| The Blob | |
|---|---|
_theatrical_poster.jpg) Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Irving H. Millgate |
| Produced by | Jack H. Harris |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Thomas E. Spalding |
| Edited by | Alfred Hillmann |
| Music by | Ralph Carmichael |
Production companies |
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| Distributed by | Paramount Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 86 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $110,000[2] |
| Box office | $4 million[2] |
The Blob is a 1958 Americanscience fiction horror film directed byIrvin S. Yeaworth Jr. from a screenplay by Theodore Simonson andKate Phillips, based on an idea by Irving H. Millgate.[3] It starsSteve McQueen (in his first leading role) andAneta Corsaut and co-stars Earl Rowe andOlin Howland.
The film concerns a carnivorousamoeboidalalien that crashes to Earth from outer space inside ameteorite, landing near the small communities ofPhoenixville andDowningtown, Pennsylvania. It envelops living beings, growing larger, becoming redder in color and more aggressive, eventually becoming larger than a building.
The Blob was distributed byParamount Pictures as adouble feature withI Married a Monster from Outer Space.
In a smallPennsylvania town in July 1957, teenager Steve Andrews and his girlfriend Jane Martin kiss at alovers' lane when they see a meteorite crash beyond the next hill. Steve goes looking for it but Barney, an old man living nearby, finds it first. When he pokes the meteorite with a stick, it breaks open and a small jelly-like globule blob inside attaches itself to his hand. In pain and unable to scrape or shake it loose, Barney runs onto the road, where he is nearly struck by Steve's car. Steve and Jane take him to Doctor Hallen.
Doctor Hallen anesthetizes the man and sends Steve and Jane back to locate the impact site and gather information. Hallen decides he must amputate the man's arm since it is beingphagocytosed. Before he can, the Blob completely absorbs Barney, then Hallen's nurse Kate, and finally the doctor himself, growing redder and larger with each victim. Steve and Jane return in time for Steve to witness the doctor trying to escape through the window with the Blob covering him. They go to the police station and return with Lieutenant Dave Barton and Sergeant Jim Bert, but they find no sign of the Blob nor its victims. The skeptical Bert dismisses Steve's story as a prank. Steve and Jane are taken home by their parents, but they sneak out later.
The Blob absorbs a mechanic at a repair shop. During a midnight screening ofDaughter of Horror at theColonial Theater, Steve recruits Tony and his friends to warn people about the Blob. When Steve notices that his father's grocery store is unlocked, he and Jane go inside to investigate. The janitor is nowhere to be seen. The couple is quickly cornered by the Blob and they seek refuge in the walk-in freezer. The Blob oozes under the door but quickly retreats. Steve and Jane gather their friends and set off the town's fire andair-raid alarms. The responding townspeople and police still refuse to believe them. The Blob enters the Colonial Theater and envelops the projectionist, then oozes into the auditorium. Steve is finally vindicated when screaming people flee the theater in panic.
Steve, Jane and her kid brother Danny are trapped in adiner, along with the owner and a waitress, as the Blob—now enormous from the dozens of people it has consumed in the theater—engulfs the diner. Dave taps into the diner's telephone with his police radio and warns those in the diner to shelter in the cellar before the police bring down a live power line onto the Blob.
Dave and Bert plan to electrocute the Blob by felling an overhead high-voltage power line. It discharges a massive electric current into the Blob, which is unaffected, but the diner underneath is set ablaze. When the diner's owner uses a carbon dioxide fire extinguisher on the approaching fire inside, Steve notices that the Blob recoils. Steve remembers it also retreated from the freezer and realizes it cannot tolerate cold temperatures. Shouting, in hopes of being picked up on the open phone line, Steve tells Dave about the Blob's vulnerability to cold. The firemen have a limited supply ofCO2 fire extinguishers. Jane's father, high school principal Henry Martin, leads Steve's friends to break into the school to retrieve its extinguishers. When they return, a brigade of fire extinguisher-armed students, firemen and police drive the Blob away from the diner, freeing the five trapped there. They surround and freeze the Blob.
Dave requests authorities send anAir Force heavy-lift cargo aircraft to transport the frozen Blob to theArctic. Dave realizes that the cold will stop the Blob "as long as the Arctic stays cold", but it won't kill it. Parachutes bearing the Blob on a pallet lower it onto an Arctic ice field with the superimposed wordsThe End morphing into a question mark.
The teenagers
The film was the first production of Jack Harris, a film distributor from Philadelphia,[4] and was reportedly inspired by a discovery ofstar jelly in Pennsylvania in 1950. It was originally titledThe Molten Meteor until producers overheard screenwriterKay Linaker refer to the film's monster as "the blob".[5][6] Other sources give a different account, saying the film went through a number of title changes (the monster was called "the mass" in the shooting script) before the makers settled onThe Glob. After hearing that cartoonistWalt Kelly had usedThe Glob as a title for hisPogo children's book, they mistakenly believed they couldn't use that title, so they changed it toThe Blob.[7][Note 2] Although the budget was set at $120,000, it ended up costing only $110,000.[2]
The film was the second feature directed byIrvin Yeaworth. Filmed in and aroundValley Forge, Pennsylvania, principal photography took place in the summer of 1957 at Valley Forge Studios.[4] Several scenes were filmed in the towns ofChester Springs,Downingtown,Phoenixville andRoyersford, including the basement of a local restaurant that is currently named Downingtown Diner. For the diner scene, a photograph of the building was put on a gyroscopically operated table onto which cameras had been mounted. The table was shaken and the Blob rolled off. When the film negative was printed in reverse, it appeared to be oozing over the building.[Note 3]The Blob was filmed in color and projected at a 1.66 ratio (then known as the "Paramount format").
Steve McQueen received $3,000 for his starring role. He turned down an offer for a smaller up-front fee in return for a 10 percent share of profits, thinking the film would never make money; he needed his signing fee immediately to pay for food and rent. However,The Blob ended up a hit, grossing $4 million at the box office.[2]
The film's tongue-in-cheek title song, "The Blob" [Columbia 42150A],[8][full citation needed] was written byBurt Bacharach andMack David. It became a nationwide hit in the United States, peaking at #33 on theBillboardHot 100 chart on November 9, 1958.[9][10][11][12] It was recorded by a studio group who adopted the nameThe Five Blobs. (The vocals are all by singerBernie Knee,overdubbing himself.) It is commonly misbelieved that Bacharach wrote the song with his famous songwriting partner,Hal David, but David's brotherMack wrote the lyrics.[13]
The Blob's background score was byRalph Carmichael, who, like Yeaworth, had worked on television specials for theBilly Graham Evangelistic Association; it was supervised by the director's wife, Jean Yeaworth.[4] It was one of only a few film scores Carmichael wrote. He composed different opening music for the film—a piece called "Violence", intended to start the film on a serious, frightening note. However, the director chose to replace it with the novelty song "The Blob" to encourage audiences to view it as campy fun. The song has contributed to the film's enduring popularity.[citation needed] The original score and title song were both included on the soundtrack album, which was re-released in 2008 on the Monstrous Movie Music soundtrack label.[13]
Paramount acquiredThe Blob for $300,000 from Jack Harris and spent another $300,000 promoting it.[14] According to Tim Dirks, it was one of a wave of "cheap teen movies" for thedrive-in market—"exploitative, cheap fare created especially for [young people] in a newly-established teen/drive-in genre".[15]
Harris eventually bought back the rights from Paramount, withAllied Artists Pictures Corporation reissuing it as a double feature with Harris and Yeaworth'sDinosaurus! in 1964.[16]
The Blob has been released as part of theCriterion Collection on three formats:LaserDisc (1988),DVD (2000) andBlu-ray (2013). The DVD and Blu-ray feature new cover art by Michael Koelsch.[11] The film, together withSon of Blob, was released on DVD in Australia by Umbrella Entertainment in September 2011. The DVD is compatible with all region codes and has special features, including audio commentaries with Jack H. Harris,Bruce Eder, Irvin Yeaworth and Robert Fields.[17] In November 2016, Umbrella released a 2-disc Blu-ray,The Blob Collection, featuring the 1988 version ofThe Blob and the 1958 version ofThe Blob. Disc two also includes the Criterion Collection's opening identification, although the release was distributed by Umbrella Entertainment with no mention of Criterion on the disc sleeve.
The Blob received negative reviews upon release.The New York Times highlighted some of its problems and identified some positives, although Steve McQueen's starring debut was not one of them. On director Irvin Yeaworth's work, they wrote:
Unfortunately, his picture talks itself to death, even with the blob nibbling away at everybody in sight. And most of his trick effects, under the direction of Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., look pretty phony. On the credit side, the camera very snugly frames the small-town background—a store, a church spire, several homes and a theatre. The color is quite good (the blob rolls around in at least a dozen horrible-looking flavors, including raspberry). The acting is pretty terrible itself, there is not a single becomingly familiar face in the cast, headed by young Steven McQueen and Aneta Corseaut.[18]
Variety had a similar reaction, seeing McQueen as the star, gamely "giving the old college try", but that the "... star performers, however, are theDeLuxe color camerawork of Thomas Spalding and Barton Sloane's special effects".[4]
Writing forFamous Monsters of Filmland in 1962,Joe Dante Jr. includedThe Blob in his list of the worst horror films ever. Dante found the film spent too much time on drag racing, and disliked how the monster was dealt with at the end.[19]
In a discussion withbiologistRichard Dawkins,astrophysicistNeil deGrasse Tyson stated that among all Hollywood aliens, which were usually disappointing,The Blob was his favorite from a scientific perspective.[20] Theethnobiologists Oscar Requejo and N. Floro Andres-Rodriguez suggest that theslime mouldFuligo septica may have inspired the film's eponymous blob.[21]
The filmreview aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes gives the film a 68% "Fresh" approval rating based on 31 reviews, with an average rating of 6.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "In spite of its chortle-worthy premise and dated special effects,The Blob remains a prime example of how satisfying cheesy B-movie monster thrills can be."[22]
Paramount initially ordered 200 prints of the film. Following the first week grosses from 15 Los Angeles theaters (which outgrossed the studio'sRock-A-Bye Baby and other films), it doubled the number of prints.[23] The first week grosses in Los Angeles included $14,900 from the Hillstreet and Hawaii theaters.[24] The film earnedtheatrical rentals of $1 million in its first year of release in the United States and Canada.[25]
Beware! The Blob, a sequel directed byI Dream of Jeannie starLarry Hagman, was released in June, 1972.[26] The creature is the same "Blob" from the 1958 film, this time inadvertently unearthed by a bulldozer crew building an oil pipeline in theArctic. Unaware of its origins, a small specimen is placed in a frozen storage container, and taken back to suburbanLos Angeles to be analyzed in a lab - escaping when the container is left to thaw. The Blob again wreaks havoc, culminating in hundreds of victims consumed before it is again frozen, this time on anice rink under renovation. Presented as a "horror comedy", the film was also released under the titleSon of Blob in 1972. As this was Hagman's first feature film as director, home video releases used the tagline, "The Movie That J.R. Shot", a play on "Who shot J.R.?", the famous catchphrase about the near-demise of the character Hagman played in the television seriesDallas.
Aremake with the same name was directed byChuck Russell and was released in 1988 byTriStar Pictures.
In August 2009, it was revealed that musician-turned-directorRob Zombie was working on another remake,[27][28] but he later left the project.[29] He was replaced bySimon West as director in January 2015.[30] It was announced that the film would be produced by Richard Saperstein and Brian Witten,[30] with the producer of the original film,Jack H. Harris, as executive producer.[31] Harris died in 2017.
As of January 2024, West has stepped down from his role as director, following delays, and a rights dispute.David Bruckner was then hired to write and direct, withDavid S. Goyer and Keith Levine attached as producers and Judith Harris (the rights holder and widowed-wife of franchise producer) serving as executive producer. The project will be a joint-venture production betweenWarner Bros. Motion Pictures Group[broken anchor], and Phantom Four Films.[32]
The 1958 Japanese filmThe H-Man directed byIshiro Honda, resemblesThe Blob, although it was released months earlier. From an original story by Hideo Kaijo, the English version was released in the United States byColumbia Pictures in 1959. In it, a creeping radioactive blob consumes human flesh on contact, leaving clothing behind. As well, a ghostly image of dissolved humans sometimes appear in an illuminated green cloud of radiation.
The 1959 Italian movieCaltiki - The Immortal Monster has similarities toThe Blob, with a meteor-related amorphous blob devouring people.
The opening scene of the 1988 horror-comedyKiller Klowns from Outer Space closely parallels that ofThe Blob. Both movies also have a decent cop named Dave who does not believe the young people, and a crabby older cop who seems to have a grudge against young citizens.
The 1999John Lafia filmMonster! includes a theater scene apparently inspired byThe Blob's.
The filmMonsters vs. Aliens has characters based on classic 1950s movie monsters, including B.O.B. (Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate), an amoeboid creature.
TheJohn Carpenter version ofThe Thing has a virtually identical camera shot of a body lying under a blanket on a gurney in which the blanket moves. It is similar to the scene inThe Blob in the doctor's office with the old man under the blanket.
In theHotel Transylvania franchise, one ofDracula's friends is a huge, indestructible green amoeboid creature called "Blobby" who is able to absorb and regurgitate anything in his path.
Realised in 2017, the movieLife may be considered as a "Blob in space". The final twist is clearly a reference to the last scene ofThe Blob.
In computing, ablob is a collection ofbinary data stored as a single entity. Blobs are typicallyimages,audio or othermultimedia objects, althoughexecutable code is sometimes stored as a blob. Blobs were originally just big amorphous chunks of data invented byJim Starkey atDEC, who describes them as "the thing that ate Cincinnati, Cleveland, or whatever" from "the 1958 Steve McQueen movie",[33] referring toThe Blob.
Since 2000, the town ofPhoenixville, Pennsylvania, one of the filming locations, has held an annual "Blobfest" to celebrate the 1958 filmThe Blob. The festival includes a reenactment of the iconic scene in which moviegoers run screaming from the town's now-restoredColonial Theatre.[34]
The 2024 Blobfest marked its 25th anniversary with expanded festivities. Notably, two "run-out" reenactments were held—one on Friday night and another on Saturday night. The Saturday event featured a special appearance by an original cast member who participated in the 1957 filming and reprised their role in the reenactment.[35]
In addition to the reenactments, the three-day festival includes a street fair with sci-fi-themed vendors, live music performances, classic car shows, costume contests, and multiple screenings ofThe Blob—including, for the first time in 2024, a Spanish-language screening.[36]
Chef's Diner in Downingtown has also been restored, and customers are able to take photographs of the basement (on weekday mornings only).[citation needed]
The Blob itself was made from silicone, with increasing amounts of red vegetable dye added as it "absorbed" people. In 1965, it was bought by film collector Wes Shank,[37] who has written a book about the making ofThe Blob.[38]
According toJeff Sharlet in his bookThe Family,The Blob was "about the creeping horrors of communism", defeated only "by freezing it—the Cold War writ small and literal".[39] Rudy Nelson, one of the film's scriptwriters, has denied many of Sharlet's assertions, saying, "What on earth can Sharlet say about the movie that will fill 23 pages—especially when what he thinks he knows is all wrong?".[40]
In 1997, film historians Kim R. Holston and Tom Winchester noted thatThe Blob was "filmed in southeastern Pennsylvania at Valley Forge Studios, (and) this very famous piece of pop culture is a model of a decent movie on a small budget".[41]
The trailer forThe Blob is seen during the drive-in scene in the 1978 film adaptation of the musicalGrease.
The film is recognized byAmerican Film Institute in these lists:
Criminal MindsSeason 4 Episode 19, 'House on Fire,' opens by depicting people buying tickets for a screening of The Blob and commenting that it is "campy," and more funny than scary.
InMetal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, it's one of the many movies that Para-Medic recommends to Snake.[44]
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