Day 89: The Blob (1958)
It was 1958- the U.S.A. liked Ike, the Reds had launched Sputnik, and a little Liverpool band called “The Quarrymen” were still two years away from changing their name to “The Beatles.” It was a time of rock-and-roll, bobby socks, and monster movies…a whole LOT of monster movies. “Creature features,” such as “Invaders from Mars, “Creature from the Black Lagoon, “This Island Earth,” and ”The Fly” had all made their way onto the big screen, but the genre was about to get a new member to its rogues gallery, something new, something differant, something not so easly defined. Something the world would call “The Blob!”
Directed by Irvin Yeaworth, “The Blob” features Steve McQueen, in his first starring film role, as teenager Steve Andrews, who, on a night drive with his sweetheart Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut), witness a meteor fall from the sky. Though the couple tries to find where the object from space has landed, an old farmer beats them to it and, after poking the rocks hard outer layer with a stick, a thick pink ooze drips out of it and grabs onto the farmer.
When Steve and Jane finally reach the impact crater they find the farmer writhing in pain, his arm completely covered by the blob like substance. Thinking fast, they take him to the town’s doctor, but even medical science can stop the blob, which finally consumes the farmer whole and next devours the doctor and his nurse. Running for their lives, Steve and Jane try to alert their unsuspecting town about the danger from another world that’s growing bigger by the minute and closer by the second!
Let’s face it, “The Blob” isn’t exactly considered the highest of cinematic art. With its “gee whiz” dialogue and B-movie special effects, it fits in nicely with the monster movies of its time but, on the surface, it seems like just another summer drive-in movie popcorn flick. But, underlining the entire film is a very distinct characteristic that holds it apart from others of its genre. While in the other films the monster was a definable creature, like a large ape, living mummy, or a dangerous man-fish, “The Blob” was the first to make its antagonist intentionally undefinable. It has no sharp teeth, no long claws, and no chilling roar to speak of. It’s just a force of nature which consumes all without mercy and cannot be stopped on its path of destruction.
Why would this be scary in the least? Consider the generation who first watched it. Just over a decade before, two nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, devastating everything in its path and bringing a global arms race to the front page of every news paper in the world. Bomb shelters were being built all over the United States for fear of what the Russians were launching into space and the nation kept its ear out for the ”grey warning” of an air raid siren, proclaiming an immiant nuclear attack. With a monster like the Blob, a nation found something it really feared, the unstoppable. With a Frankenstein or a Wearwolf, you can pinpoint a way to kill it, find its weakness, but the Blob represented the underlying fear in all Americans of the late 1950′s – to be caught in a world where a devastating force could not be reckoned with.
Though certainly late night movie foder, “The Blob” does mark well a certain era’s paranoia and fears, which makes it one of the absolute classics of the monster movie genre.
To learn more about “The Blob,” check out Criterion’s page here.
If you would like updated on all things Nathan and “The Criterion Summer,” check out our Facebook page here.