The Blob (1958)

Although not a masterpiece, this film is a cultural gem

Practically nothing is known about an incident that occurred in a small rural town in Pennsylvania in July 1957. It involved a mysterious extra-terrestrial blob-like entity that crashed to Earth inside a meteorite. Not only that, but the alien entity turned out to be both aggressive and destructive as it set about devouring and dissolving the citizens of this small rural community.

Almost nothing is also known about the then teenage pair, Steve Andrews and his girlfriend, Jane Martin who witnessed the crash of the meteorite and who set about investigating it. As the teenage pair witnessed the alien creature’s destructive power, they faced the problem of being confronted by a wall of adult skepticism and anger. Meanwhile, the blob continued to engulf more and more people, while growing bigger and bigger……

Directed by Irvin Yeaworth
Produced by Jack H. Harris
Written by Kay Linaker, Theodore Simonson
Story by Irving H. Millgate
Music by Ralph Carmichael, Burt Bacharach
Cinematography Thomas E. Spalding
Edited by Alfred Hillmann
Production company: Fairview Productions, Tonylyn Productions, Valley Forge Films
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
Running time: 86 minutes
Budget: $110,000
Box office: $4 million

Cast

Steve McQueen as Steve Andrews
Aneta Corsaut as Jane Martin
Earl Rowe as Lieutenant Dave
Olin Howland as Old Man
Stephen Chase as Dr. Hallen
John Benson as Sergeant Jim Bert
George Karas as Officer Ritchie
Lee Payton as Kate
Elbert Smith as Mr. Martin
Hugh Graham as Mr. Andrews
Keith Almoney as Danny Martin

Trailer

Read on for more....

Spoilers follow below....

Sixty years later, 17-year-old Steve Andrews III wiles away his time playing a game on his iPhone. As he blows up aliens and stuff on his screen, he sings a little ditty that his grandfather taught him when he was a young boy:

“Beware of the Blob

It creeps and leaps

And glides and slides

across the floor

Right through the door

and all around the wall

A splotch, a blotch

Be careful of the Blob

Beware of the Blob

It creeps and leaps

And glides and slides

across the floor

Right through the door

and all around the wall

A splotch, a blotch

Be careful of the Blob

Beware of the Blob

It creeps and leaps

And glides and slides

across the floor

Right through the door

and all around the wall

A splotch, a blotch

Be careful of the Blob”

Steve doesn’t notice his grandfather shuffle into the living room and attempt a controlled but rather noisy descent onto the surface of the recliner opposite him.

Grandpa Steve: So Boy, you still remember that song I taught ya’?

Steve: Mmm?

Grandpa Steve: That song you was just singin’. Ya’ still remember it, Boy?

Steve. Yeah, I suppose. Whadeva.

Grandpa Steve: Ever wondered what it meant?

Steve: Dunno. Just some kids’ song. What about it?

Grandpa Steve: Kids’ song! Well, put away that kiddie thing ya’ fiddlin’ with and I’ll tell ya’ what it refers to. Something that only a few of us know who are still alive to remember what happened back in 1957 in my hometown in Pennsylvania. Something we were forced by the United States government to swear to keep secret or face severe personal consequences. That’s what they told us and what was writ on the forms they forced us to sign – consequences!

Steve: Then, why are you telling me Grandpa, and why now?

Grandad Steve: Well, I couldn’t tell ya’ fool Pa on account he never believed half of what I said most times and never listened to the other half anyways. Besides, I still felt scared at what might’ve happened if I had told him. Anywho, at 77 years old, I can see as plain as the zit on your chin that the days in front of me are a lot less than the days stretched out behind me. I ain’t got no time to worry about bullies stompin’ over me and the truth, the truth that perhaps you young people of today can spread with ya’ interwebs and cell phone gee-gaws and whatcha-ma-call-its.

Steve: (after examining his chin area and with the last of aliens on his phone vanquished) So tell me then Grandpa, what did happen back then that you so badly want me to know about?

Grandpa Steve: (leaning back in the recliner and with eyes fixed at a point elsewhere in time and space) Well, I was a teenager just your age back in ’57 in my hometown of Downington, Pennsylvania. Many people back then had served in the Second World War and after that the Korean War. Now we had peace and money and jobs. All we had to worry about was Commies, Ruskies and the possibility of atomic war, which I suppose was enough to worry about. Well, we teenagers could afford cars – real cars made out of steel that had fins! We could now go places. We loved to race hot-rods, listen and dance to rock-n-roll music (real music!) and watch scary movies at the local cinema or drive-in. And man, the girls back then! You know, Boy, women in those days actually looked like women should look. Our president was good ol’ Ike. After him came Kennedy. Now they was real presidents. Not like this buffoon we got now……

Steve: OK grandpa. Back to the story….

Grandpa Steve: Well, one night I was out at lovers' lane with Jane your departed grandma who was then my girlfriend. She hated being called ‘Janey girl!’ God rest her soul. She was so beautiful. Suddenly, we spotted a meteorite crash just over the next hill, so I decided to go look for it.

We drove out to try to find where the meteor landed when we came across an old man lying on the road. It seems that he had also heard the meteor crash near his house. He must have located it and prodded and poked it out of curiosity. 

It turned out that some kind of a creature – a, a, a…. blob – had managed to attach itself to his hand. Unable to dislodge it, the old fella must have panicked and run onto the road. Anyways, we took him to see Doc Hallen.

Steve: A “blob?”

Grandpa Steve: I’m getting’ to that. Luckily, we reached the clinic just as Doc Hallen was about to leave. You should have seen the size of the blister on the old man’s fingers. After the Doc anesthetized the old timer, he sent us back to the impact site to gather more information. 

I’m afraid I got a bit side-tracked on the way and being a foolish head-strong young buck, I just couldn’t resist the challenge of a full reverse drag race with some of the local boys. One of them boys says to me, “We can beat this kiddie car of yours going backwards.” Ha! They was no match for my ol’ 1953 Plymouth Cranbrook blue convertible! No siree!

Anyways, the gang joined us as we went back to the impact site before going to the movies. We soon enough realized that we were “getting close to the front line.” We located what was to us a “little pebble” – “a real piece of sky” that had “been out there hot-roddin' around the universe” and had started out “probably big as the moon.”

Suddenly the howling of a dog drew us to a house situated close by. It looked isolated and abandoned: a real “cozy spot. No neighbours, no cars, no roads, no lights (and) no movies.” We figured the place and the dog belonged to the old man so before going to join the others at the “spook show,” Jane and I decided to take the dog with us back to the Doc’s clinic.

When we returned, I went to see if the doc’s car was in the garage. I was soon shocked out of my wits to witness through the clinic window Doc Hallen being killed and consumed by some kind of a creature. It was “just like the thing on the old man's hand, only it was bigger. Then it was on his whole head, and then in just a second he disappeared….He was all gone. He was all gone. You know, he just disappeared!” In fact, the creature had consumed both the old man we found and Hallen’s nurse.

There was nothing left to do but to go to the police station and report what had just happened. I felt that the police would know what to do.

At the station I was still in a state of shock and had trouble getting Lieutenant Dave to believe my story about Doc Hallen having been killed. I remember gibbering something about a creature being responsible and it being “kind of like a mass that keeps getting bigger and bigger” and that it could have been a monster of some kind. After thinking what I had to say might have been part of a gag, Dave knew he had to check it out seeing that a murder had been reported.

When we returned to the clinic with Lieutenant Dave and Sergeant Bert we found no sign of any blob-like creature or any of its victims. Still, there was the question of how it was that in the room I saw the doc being killed, “the window was locked from the inside and so was the door.”

That Sergeant Bert was sure hostile towards us throughout the entire investigation.

Steve: How so?

Grandpa Steve: Well, boy, you know yourself how people get ideas in their heads about other people just because of some bad experience they may have had or based on the way they were raised. They look for what’s bad in the other person just as a way to confirm their own preconceived notions and prejudices. A few teenagers or a couple of gangs commit some crimes and suddenly all teenagers are labelled as being juvenile delinquents. Suddenly the youth of today are all wild and out of control when in fact most are just healthy and well-adjusted youngsters who may occasionally rebel, test boundaries and look for some excitement. Boy, how I used to shake my head at your Pa and his shenanigans when he was growing up and how he shakes his head at you and your shenanigans. We just tend to forget, is all!

Steve: Me? I don’t get up to anything, do I? What about this Sergeant Bert fella?

Grandpa Steve: Well, according to some who knew him, it seemed that he acted like we were still fighting the war and also because some kid smacked into his wife on the turnpike….in his mind it almost seemed to “make it a crime to be 17 years old!”

Anyway, back to the investigation. After a chat with a certain Mrs. Porter, my story was dismissed as being nothing more than a teenage prank and both Jane and I were later sent home with our tails between our legs accompanied by our parents.

Steve: Let me guess. Back in the day, your parents grounded you for the next ten years?

Grandpa Steve: Very funny. No, boy. We did what I know you’ve done on at least a couple of occasions when your dad ordered you to stay home - we snuck out behind their backs in the dead of night!

Steve: You rebel, grandpa! You knew I did that?

Grandpa Steve: Yep! Don’t fret, your Pa won’t hear about it from me. We then decided to rustle up a few of our friends who were at the Colonial Theatre which was showing a midnight screening of Daughter of Horror. The intention was to get them to help us warn the townsfolk about the Blob creature and the danger it posed.

I had much to thank your grandma for because of the faith she had in me. She knew in her heart that I was “not the kind of person who can turn (his) back on something (he) know(s) is true.”

The question for us was “how do you get people to protect themselves from something they don't believe in?” The only possible answer was to “keep trying and hoping you can find...some sort of proof that'll convince them.”

And that’s what we set out to do.

At first it was a difficult job just trying to convince the rest of the gang. I told them there “was something inside of that rock we found, something that could wipe out this whole town.” Then one of the guys recalled something strange in one of the bars in town: “there was nobody there. TV was playin' away. The cash register was there with the money still in it. Nobody around. No bartender, nobody.”

After we left the others, I noticed that my dad’s grocery store was unlocked which was definitely unusual. It was after all a Friday when I knew that “the store closes at 10:00, and then old Mr. Weinermeyer sweeps up...and then he collects all the push carts…. He works around for a couple of hours before he locks up. I was sure he'd never be this late.” Jane and I then decided to enter the store to investigate. Unable to locate the janitor, we quickly found ourselves confronted and cornered by The Blob.

Steve: What did you and grandma do to save yourselves?

Grandpa Steve: There was nothing for it but for your grandma and me to seek refuge in the big walk-in freezer. It was a choice between freezing to death or being consumed by the Blob. It wasn’t long before we noticed the creature oozing in under the door. Just when it seemed that we could do nothing to prevent it from getting at us, the Blob retreated allowing us to escape our frigid sanctuary

Once outside the store, we came across our friends. I asked them where they had been all this time and told them that the creature was in the store. I then got one of the gang, Tony Gressette to use the phonebooth to call the police. That’s what we did back in them days – no cell phones back then! I told Tony, “I'm supposed to be home asleep, if they think I'm running around loose, they'll never believe us.” I then asked him to “ask for Dave, and … give it to him straight. Tell him to get out to (the) store quick! (and) tell him to bring every piece of hardware he can find in the police station!”

Steve: So, did the cavalry come charging to the rescue?

Grandpa Steve: Hell no! The police (namely, Bert) thought that every kid in town was in on a prank. “All right, we tried to do it the right way,” so we decided it was high time to “wake this town up ourselves.”

Jane and I got our friends together to set off the town's fire and air-raid alarms. Boy, you shouldha’ heard the racket! The townspeople and police sure did! The whole town streamed in and gathered around us demanding to know what the heck was going on. I got up in front of everybody and announced to them;

“Now listen to me, everybody ! This town is in danger. Several people have been killed already. Now we had to make this noise so you'd listen to us, so we could warn you.”

Steve: Did they listen? Did they believe you?

Grandpa Steve: At first the townspeople were angry and confused and refused to believe me, especially Bert. Dave, however could see it in my eyes that I was telling the truth. He said to the assembled crowd, “Listen, this is an emergency, and it can affect every one of us. That's all I can tell you right now. But we're trying to get things under control. In order to do that, we have to clear this area immediately. So please go home and stay there. We'll keep in touch with you through your radio station.”

What did finally convince everyone was the number of panicked people pouring out of the Colonial Theatre hell bent on escaping the Blob which had entered during the screening of Daughter of Horror and had already consumed some of the audience.

As people were fleeing in all directions and gunshots were going off, Jane, Danny, her little brother, and I found ourselves in the diner, along with the manager and a waitress. Can you imagine it? Jane's little brother confronting the Blob with just a cap gun! By now, the Blob had fed and had grown to an enormous size. It now engulfed the diner we were in, trapping us.

In the meantime, Dave arranged for the telephone company to establish a connection with the diner, so he could have a line of communication from his police radio to the diner's telephone. Over that line Dave said to us, “We can drop a power line on it. Do you understand? There should be enough juice in that line to burn the thing to a crisp.” He then ordered us to get into the cellar before they brought down the live power line onto The Blob.

The police made the attempt to kill the Blob by dropping the power line onto it, but it failed and only succeeded in setting the diner ablaze.

With the unaffected Blob squeezing through every orifice in the diner and with the diner itself alight, we tried to defend ourselves as best we could. When the diner's manager used a CO2 fire extinguisher to put out the fire, it was noticed that the advancing Blob began to recoil. I then recalled the time when the Blob retreated from the refrigerator back in the store. I yelled out to Jane, “CO2! Hey, that's it! It's cold! That's why it didn't come in the ice box after us. It can't stand cold.”

I yelled out some more hoping to be picked up on the open phone line, so that Dave would know about the Blob's vulnerability to cold. It must have worked as I found out soon after that Jane's father, Mr. Martin together with a bunch of our friends got their hands about 20 fire extinguishers from the local high school which were used to drive The Blob away from the diner and then freeze it.

Steve: (Looking up from his iPhone which he again has in his hand.) So, what happened with the Blob?

Grandpa Steve: With the power still out, we couldn’t do much in the way of refrigeration. We thought we had it under control, but we couldn’t rest easy until it was frozen solid. Using a bomb would’ve only spread it all over the country and with the sun soon to rise overhead, the only option would be to request from the Air Force a heavy-lift cargo aircraft to transport the Blob to the Arctic. Once there it would be parachuted to the ice and snow below to keep it frozen.

So now you know the whole story, boy! That’s how your old grandpa helped to save the world. Apart from me and anyone else involved who is still alive, you are the only other person who knows. And I hope through you a lot more will know and ask questions, particularly why our government has tried to keep it secret from the public! We’ll talk more about that later…..

Grandpa Steve Andrews hears his grandson grunt in acknowledgement and watches him focus on the phone’s screen as his thumbs peck out a text message.

Steve Andrews Jnr: Hey son. Wots up?

Steve Andrews III: GP crzy ol storys bout ol daz

Steve Andrew Jnr: jst humr im maks im (: home soon.

Grandpa Steve settles further back into his recliner and catches part of a news report about the effects of global warming on the TV in the next room. There's no-one in the room to watch it. He then silently chuckles to himself as he recalls his response sixty years ago at the people’s relief that the Blob had at last been stopped:

” Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold!”

*************************

Points Of Interest

Title

It has been reported that The Blob was to have been originally titled The Molten Meteor and even The Glob. It was changed when it was discovered that cartoonist Walt Kelly had already used the latter title.

In changing the title from "The Glob" to "The Blob," producer Jack H. Harris hoped that comedians would pick up on it, resulting in free advertising on national television.


Setting

The Blob was filmed in and around Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Principal photography took place at Valley Forge Studios. Several scenes were filmed in the towns of Chester Springs, Downingtown, Phoenixville, and Royersford, including the basement of a local restaurant named Chef's.

Effects

For the diner scene, a photograph of the building was placed on a gyroscopically operated table onto which cameras were mounted. The table was shaken, causing the Blob to roll off. When the Printing the film negative in reverse, made The Blob appear to be oozing over the building.

The Blob was made from a mixture of red dye and silicone, with increasing amounts of the red vegetable dye added as it "absorbed" more and more victims.

The Blob itself has never dried out and has been kept in the original five-gallon pail in which it was shipped to the production company in 1958 from Union Carbide.


Title Song

The film's light-hearted title song, "Beware of The Blob," was written by Burt Bacharach and Mack David and became a nationwide hit in the U.S., peaking at number 33 on the Billboard chart on 9 November, 1958.

The song was recorded by phantom studio group the Five Blobs consisting of Bacharach, some hired musicians and Nee, who tracked his voice five times.

It was intended that the title song have a non-threatening theme that would not scare the wits out of audiences during the opening credits.

Film Release

The Blob was released theatrically in 1958 on a double bill with I Married a Monster from Outer Space. It was originally intended to appear on the bottom half the double bill but it soon became evident that ticket buyers were coming for this film rather than the top-billed picture. The Blob then became the main feature with more money spent on its promotion.

Actors

Steve McQueen was offered $2,500 or 10% of the profits. He settled on the $2,500 because the film wasn't expected to make much. It ended up grossing over $4 million!!

Steve McQueen was playing a teenage high-school student, but he was in reality 27 years old.

Steve McQueen had the poster of this film on his bedroom wall at the time of his death.

It was reported that Aneta Corsaut was interviewed and hired only two days before shooting started.

Trivia

The movie being shown in the Colonial Theater was an actual movie originally released as Dementia (1955). 

The "trichloracetic acid" thrown onto the Blob by the nurse is a weak acid used in chemical peels and is also used to treat genital warts - assuming that the Blob has genitals!

The movie poster just outside the theatre advertising "The Vampire and The Robot" is actually the one for Forbidden Planet, with different titles pasted over the original text.

©Chris Christopoulos 2017