- Directed by Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. Russell S. Doughten Jr.
- Written by Theodore Simonson, Kay Linaker, Irvine H. Millgate
- Stars Steve McQueen, Aneta Corsaut, Earl Rowe
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 26 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-heIT3L9Qg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a little dated, and kind of talky in some places. But faults aside, it was groundbreaking for the time with the special effects. The monster makes the movie. Overall, it’s still pretty good and unsettling.
Synopsis
Credits roll over the funky saxophone-laden “Beware of the Blob” song. It’s said they did a lighthearted opening song to reduce the intensity of the scare factor. Steve and Jane are making out in the park, the oldest highschoolers you’ve ever seen. She thinks she’s just the latest in a long line of his conquests, but he says she’s his first. Before that goes anywhere, a meteorite crashes nearby.
Not too far away, an old man hears the crash as well and goes to investigate. He finds it and pokes it with a stick to find that it’s got a gooey filling inside. The goop gets stuck on the stick, and before he realizes what’s happening, it gets stuck on his hand.
The old man runs off, screaming before Steve and Jane arrive; they don’t see anything. The old man flags them down and says to take him to town for a doctor. Dr. Hallen is just about to leave town for the weekend when they arrive. They unwrap his hand, but by this point, his hand has melted away and the “blob” has gotten bigger.
On the way out of the doctor’s office, three teens challenge him to a drag race, but his trick backfires when the local cop, Lt. Dave, shows up. He talks his way out of trouble, and his three friends follow along to help. Steve and his buddies find the meteorite, but it’s just a warm rock at this stage. They also find the old man’s house and little dog, which Jane takes along.
Back at the Doctor’s office, the man with the blob-hand has passed out– but something’s moving under the blanket. He calls in Kate the nurse. By the time the nurse arrives, the man is gone, and there’s nothing but a rolling blob of goo. After it eats Nurse Kate, the doctor shoots it to no effect.
Steve arrives back at the doctor’s just in time to watch the doctor die. Steve goes to the police and runs into Dave and the other cops, who don’t really believe him. Dave thinks it’s just a teenage prank. When they finally get Dave to visit the place, they find the place wrecked, but there are no bodies. The cops are still skeptical, but the landlady wants to clean up and at least dust around the fingerprints.
Elsewhere, a couple of mechanics work on a car in the garage. One leaves the other under the being worked on, not seeing the oozy blob sliding toward him. Lt. Dave calls Jane and Steve’s parents, who take them home. They both promptly sneak out again. Steve starts to doubt what he already saw, but Jane supports him; she knows he wouldn’t make that up.
Steve and Jane go to the movie theater to pick up his three friends (that’s 80 cents they’ll never get back). He tells them that he saw a monster kill Doctor Hallan. They need to find the creature.
The, uh, “kids,” go through the town warning people about monsters, and that goes about how you’d expect. Steve goes into the apparently-deserted grocery store, and they find the blob inside. They can’t get out the back door, so they end up hiding in the meat cooler. The blob starts to come in under the door and changes its mind; it leaves them.
Steve gives Tony a dime to call the police and come to the grocery store. The cop who answers the phone thinks it’s a prank. Steve insists that they have to wake up the entire town, but Sgt Bert of the police thinks it’s all a conspiracy. The kids drive through town blasting their car horns to wake everyone up. The air raid siren goes off.
A huge crowd arrives in front of the grocery, where Steve relays what’s going on. The police disperse the crowd. Except we see that the blob isn’t in the grocery anymore; it’s moved to the town’s movie theater, where it oozes into the projection booth. Just as they figure out the monster’s not in the grocery, there’s a mass stampede out of the theater.
Danny, Jane’s brother, tries to shoot the monster with his cap gun and then runs into a diner. The blob covers the diner with Steve and several others inside. Dave calls and says they’re going to drop a power line on the thing to kill it. It has no effect. There’s a small fire in the diner, and Steve puts it out with a fire extinguisher. The creature withdraws from the cold of the fire extinguisher. That’s why it didn’t get them in the cooler!
Dave tells the firemen and teenagers to gather all the fire extinguishers in town and come back to fight the blob. With dozens of extinguishers, they guide the blob away from the diner, and everyone gets out unharmed. They freeze the thing solid, and the army picks it up and dumps it in the arctic.
Commentary
Steve McQueen was nearly thirty when he made this, and he looks it. The acting and dialog isn’t particularly good from any of the cast, and the story is predictable. The thing is, the monster is so good that it became an almost instant classic. It’s just an amorphous blob of red goo, but it moves realistically, and it’s completely alien. Plus, it was in color, which was still a novelty for a horror film in 1958.
It’s really dated, but it’s still actually pretty good.