
Despite the fact the atmosphere of the era makes the whole thing feel like a long anti-communism advert, The Blob has some incredible good qualities. Frankly, the blob is a minor character in this movie. Of course, it is a plot point that creates the tension and atmosphere, leading up to a whopping crescendo where it swallows a diner whole with people inside. The threat is there but we spend most of the time not really seeing it, following our leading characters and their friends trying to convince the town that it exists.
That is the redeeming part of The Blob that the town doesn’t just edge straight into panic. Despite the disappearance of a few townsfolk, the cops spend more time judging the teenagers and trying to get their parents to kick them in line. Even after a ruckus they cause, it isn’t until the blob is as big as a house that people pay attention. And director Irvin Yeaworth shadows the town with night time and ignorance. He makes the threat more by its late night rampage and lack of human remains after chow time. It’s simply a monster, with no room for empathy and that it is terrifying. It isn’t beauty that killed the beast. It doesn’t care. In fact, throw more pinups at the beast, it is tea time.
There are moments of hilarity and some real 1950’s cheese such as people bounding out of a horror flick when the projectionist is murdered by the thing. But The Blob is the movie that inspired generations of filmmakers. It strips down the complexity and leaves merely the hysteria left. This simplistic film making is incredible to watch and admire. Even if it now feels more like a “communism is bad” film. Heck, the monster even hates the cold.
Cold.
Cold War.
Get it?
TTFN