After six days of doing the Fox morning show, I'm going to be heading back to the noon show. I've done crazy hours before, but 1:00 AM - 9:00 AM has been rough. My sleep schedule is shot and I'm going to love the extra sleep I'm about to get without having to break up my sleep. To give you an idea of what it's doing to me, it took me 10 minutes to bang out those three sentences.
The Blob (1958)
If you remember, and I'm sure you all do, the very first year I did my reviews (2011,) I watched the 1988 remake. I loved it and thought it was an absolute blast to watch. From the cool alien, the gory effects and the 80s camp, it was a very good time. I've wanted to check out the original for a while and was curious to see how it would stack up.
It's a very fun movie in its own right. The plot is straightforward; like the remake, a meteor crash lands on Earth and a weird substance escapes. A person is unlucky enough to come in contact with it and ends up having a very bad time. From there, the thing grows and starts consuming everything around it, growing bigger the more it feeds and our plucky band of heroes need to stop the alien before it grows too big and destroys the town and then the world!
This was the first starring role for Steve McQueen and like many actors who get their start in low-budget movies, he hated this movie and for the longest time and refused to talk about it. When negotiating his contract he was offered $1,200 ($13,344 when adjusted for inflation) or 10% of the profits, he chose the guaranteed payday. Unfortunately for him, the movie went on to make 4-million-money, so he would have walked away with $400,000 ($4,481,081 when adjusted for inflation.) I can understand why he'd be a little bitter!
I think my favorite thing about the movie was his friends. When we first meet the group, they don't seem happy to see him and then make a U-turn to chase him down. Once they meet, the group of dudes challenge Steve (McQueen) to a drag race. After a lot of cajoling, Steve agrees to drag race the group with his girlfriend sitting in the passenger seat. The movie sets them up to be mini-antagonists like you see in a lot of these older movies, and I was pleasantly surprised that they were all solid dudes, just wanting to fuck with their friend, and were down to help Steve and his g/f despite not believing them.
Late in the movie, Steve tracks them down in the movie theater they're in. With little prompting, he manages to get the guys, and their girlfriends to leave the movie and follow him. That's what you want in a friend! The only pushback they give is when one of the friends complains they wasted 85 cents by leaving ($9.52 when adjusted for inflation. Aren't numbers fun?)
Another thing I liked about the movie was how it got around the shoestring budget. There are several moments when Blobby is devouring buildings or pouring out of windows and doors and it is painfully obvious that it's just a model with something like Nickelodeon's ooze being shoved through the openings on the other side. It looks bad, but with everything that's going it fits with the theme of the movie and somehow enhances it. As bad as it looked though, it still looked better than when It: Chapter 2 ripped off the iconic spider head scene from The Thing.
Overall, it's a fun movie. I enjoyed it, the characters are fun, the alien is unique and I'm not sure why, but the 50s setting is one of my favorite eras to see in media. The clothes, the way people talked and acted and the cool cars, there's not much not to love!
7 Dr. Chainsaws!
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