Beware of the Blob,
It creeps and leaps,
And glides, and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch.
Be careful of the Blob!
Unfortunately, the lyrics just don’t convey how fun and carefree this song sounds. And it sounds at the very beginning of the film, when we are shown the opening credits. For comparison: it’s about as if the Saw opened With a Conversation With Happiness (the one from the movie Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession). As the urban legend says, the song does not go so well with the film, because, they say, the creators did not plan to shoot horror. I don’t believe in this version, frankly, because it’s not very clear what was in the plans then. No, of course, cinematographers have already proved at the moment that even a comedy can be made with the plot “an alien from outer space devours people,” but let’s be honest: basically, horror films are shot with such a synopsis. And even if we assume that they were not planning a horror, then he is the one who was responsible for all this – he probably saw the result at the installation and in the process of other post-production.
Wikipedia offers a more plausible version: Two introductory tracks were allegedly recorded for the film – the one that is available, and a much more intense and frightening one called Violence. But the director of the film, Irwin Yovorth Jr., purposefully chose a more fun song, just so that the audience would relax and not take the film following the song seriously. As far as he did it, I can’t say, but such a start is definitely confusing, and it is remembered for a long time. As you can see, I wrote two whole paragraphs about this one song.
The Five Blobs – The Blob
Unfortunately, there is nothing particularly memorable in this movie anymore. The Blob (The Blob) is a cheap class B horror movie shot for one hundred and ten thousand American pieces of paper, which means a little more than a million in translation nowadays, and for cinema a million dollars is not money at all. Critics, accordingly, smashed the film left and right: they didn’t like the pace of the narration, didn’t like the acting, didn’t like the actors themselves, didn’t like the ending, and in general, in 1962, Joe Dante Jr. (not just a critic, but the director of at least both parts of awesome Gremlins) brought The Blob into the your list of the worst horror movies. The opinions of critics were divided only regarding special effects, but they only liked working with film – color cinema was still a novelty at that time, and not everyone was able to work in DeLuxe Color format.
However, critics can once again go through the woods: despite all their statements, The Blob has successfully earned four million dollars. I repeat: the budget was only one hundred and ten thousand. And the cheerful introductory song, by the way, reached the 33rd line in the famous American Billboard Hot 100 chart. In general, a cheap bi-movie suddenly won the hearts of millions, successfully became a cult classic, and now there are dozens of references, parodies and just imitators in the world, as well as even cheaper and useless sequels, and one remake, plus Hollywood has been threatening to reshoot the film again for twenty years. In other words, no matter what anyone says, the Blob has knocked out a place for itself in the culture and is not going to release it. This alone should be enough for every self-respecting filmmaker to feel the need to familiarize himself with this work of art – at least just for general development.
At some point, all the surrounding youth gather to fight the alien threat. Literally every second person drives a hot rod. To my great regret, these cars appear in the frame for no more than three seconds.
For everyone else, I can say: yes, the critics, on the whole, were right. The film is unhurried. Actors are not a fountain. Nothing particularly outstanding is happening on the screen. But the success of the picture is very simple to explain: no matter what, The Blob catches. I can’t say for sure what’s the matter. Maybe the whole thing is in the dog, for whose fate you are worried along with the main character of the film. Or maybe just in the atmosphere of the film, which was somehow very aptly built by the magicians involved in the magic of cinema. In 2024, after all, it’s just interesting to look at the fifties, and even in color! In general, one way or another, but the Blob looks in one breath – and more for a good movie, in general, is not necessary.
The shaggy-shaggy friend of man has undoubtedly become a key character for many. And for many more, it probably will.
Who I personally am ready to criticize is Steve McQueen. Yes, the same Steve McQueen, from that very sad movie called Bullit (which, at the same time, still contains one of the coolest chases of all that has ever been filmed in the cinema; this is your Fast and Furious and not lying around). So, Comrade McQueen plays the main role in the Blob. And he plays… Damn, I don’t even know how he plays. The problem is that at the time of filming, Steve was already 28 years old. And he should play a twenty-year-old student, or whatever it translates from English. And the problem is that McQueen, at the age of 28, looks more like a 35-year-old brutal man. Especially when the light doesn’t fall very well on the deep folds of his skin. All the supporting actors look much younger than Steve: the de facto difference between them and McQueen was three or four years, but this difference looks like all ten. Minimum. As a result, personally, I didn’t even really follow the main character’s acting, but I kept thinking what a fierce miskast it was.
And the second – in my personal opinion – minus of the Blob is that it is not a classic horror film in its construction. Classic horror films are such films as The Mummy of 1932, Dracula of 1931, It Came From Deep Space in 1953. The main characters in them are scientists, archaeologists, amateur astronomers and, in general, established and adult people, and sometimes even very respected and prominent representatives of society. Personally, it is much more interesting for me to observe exactly how a person who has taken place and is convinced of his knowledge, talents and abilities suddenly encounters something unknown. Something that makes all long-standing beliefs and the very vision of reality crack at the seams, which becomes a test of all decades of accumulated experience and knowledge, which jeopardizes the reputation and position of a person – an absolutely classic approach to horror. Psychological and, if you like, Lovecraftian: when the whole world, to which I have long been accustomed, in which I was convinced, and which, it would seem, has been studied down to the atoms, one day turns out to be completely different from what it was, and all installations break down, collapse, and the new reality makes me tremble, go crazy, but still pull yourself together and resist her.
It seems to me that this approach is much more interesting than watching helpless victims, who God forbid if they are twenty (according to the script, not the biological age of the actors). Beating the defenseless has never impressed me. However, in fairness, The Blob still came out at a time when the victims were not blind kittens, and it was customary to rebuff the threat. Steve McQueen and his team still follow the rules in this regard… for the most part, at least.In some moments, as I believe, it is already quite possible to discern hints of the slasher genre, which over time will become almost synonymous with the word “horror”. Seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if Blob is somehow considered, if not the founder of the genre, then at least one of the films that helped popularize this one… a non-classical approach to horror films – and this is not at all a compliment to this picture.
But there are also advantages. I have already mentioned that critics’ opinions about special effects are divided – so, in my opinion, they are gorgeous. From the small budget of the film, a piece of silicone and a couple of bottles of food dyes, the creators of the Blob squeezed well, just everything possible. Pure, undiluted creativity. And once again, cheap practical effects look much cooler than computer graphics, which, it seems, should generally have unlimited possibilities. But no, even the shapeless mass of silicone looks much more impressive than the vast majority of digital animation, which, ahem, “pleases the eye” in modern cinema.
In general, instead of the result, it seems that for the first time I am ready to agree with the conclusion given on the Dead Tomatoes website:
“Despite the laugh-inducing idea and outdated special effects, the Blob remains a vivid example of how enjoyable the thrill of monsters from cheesy B movies can be.”
This phrase most fully describes in a nutshell all that I have tried to describe in detail in this article. Moving away from the high arts, actors and other approaches and ideas of cinema, The Blob just works like a movie: it does its job and entertains the viewer while he chews popcorn and drinks soda. And sometimes… sometimes everything else is just superfluous.
