The film concerns a carnivorous amoeboidalalien that crashes to Earth from outer space inside a meteorite, landing near the small communities of Phoenixville and Downingtown, Pennsylvania. It envelops living beings, growing larger, becoming redder in color and more aggressive, eventually becoming larger than a building.
Plot
In a small Pennsylvania town, teenager Steve Andrews and his girlfriend Jane Martin kiss at a lovers' 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 being phagocytosed. 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 of Daughter of Horror at the Colonial 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 and air-raid alarms. The responding townspeople and police still refuse to believe them. The Blob enters the Colonial Theater and envelopes 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 a diner, along with the owner and a waitress, as the Blob—now enormous from the people it has consumed—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 of CO2 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 an Air Force heavy-lift cargo aircraft to transport the frozen Blob to the Arctic. 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 words The End morphing into a question mark.
Cast
Steve McQueen (credited as Steven McQueen) as Steve Andrews
The film was the first production of Jack Harris, a film distributor from Philadelphia,[3] and was reportedly inspired by a discovery of star jelly in Pennsylvania in 1950. It was originally titled The Molten Meteor until producers overheard screenwriter Kay Linaker refer to the film's monster as "the blob".[4][5] 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 on The Glob. After hearing that cartoonist Walt Kelly had used The Glob as a title for his Pogo children's book, they mistakenly believed they couldn't use that title, so they changed it to The Blob.[6][Note 2] Although the budget was set at $120,000, it ended up costing only $110,000.[1]
The film was the second feature directed by Irvin Yeaworth. Filmed in and around Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, principal photography took place in the summer of 1957 at Valley Forge Studios.[3] Several scenes were filmed in the towns of Chester Springs, Downingtown, Phoenixville and Royersford, 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 $4million at the box office.[1]
The film's tongue-in-cheek title song, "The Blob" [Columbia 42150A],[7][full citation needed] was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David. It became a nationwide hit in the United States, peaking at #33 on the BillboardHot 100 chart on November 9, 1958.[8][9][10][11] It was recorded by a studio group who adopted the name The Five Blobs. (The vocals are all by singer Bernie Knee, overdubbing himself.) It is commonly misbelieved that Bacharach wrote the song with his famous songwriting partner, Hal David, but David's brother Mack wrote the lyrics.[12]
The Blob's background score was by Ralph Carmichael, who, like Yeaworth, had worked on television specials for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association; it was supervised by the director's wife, Jean Yeaworth.[3] 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.[12]
Release
Original trailer for The Blob.
Paramount acquired The Blob for $300,000 from Jack Harris and spent another $300,000 promoting it.[13] According to Tim Dirks, it was one of a wave of "cheap teen movies" for the drive-in market—"exploitative, cheap fare created especially for [young people] in a newly-established teen/drive-in genre".[14]
The Blob has been released as part of the Criterion Collection on three formats: LaserDisc (1988), DVD (2000) and Blu-ray (2013). The DVD and Blu-ray feature new cover art by Michael Koelsch.[10] The film, together with Son 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.[16] In November 2016, Umbrella released a 2-disc Blu-ray, The Blob Collection, featuring the 1988 version of The Blob and the 1958 version of The 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.
Reception
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.[17]
Variety had a similar reaction, seeing McQueen as the star, gamely "giving the old college try", but that the "... star performers, however, are the DeLuxe color camerawork of Thomas Spalding and Barton Sloane's special effects".[3]
Writing for Famous Monsters of Filmland in 1962, Joe Dante Jr. included The 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.[18]
The film review aggregator website Rotten 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."[21]
Box office
Paramount initially ordered 200 prints of the film. Following the first week grosses from 15 Los Angeles theaters (which outgrossed the studio's Rock-A-Bye Baby and other films), it doubled the number of prints.[22] The first week grosses in Los Angeles included $14,900 from the Hillstreet and Hawaii theaters.[23] The film earned theatrical rentals of $1million in its first year of release in the United States and Canada.[24]
Sequel
Beware! The Blob, a sequel directed by Larry Hagman, was released in 1972.[25] The same creature from the original—this time starting as a small specimen unearthed by a bulldozer crew in the Arctic—is brought back to suburban Los Angeles, where it escapes. Presented as a "horror comedy", the film was also released under the title Son 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 series Dallas.
In August 2009, it was revealed that musician-turned-director Rob Zombie was working on another remake,[26][27] but he later left the project.[28] He was replaced by Simon West as director in January 2015.[29] It was announced that the film would be produced by Richard Saperstein and Brian Witten,[29] with the producer of the original film, Jack H. Harris, as executive producer.[30] 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, with David 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 between Warner Bros. Motion Pictures Group, and Phantom Four Films.[31]
Influence
The 1958 Japanese film The H-Man directed by Ishiro Honda, resembles The Blob. From an original story by Hideo Kaijo, the English version was released in the United States by Columbia 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 movie Caltiki - The Immortal Monster has similarities to The Blob, with a meteor-related amorphous blob devouring people.
The opening scene of the 1988 horror-comedy Killer Klowns from Outer Space closely parallels that of The 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 1999 John Lafia film Monster! includes a theater scene apparently inspired by The Blob's.
The film Monsters vs. Aliens has characters based on classic 1950s movie monsters, including B.O.B. (Benzoate Ostylezene Bicarbonate), an amoeboid creature.
The John Carpenter version of The 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 in The Blob in the doctor's office with the old man under the blanket.
In the Hotel Transylvania franchise, one of Dracula's friends is a huge, indestructible green amoeboid creature called "Blobby" who is able to absorb and regurgitate anything in his path.
In computing, a blob is a collection of binary data stored as a single entity. Blobs are typically images, audio or other multimedia objects, although executable code is sometimes stored as a blob. Blobs were originally just big amorphous chunks of data invented by Jim Starkey at DEC, who describes them as "the thing that ate Cincinnati, Cleveland, or whatever" from "the 1958 Steve McQueen movie",[32] referring to The Blob.
Legacy
Since 2000, the town of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, one of the filming locations, has held an annual "Blobfest", including a reenactment of the scene in which moviegoers run screaming from the town's now-restored Colonial Theatre.[33] 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,[34] who has written a book about the making of The Blob.[35]
According to Jeff Sharlet in his book The Family, The Blob was "about the creeping horrors of communism", defeated only "by freezing it—the Cold War writ small and literal".[36] 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?".[37]
In 1997, film historians Kim R. Holston and Tom Winchester noted that The 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".[38]
The trailer for The Blob is seen during the drive-in scene in the 1978 film adaptation of the musical Grease.
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.
Star jelly - said to inspire movie premise (from 1950 incident in Pennsylvania)[41]
BLOB (Binary Large OBject), inspired by this film.[32]
Notes
↑ Olin Howland appeared in his last film role. He died the following year.
↑ "During the production, crew members were invited to write any title they could imagine for the film. 'The one that used to get all the laughs when people repeated it,' recalled Harris, 'was The Glob That Girdled the Globe. We had another one: Absorbine Senior. I liked that. And, The Night of the Creeping Dread. We were really serious about that one, because it was a "tuxedo" title; The Glob That Girdled the Globe was a "dumb" title. I love one-word titles, having distributed many of them, so I said, "Let's call it The Glob." Finally everybody agreed. We were applying for copyright, and somebody had done a little investigation and found there was a book called The Glob, by Walt Kelly, the cartoonist. I didn't know any better then. Today, I know I could have called the picture The Glob, because you can't copyright titles.'"[6]
↑ The setting is apparently Downingtown, Pennsylvania itself as the one policeman identifies his department's office as "Downingtown HQ to East Cornwall HQ" over the two-way radio during his chess game, and the final scenes take place in a restaurant that is clearly labeled "Downingtown Diner".
Related Research Articles
Downingtown is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States, 33 miles (53 km) west of Philadelphia. As of the 2020 census, it had a population of 7,898. Downingtown was settled by European colonists in the early 18th century and has a number of historic buildings and structures.
Phoenixville is a borough in Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located 28 miles (45 km) northwest of Philadelphia at the junction of French Creek and the Schuylkill River. It is in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. According to a 2022 estimate, the population was 19,354.
4D Man is a 1959 independent American science-fiction film in color by De Luxe, produced by Jack H. Harris, directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., and starring Robert Lansing, Lee Meriwether, and James Congdon. The film was released by Universal-International.
Fiend Without a Face is a 1958 independently made British black-and-white science fiction-horror film drama from Amalgamated Productions. It was produced by John Croydon and Richard Gordon, directed by Arthur Crabtree, and stars Marshall Thompson, Kynaston Reeves, Michael Balfour, and Kim Parker. The film was released in the U.K. by Eros Films; in the U.S. it was released in June 1958 by MGM as a double feature with The Haunted Strangler.
Irvin Shortess "Shorty" Yeaworth Jr. was a German-born American film director, producer, screenwriter and theme park builder. He began his career singing at age 10 at KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He later became a radio producer. He directed more than 400 films for motivational, educational, and religious purposes, including television specials for evangelist Billy Graham. As an impresario, he directed the Wayne (Pa.) Concert Series from 1979 to 2003. However, he is best known for directing the classic film The Blob which depicts a growing, devouring alien slime.
C.H.U.D. is a 1984 American science fiction horror film directed by Douglas Cheek, produced by Andrew Bonime, and starring John Heard, Daniel Stern, and Christopher Curry in his film debut. The plot concerns a New York City police officer and a homeless shelter manager who team up to investigate a series of disappearances, and discover that the missing people have been killed by humanoid monsters that live in the sewers.
The Blob is a 1988 American science fiction horror film co-written and directed by Chuck Russell. A remake of the 1958 film of the same name, it stars Shawnee Smith, Kevin Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Jeffrey DeMunn, Paul McCrane, Art LaFleur, Robert Axelrod, Joe Seneca, Del Close and Candy Clark. The plot follows an acidic, amoeba-like organism that crashes down to Earth in a military satellite, which devours and dissolves anything in its path as it grows.
Dinosaurus! is a 1960 science fiction film directed by Irvin Yeaworth and produced by Jack H. Harris.
Equinox is a 1970 American supernatural horror film directed by Jack Woods, and starring Edward Connell, Barbara Hewitt, Frank Bonner and Robin Christopher. Though uncredited, producer Dennis Muren also served as a second director. The film focuses on four young people picnicking in a California canyon, where they stumble upon an ancient book used to conjure demons; soon they unleash a plethora of evil creatures.
Beware! The Blob is a 1972 American independent science fiction comedy horror film directed by Larry Hagman. It is a sequel to The Blob (1958). The screenplay was penned by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods III, based on a story by Jack H. Harris and Richard Clair. The film originally earned a PG rating from the MPAA, though it is now unrated. It is the second film in The Blob film series.
The Giant Gila Monster is an American 1959 science fiction horror film directed by Ray Kellogg and produced by Ken Curtis. A famous B-movie of the era, the film stars Don Sullivan, a veteran of several low budget monster and zombie films, and Lisa Simone, the French contestant for the 1957 Miss Universe, as well as comedic actor Shug Fisher and KLIF disc jockey Ken Knox. The effects included a live Mexican beaded lizard filmed on a scaled-down model landscape.
The Colonial Theatre is located in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, at 227 Bridge Street. Built in 1903, the "Colonial Opera House" became a preeminent venue for movies, traveling shows and live entertainment throughout the 20th century. The three-screen venue consists of the original 658-seat ‘vaudeville house’ and two newer additional theatres in the adjacent National Bank of Phoenixville building (c.1925).
Erik Lobo, better known by his stage name Mr. Lobo, is an American artist and comedic actor best known as the horror host of the nationally syndicated American television series Cinema Insomnia. In 2022, he was inducted into the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards' Monster Kid Hall of Fame.
Sam Irvin is an American film and television director, producer, screenwriter, actor, author and film teacher.
William Robert Cardille, also known as "Chilly Billy", was an American broadcast personality from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was well known to regional viewers as a late-night horror host, but is perhaps more widely remembered for his appearance in George A. Romero's landmark zombie film Night of the Living Dead (1968), portraying a fictional version of himself; he also appeared as himself in the 1990 remake.
Robert Samuel Fields is an American actor who has appeared in film and television. A life member of The Actors Studio, Fields is known for his role as Daniel in the 1987 drama film Anna.
Jack Henry Harris was an American film producer and distributor. He produced The Blob (1958), 4D Man (1959), and Equinox (1970).
The Flame Barrier is a 1958 American jungle adventure/science fiction film produced by Arthur Gardner and Jules V. Levy, directed by Paul Landres, and written by Pat Fielder and George Worthing Yates. The film stars Arthur Franz, Kathleen Crowley and Robert Brown. It was released in the U.S. on April 2, 1958 by United Artists as the bottom half of a double feature with The Return of Dracula (1958).
The Blob franchise consists of American science fiction monster-horror films, including the Steve McQueen-led original, its campy comedic sequel, and its remake. Based on an original story by Irving H. Millgate, the plot centers around the invasion of Earth by an amoeboidal creature from a different planet that emerges from a meteorite and feasts on anything that it comes into contact with. The story of each installment includes the resistance of the planet's inhabitants, and their attempts to thwart the monster's advances.
↑ "Top Grossers of 1958". Variety. January 7, 1959. p.48. Please note figures are for US and Canada only and are domestic rentals accruing to distributors, as opposed to theatre gross
Holston, Kim R.; Winchester, Tom (1997). Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film Sequels, Series and Remakes: An Illustrated Filmography. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN978-0-7864-0155-0.
Magrì, Antonio (2009). Di Blob in Blob. Analisi di semiotica comparata. Cinema Tv e Linguaggio del corpo. Roome: Aracne editrice. ISBN978-8-85482-711-0.
Shank, Wes (2009). From Silicone to the Silver Screen: Memoirs of the Blob (1958). Los Angeles. ISBN978-0-57804-728-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
Sharlet, Jeff (2008). The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power. New York: Harper. ISBN978-0-06056-005-8.
Warren, Bill. Keep Watching the Skies: Science Fiction Films of the Fifties, 21st Century Edition. 2009. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company,(First Editions Vol. 1, 1982, Vol. 2, 1986). ISBN0-89950-032-3.
Weaver, Tom (2002). "Interview with Russ Doughten". Science Fiction Confidential: Interviews with 23 Monster Stars and Filmmakers. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN978-0-78641-175-7.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
