The Blob (1988)

The Blob

Release Date: 1988

Rating: * * *

By John Engell August 15, 2012

  

As the proverbial saying goes, we all have to start somewhere. For A-list Hollywood director Frank Darabont, the man responsible for one of cinema’s greatest achievements, “The Shawshank Redemption,” and more recently for adapting the “Walking Dead” comics into a hit television program, that beginning came as a screenwriter.    

Darabont’s first feature length writing credit was 1987’s slasher sequel “A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.” A year later, Darabont would re-team with Chuck Russell, the director of that film, and together they would pen the screenplay for “The Blob.”

The blob is a purple jelly-like substance that first appears in what is believed to be a meteorite that has crashed in the small rural town of Arborville, California. After a local vagabond strays too close to the crater, he is attacked by the bubbling life form within. Bad-boy biker Brian Flagg attempts to help the man, but the crazed vagrant is nearly run over by football star Paul Taylor, who is on his first date with beautiful high school cheerleader Meg Penny. The couple rush the man to the hospital, but it is too late. The unidentified mass has claimed its first victim. Meg’s date then ends rather abruptly when Paul is promptly devoured by the blob, which by this point has grown from the size of a spilled jar of jam to something that fills a small room. 

By the time police show up, led by overwhelmed and understaffed Sheriff Herb Geller (frequent Darabont collaborator Jeffrey DeMunn), the blob has literally slipped out the back door, headed towards Main Street where the townspeople are being unceremoniously herded at gunpoint like sheep by a FEMA like body, to the local church. 

“The Blob” is nothing we haven’t seen before. After all it is a remake of the Steve McQueen movie of the same name, made 30 years earlier. It is reminiscent of George Romero’s “The Crazies” and countless others. Government agents in white hazmat suits and gas masks quickly show up and quarantine the unsuspecting small town. “No one gets in, no one gets out,” says Dr. Christopher Meddows, the man at the forefront of this secret military operation gone awry. He has come to contain the life form, not destroy it. He wants to study it for use in biological warfare, even at the expense of the citizens of Arborville, whom he calls “expendable.” Of course there is one local who won’t go quietly, in this case Flagg, who recognizes the blob’s one apparent weakness and works, with the help of Penny, to exploit it before the entire town is consumed. 

The cast puts in fine performances (although the talented DeMunn is criminally underused and is eliminated from proceedings far too early on), nevertheless the real star of the film is its special effects which have aged remarkably well. Despite nearly 25 years of industry advancements, the practical special effects in “The Blob” are as impressive as anything the big studios pay big money for today. And I have yet to see anything CGI that captures “The Blob’s” visceral realness. 

The film flopped at the box office. According to IMDB “The Blob” only grossed $8 million, which was less than half of its budget, and almost a million dollars less than its effects cost alone. 

Despite its poor theatrical performance, “The Blob” has grown (no pun intended) to be a fan boy favorite. I now include myself in that group. Good campy fun from people who clearly worked hard to create an entertaining movie with laughs and real scares.