Back when we lived in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, our home was only minutes away from a big old barn housing the Chester Springs Arts center........once the home of a little filmmaking outfit Valley Forge Films, producers of short 16 mm movies providing moral lessons to Sunday School kids......
Low budget shlockmeister Jack H. Harris came up with the inspired idea of employing this bunch, not to provide moral lessons, but to scare the crap out of Saturday Matinee kids everywhere with a quickie horror film.......and Paramount wasted no time in snapping it up for distribution...
Bumping themselves to up 35 mm and color, the Valley Forge crew shot the film in less than a few weeks, working round the clock to cut down the expensive lease time on the 35 mm camera....supposedly the third shift crew members worked in their pajamas.....
And that, folks, is how a much mocked but beloved iconic sci-fi/horror classic was born,
You can't beat the simple, primal idea.......a single-celled, cherry-red glop from outer space oozes and rolls over folks, attaching itself like superglue then ingesting them whole.
To us, the Blob has always loomed as the most fearful of all movie monsters........for what is the Blob but a giant metaphor for cancer.......randomly grabbing and consuming people of all ages,sizes and gender. No wonder Hollywood wants to remake it every so often.....like the "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers" with its fear of erased identity, the Blob is also eternal.......the fear of cancer erasing us altogether.....
Not that the execution of the film itself is anywhere near the brilliance of its premise.......but we don't mind......the fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants, earnest amateurism of the Valley Forge film crew coats the movie with an innocent charm soon to disappear from American movies.....
For their hot-rodding-teens-versus-disapproving-adults "Rebel Without A Cause" storyline, the filmmakers imported from the New York stage a 27 year old struggling actor. Though still completely unknown, Steve McQueen already possessed the temperamental, pain-in-the-ass demeanor of an established superstar.......this attitude didn't go over too well with Jack H.Harris and all the Sunday School auteurs of Valley Forge Films, but McQueen's work lifted the film above its limited ambition to go "boo!" and slip out of town....
As you watch him play a misunderstood high school bad boy, you can knowingly smile at the easy charm and unmistakable charisma that would serve McQueen well through his long, legendary Hollywood career......
But enough of Steve......let us now praise the real superstar of this film....a jumbo glob of silicone with a red dye job giving a multi-faceted performance in the title role. A bravura piece piece of performance art......especially in its signature scene, squishing its way through the projection booth portals of a movie theater to gobble the crowd below.........(in presumed panic, they run screaming out the theater......and you can have fun spotting all the
terrified moviegoers fleeing with huge smiles on their faces. Not that we blame them.......being in this movie must have been a blast...)
A few years back, we enjoyed a delightful "making of the Blob" tour given by that Chester Springs Arts center, loaded with nuggets of Blob trivia, some of which we shared with you in this post.......and no Halloween season should go by without visiting the cinematic 1958 Downingtown, Pennsylvania......and watch overage teen Steve McQueen do battle with "The Blob". We happily ooze, slide and glide out 5 stars (*****) a FIND OF FINDS.....
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