Audiences love a good creature feature. Whether it’s just regular sharks, aliens, or over-sized insects, we can’t get enough of big monsters destroying famous landmarks. Sixty years ago, teens crowded drive-in theaters to see one of Hollywood’s best creature-features – The Blob. It’s the perfect midnight movie and a testament to a way of film-making that sadly goes unappreciated today. Thirty years after The Blob was released, it got the remake treatment. How well does the remake compare to its predecessor? Can it add something new to a fun 1950’s B-film?

The Blob Is ‘50’s Creature-Feature Fun

Following World War II and the birth of the “Atomic Age” and the “Space Race”, horror shifted focus from Gothic monsters to science-fiction nightmares. Hollywood also saw a growing middle class with more disposable income. In response, they targeted a new teen market with cheap movies that could fit on drive-in double-bills.

The Blob was an independent sci-fi/horror film distributed by Paramount Pictures and starring a young Steve McQueen. It has a perfect 1950’s B-film plot – a meteor crashes outside a small town unleashing a formless alien life-form that consumes anything that gets in its way. Teen Steve Andrews and his girlfriend, Jane Martin, must convince the town’s skeptical adults that there is a threat on its way before it’s too late.

Vintage Special Effects and a Young Steve McQueen

Pure popcorn fun, The Blob is a surprisingly briskly paced movie for the period. Despite its admittedly silly premise, there’s actually a fair amount of suspense in its execution. Director Irvin Yeaworth stages the scenes with the slow-moving ‘blob’ in clever ways to mount tension. Good special effects for the era and a healthy dose of humor flesh out a well-staged, original concept.

Aside from McQueen, who shows the charm that would make him a movie star, most of the acting is fairly wooden. Some of the dialogue also probably falls on the side of unintentionally humorous (“Hotrodding around the universe”, anyone). But these aspects of The Blob just add to its charm.

‘Doctor, nothing will stop it.’

One part of The Blob that is interesting to note today, decades after its release, is how it elevates its young cast as the protagonists. The film’s adults are either characterized as authoritarian, skeptical, or clueless. Straight-laced teen Steve has to rely on his ‘buddies’ to warn the townsfolk. Generally, The Blob lacks any real social commentary; its centering of teen characters is more a reflection of marketing concerns. Nonetheless, The Blob is a call-back to fun era of Hollywood monster-making.

The Blob Remake Remembers Its B-Film Roots

Now this is how you remake a horror classic. Thirty years later, TriStar Pictures released The Blob remake. It’s a re-imagining of the original teen drive-in staple. But the remake honours the original’s B-film spirit while injecting enough contemporary commentary to stand on its own. There’s no Steve McQueen star power here. Instead, we get Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith along with a cast of familiar character actors. Like the original movie, the acting isn’t particularly noteworthy. Does it matter? No one is watching film about a man-eating ‘blob’ for  Oscar-worthy performances.

For the most part, The Blob remake follows the same plot as the original. One of the most noticeable changes is the use of more graphic special effects. Director Chuck Russell’s remake takes advantage of F/X advancements and has fun with the concept. In its smaller-scale scenes, the blob effects hold up quite well with a few grisly moments of bodily destruction caught on screen. When the movie moves to bigger moments the special effects will inevitably feel dated. Fortunately, the cheaper aesthetics of some of these effects still fit with The Blob’s B-film roots.

Subversive Re-Interpretation Gives Remake A Purpose

Yet the most significant departure here is the remake’s subversive interpretation of the original. On the one hand, the Steve McQueen ‘creature feature’ makes heroes out of its teens and pokes fun at the adults. Still the 1958 original shows an affection for ‘small-town Americana’ and the prevailing social order. In contrast, the 1988 version of The Blob flips the source of the man-eating blob. It’s no longer an alien lifeform from a meteor; it’s a military bio-weapons experiment. This origin change makes authority generally and, more specifically, the American military a secondary villain in the film. As such, The Blob remake offers some biting criticism of the American industrial-military complex.

Come on Meg, we don’t even know who they are. NASA, CIA, Royal Canadian Mounties, all I know is I saw a bunch of unmarked trucks back there. I think the whole thing stinks.

Russell’s remake even flips audience expectations with its protagonists. Football star Paul Taylor most closely fits McQueen’s straight-arrow Steve. You expect ‘Paul’ to be the film’s hero. In a clever twist, Paul is one of the blob’s early victims and it’s Kevin Dillon’s delinquent Brian Flagg, with his black leather jacket and motorcycle, who becomes the film’s hero. The film’s most anti-authority character becomes the hero in a film where authority is constructed as dangerous.

A Simple, Fun Premise Can Go A Long way

As I said above, the original The Blob is a fun popcorn film, intended to be watched late at night with the lights out. Its monster remains both clever and unique in the horror and science fiction genres. It even has its own theme song, penned by Burt Bacharach and performed by “The Five Blobs”. If you’re looking to pair The Blob with another film for your own double-bill, the 1988 version is the rare example of a remake getting it right, updating special effects and some parts of the story for its era while honoring the original film’s fun spirit. Both films would make great additions to ‘creatures’ film marathon.