The Blob (1988 film)

A military satellite crashes near Arborville, California. An elderly transient discovers, within the sphere, a slime mold-like substance that adheres to his hand. Three high school students, Brian, Meg and Paul, take him to a hospital. After Brian leaves, Paul witnesses the lower half of the transient melting from exposure to the Blob. As he calls for help, the Blob drops on top of him. Meg walks in to see Paul being consumed by the growing Blob. While she tries freeing him, his arm dissolves off, Meg is thrown against a wall and knocked unconscious, the Blob fully dissolves Paul, and the Blob oozes out of the hospital, where it devours Scott, Paul's friend and his date Vicki nearby.

After Brian and Meg have unsatisfactory encounters with the police, they meet at a diner where Meg tells Brian about the Blob. Brian's disbelief is shattered when a diner worker is violently pulled through a sink drain by the Blob. It pursues them to the diner's walk-in freezer, but the Blob retreats after entering the freezer. After consuming Sheriff Geller and the diner's owner Fran Hewitt, the Blob reenters the sewers, observed by the town's Reverend Meeker, who investigates inside the diner and picks up a few frozen fragments of the Blob, placing them inside a glass jar. Meg and Brian return to the police station, where the dispatcher tells them Deputy Briggs is near the meteor-landing site. They discover a military operation led by a scientist, Dr. Meddows, who orders the town and the two teens quarantined. While Brian escapes, Meg is taken to town where she learns her younger brother, Kevin, is missing. Meg learns he and his friend, Eddie, sneaked into the movie theater. The Blob enters the theater though the ventilation shaft, where it begins to feed on the staff and audience. Meg arrives as the audience flees the theater, rescuing Eddie and Kevin, but the trio are cornered in an alleyway when trying to escape and are forced to flee into the sewers.

Brian eavesdrops on Meddows and Jennings talking and learns that the Blob is a biological warfare experiment created during the Cold War, launched into space because it was so dangerous. Learning that the Blob has entered the sewers, Meddows decide to trap it there, even if that means allowing Meg, Kevin, and Eddie to die. Brian is discovered listening in and evades military personnel by driving his motorcycle into the sewers. Meanwhile, Meg and Kevin flee from the Blob when it emerges and consumes Eddie. Kevin escapes by scaling a pipe to the surface, and Meg is saved by Brian. They escape the sewers to the town square, where Brian confronts Meddows in front of the townsfolk and Briggs. When Brian begins to win over Briggs with his arguments, Meddows attempts to shoot Brian, but is killed by the Blob when it drags him into the sewer. The military unload their weapons in the sewer entrance in hopes of killing the creature, but only succeed in making it enraged. The Blob suddenly bursts out of the sewer, rampaging down the street and feasting on the town's population. Reverend Meeker proclaims the scene to be the prophesied end of the world, after which a failed flamethrower attack on the Blob sets him ablaze. Meg saves him with a fire extinguisher, and in the process blasts the Blob with it. When the monster backs off, she realizes that the Blob cannot tolerate cold.

The survivors retreat to the town hall and hold the Blob off with furniture-barricades and fire extinguishers, but it is a losing battle; the Blob engulfs half the building and devours Briggs. Brian goes to the town's garage and gets a snow maker truck that has canisters of liquid nitrogen attached. Brian shoots snow at the creature, angering it, and it leaves its attack on the town hall and rams the truck, knocking the canisters onto the street. As the Blob attempts to break into the overturned truck with Brian inside, Meg lures it away from him toward the canisters, which she has rigged with an explosive charge taken from a dying soldier. She tries getting clear, but snags her foot between two pieces of metal, trapping her. Brian frees himself from the truck and rescues Meg. The Blob is about to overrun them when the charge goes off, blowing up the canisters and covering the Blob in liquid nitrogen. The creature is flash-frozen into a mass of crystallized pieces. Moss Woodley has its remains stored in the town ice house.

Later, at a tent-meeting church service in a field, Meeker, disfigured by his burns, preaches a doomsday sermon resembling the Blob's attack. He has a still-living piece of the Blob, trapped inside the jar, and hints at planning to unleash it back upon the world when God gives him a sign.

The film functions as a conspiracy theory film. The threat of the original film was an alien entity from outer space. The remake differs in making the threat a biological weapon, created by a secret government agency. The Blob is closely followed by soldiers and scientists in protective suits. The change reflects the mentality of a more cynical era.[4] The sinister government agents are opposed by rebellious teenager Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon). His depiction as a rebel and a "tough guy punk" includes wearing a leather jacket, sporting long hair, riding a motorcycle, and distrusting authority figures.[5]

Screenwriter Frank Darabont first met director Chuck Russell in 1981, while working as a production assistant on the film Hell Night.[6] Before working together on The Blob, the two also collaborated on the script for A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.[6]

Actor Del Close had been scheduled to direct a "mock opera" about Ronald Reagan at New York's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts during the filming of The Blob;[7] however, the production was cancelled and he was unexpectedly available to audition for The Blob.[8]

Production began on January 11, with the cast and crew of approximately 150 staying at a Travelodge in Abbeville, Louisiana.[9] Due to the large amount of night shooting, the cast often slept during the day.[10] On their off days, they watched videos at the hotel and ate crawfish, a popular item of local cuisine.[10]

Special effects in the film were handled by Tony Gardner.[11] Gardner was originally supposed to provide only a few small effects, with special effects artist Lyle Conway originally being in charge of the effects.[12] However, after personnel changes he ended up running a crew of 33, including artist Chet Zar and mechanical effects designer Bill Sturgeon.[11] In creating the titular Blob creature, the special effects team used silk bags filled with Methyl cellulose (Fangoria reported Methacil), a thickening agent for food, creating what the team described as a "Blob Quilt".[12] For the few minutes of screen time, near the end of the film, where Reverend Meeker has a scene with fresh burns and another with healed burns, actor Del Close required five-and-a-half hours of makeup preparation for fresh burns, and seven-and-a-half hours for healed burns.[10]

The Blob opened in New York and Los Angeles, California on August 5, 1988.[1] It grossed $8,247,943 at the box office.[13] An article in the 27 May 1989 Screen International reported that the film’s domestic box-office gross was “disastrous.”[1]

• The Crazies (1973 film)
• The Thing (1982 film)
• The Stuff (1985 film)

• Donovan, Barna William (2011), "Aliens, Rugged Individualists, and Incompetent Conspirators: Conspiracy Films of the 1980s", Conspiracy Films: A Tour of Dark Places in the American Conscious, McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0786486151
• Foertsch, Jacqueline (2001), "Two Takes on a Scare: Cinematic Plague Texts and their Remakes", Enemies Within: The Cold War and the AIDS Crisis in Literature, Film, and Culture, University of Illinois Press, ISBN 978-0252026379
• O'Neill, William L. (2007), "The "Good" War: National Security and American Culture", in Bacevich, Andrew J. (ed.), The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy Since World War II, Columbia University Press, ISBN 978-0231505864

• The Blob at IMDb
• The Blob at AllMovie
• The Blob at Box Office Mojo
• The Blob at Rotten Tomatoes
• Retrospective article in Cinefantastique magazine