A 1980s remake of a classic 1950s horror movie that was already pretty cheesy and admittedly a little silly? Sure. Let’s see what you got.
One quiet afternoon in the small town of Arborville, California, just before the sun begins to set and the street lights are about to come on, two high school football teams meet on the field. Across town, a loner sits on his motorcycle contemplating if he can make a jump across a broken bridge spanning a small gorge. The local police sheriff sits in the local diner and discusses with the waitress the future, or lack thereof, of the town. What all of these people don’t realize is that speeding toward Earth is something that will change their lives and possibly the lives of everyone on the planet forever.
A hobo and his dog make camp that night and begin to take stock of all the cans collected during the day. Most likely to turn them into the local recycling center to make some easy change. The dog begins to bark and whine about something and draws the eye of the hobo. As he looks toward the sky he sees a ball of fire streaking toward him. The object crashes into the woods not far from their camp. The hobo and his dog go to investigate. When they find the crash site they see that it is a large circular object that appears to be some sort of meteorite crashed to Earth. At the top of the object is a large crack, and through this crack, he can see some sort of substance undulating inside. The hobo takes a stick and pokes at the substance. It adheres to this stick as he pulls it out and holds it up to the light of the moon. As he tries to figure out what other-worldly thing this might be the substance moves quickly to the hobo’s hand encapsulating it. The hobo screams out in pain and terror as he runs off into the woods.
I watched for the first time the original “The Blob” last year and was impressed with what it was able to pull off both in special effects and the movie as a whole for something from the late 1950s. I want to say that I can remember when the remake came out in 1988 but I was only 10 at the time so I could be just making it up. I do remember seeing the poster at a local video store for a while and thinking that it looked really dumb. So this year I decided to check it out and see if any of my memories might be true.
I was NOT prepared for how hard this movie went. Again, the original wasn’t bloody, or really a “horror” movie in modern-day terms, but just a run-of-the-mill 50s monster movie. The 1988 remake really takes that and cranks it up to 11. From the moment that the hobo attempts to literally chop off his own hand to get the blob off of it I knew this one was going to be different. The deaths throughout are bloody, gory, and over-the-top in a way that only 80s slasher films can rival. It was almost shocking in a way that I can totally get behind.
Almost everything in the film was done with practical effects. Aside from a few blue-screen composite shots, there were a LOT of guts and goo and gross sounds. The first real death in the movie caused by the Blob took me a bit by surprise. From then on they kept cranking things up until the very end. Every now and then something would happen on screen and I would say out loud in surprise “Really?!”
The plot is changed from the original “alien invader” style into a government-created conspiracy thing but it serves the greater movie plot well enough. For the time I guess this was cast of relatively unknown actors. However looking back now seeing Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith, and a small bit part for Erika Eleniak. Also, even character actors like Art LaFleur and Donovan Leitch will peak your “Hey! It’s that guy!” radar pretty easily.
In the end, this was totally worth a watch for me. I never really thought about giving it a real chance until it popped up as a free watch on Tubi this year. It also gave me a bit of a chuckle to think about how Steve McQueen would look in the 80s acting with all these gory special effects. I might even have to add it to my physical (digital) collection to watch again another day.
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