Streaming Availability: Peacock
"Listen to me, Briggs! Think for a minute! Do you suppose an army of guys in plastic suits show up every time a meteor falls?"
Back to remakes!
The new Eighties spin on The Blob was written by Frank Darabont. You'll probably know that name because of his connection to Stephen King, specifically directing three adaptations: The Mist, The Green Mile, and of course, the favorite old man yaoi film of the IMDB crowd, The Shawshank Redemption. The Blob is only Darabont's second film credit (the first being the really solid A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, also directed by Chuck Russell) yet you can already see a lot of fascination and inspiration from King. There's a character named "Flagg" (Kevin Dillon) dressed like a Fifties Greaser, as if multiple King villains got mixed together. Flagg, however, is the hero this time, fitting into a very cynical and bitter look at modern America which is also very King-y. The Conservative man of faith is in fact a deranged cleric worshiping a Lovecraftian deity of evil. A vague yet sinister government conspiracy rolls into town, more or less The Shop from Firestarter and King's underrated alien opus, The Tommyknockers.
While the original The Blob gets going immediately with our two lovebirds in the car, the 1988 version takes a bit more time. This movie is still only about 90 minutes, there is not a slow artsy adventure. It does want to establish the scene more, since this Blob has more on its mind than just "wow, teenagers exist and are people too, mom and dad". We see the run-down theater, main street losing a battle against urban decay, the sidewalks covered in dust and debris. We're no longer in Pennsylvania, this was shot in Louisiana with the location filling in for an unnamed skiing town in October. That means the economy is dying, but there's plenty of snow machines hanging around if say, a dangerous space virus landed with a critical weakness to Blizzaga spells.
Speaking of, within a few scenes a meteor lands and the first victim is again an old man with "something funky" on his hand. The good cheerleader, Meg (Shawnee Smith) and the star Wide Receiver, Paul (Donovan Leitch) are out on their first date. They're our new Steve McQueen and Aneta Corsaut. Paul has several comedy scenes, including buying condoms from his date's pharmacist father. Sure is a lovable young man, hope he doesn't get eaten by moving slime.
The '88 Blob makes a big statement early by devouring the Old Man in gruesome detail, we see most of his torso eaten away. It makes a bigger statement by feeding Paul to the Blob, in this incredible gore effect. Even after two Blob movies, we've never actually seen the creature eat anybody. But now it is 1988, gore is in big time. Now we see Paul is in there screaming, until the pink goo's acidic power causes his face to dissolve into a monstrous snout. With offense intended to Beware! The Blob, Darabont's Blob script has better gore *and* better jokes.
There's going to be a lot of great gore effects and twisted remnants of humanity in this version. The influence of The Thing is already being felt by the effects here. They are wonderful. There is a whole sub-genre of horror movies called "Melt Movies", which... are exactly what you think. For much sleezier things of this nature, check out Street Trash or Body Melt. The Blob '88 is the greatest example of a Melt Movie, both technically and in terms of actually being a respectable film. Let us also not forget Larry Cohen's 1985 movie, The Stuff, also about goo eating people.
One thing this movie does is make the Blob more than merely a fluid or a lump. There are several gags of people eating Jell-o or a character spilling a can of cranberries, just to give you a clearer visual contrast of how this movie's special effects are far more sophisticated. It moves like a shape-shifting eldritch horror. It makes unearthly screaming sounds. It grows tentacles to grab at you, getting into Meg's hair in one scene. In another great gag, it has eaten a girl on lover's land from the inside, so while her awful pervert boyfriend goes in to molest her, the creature pops out, while her face implodes from the inside-out. There's a lot of deaths, but the Blob never eats anybody the same way twice. Sometimes it'll digest you up on the ceiling for a jump scare. It even eats a little boy, breaking a big horror taboo.
So with our Steve McQueen gone, who is going to be our male lead now? Well, that belongs to a new character, Brian Flagg, the local baby-faced punk in a leather jacket. His dialog might be a bit too clever. There's one too many sarcastic remarks. B this is the Eighties, society is a mess, so the jaded outsider is ultimately the voice of reason. Unlike the '58 movie, the teenagers have no problem making the authorities believe them about pink slimes eating people. The authorities pour in that very night. All should be well, except that in Reagan's America, a small town in the middle of nowhere is "expendable".
Fans of the '88 Blob might Cinema Sins me for putting this in Aliens Month. Because one big twist Darabont added is that the meteor is not a rock from space but instead a satellite. The Blob isn't an alien, technically, it's a military virus sent into space, which transformed radically into a gooey death mass. (What if Captain Trips ate people?) Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca) is the leader of a group of government scientists in astronaut suits, trying to put together a containment. There's tons of value in the slime as a weapon. However, the government is as incompetent as they are evil, since Flagg easily escapes, and the Blob wipes out the soldiers. Even the scientists have no idea what they're dealing with, in the end. Teenagers must save the day because the older generation has already failed.
So... the text says the Blob isn't an alien. However, I would note that what has come down is something changed radically and terribly by its connection with the unknowable physics of outer space. The Quatermass Xperiment is just about a guy who went up one time and came back a cosmic horror. Also, The Blob kicks ass, so who cares?
We end with the creepy Reverend (Del Close) having survived this night only with minor injuries and a half-melted face. He's now an evangelical apocalyptic preacher, complete with a tent revival service and all. He's got a jar of some Blob goo, still alive in there, if the angels won't bring the fire and brimstone, the Moral Majority has a back-up plan. "The Lord will send me a sign."
Unfortunately, that sign never came. The Blob '88 was a box office failure, which is a massive shame. This is a near-perfect horror movie. It's great to see the monster attacking a theater again, this time showing a blatant parody of Friday the 13th movies. You can see where schlock horror has moved between 1958 and 1988. No more Bela Lugosi, now its tits and garden tools as butchering equipment. And say what you want about Jason, he filled audiences in the late Eighties. This didn't. Somehow the teenagers didn't connect with it. Probably because the 1988 Blob forgot to have a rocking pop song like the 1958 one did. You mean to tell me Ray Parker Jr. couldn't get on the case this one?
There has never been another Blob movie. Luckily there does not need to be one. This Blob is perfect.
Next time! John Carpenter really hates Republicans in They Live.
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