Review of The Blob (1958) by Devon B — 11 Oct 2010

By the goofy, bossa nova-style opening theme song ("Beware of the blob, it creeps and leaps and glides and slides") you might think "The Blob" is going to be just a typical grade B, 1950s sci-fi cheese-fest, but it manages to set itself apart from the crowd with a slightly better than average story.

What's so great about it? Well for starters, the disaffected youth aren't overly dramatic, rebels-without-causes, they're kind of actually believable human beings. And yet, the age-old generation gap is played up big for the kids of the fifties.

Actually, I'd go so far as to say it's the adults who look cartoonish and the kids who are the realistic characters here. The film-makers certainly played up to their intended audience. The story starts off the way every sci-fi movie from the fifties starts off, with an unidentified flying object falling to earth from space.

It turns out to be a meteorite, containing a gooey substance, or "blob", if you will. The blob begins eating people, and it's up to the teenagers of the town to stop it. Steve McQueen stars as the lead teenager (although he was apparently in his late 20s when this film was made).

He and his girl rush the first victim back to the doctor in town (as a side note, the doctor bares an uncanny resemblence to Gregory Peck) and unwittingly unleash the creature on the whole town (you see, the blob grows bigger with each victim it consumes, so that eventually it's the size of an elephant).

I'm not sure if the blob just consumes animal matter, or if it eats just anything it comes across: if it's just people, it must devour a lot of them, as it grows awfully big. I've read online the Blob is, whether consciously or sub-consciously on the filmmakers part, a communist parable.

I suppose this is possible, but does it really mattter? The Blob taps into our innermost fears of being eaten by something that can't be forcibly stopped (admit it, you're terrified of being eaten by monsters).

And it's a fairly clever B movie from the fifties.