The Blob

With boredom by my side I watched The Blob in its original 1958 format the other night on televivison. Burrowed into the couch by the end of the film, a remake of The Blob from 1988 was next up. I did not, of course, intend for it to be a Blob half-marathon. However, it was a slow, showery night.

I'm one of those film viewers who is enamoured with obscure, underground or lost movies. The more removed from pop culture all the better. I'm not sure why this is so. Maybe it's because when stripped away from the superficiality of a final product that was meant for distribution, independent films show film as art in its bare form. I never did understand the "won't go for that" line used by executives or marketers. How can they really be sure, right? Art has a weird aura to it that no one can predict with any consistent accuracy. Kind of like a grocery store's inability to precisely forecast customer eating and purchasing habits. In a way, this is a good thing. It shows humans still have some independent thought and fight in them.

Far from being a critique of either film, this post would like to discuss something else - Namely, the whole debate of sequels or remakes. The old saying goes that you can never replicate an original and for the most part this has been true in almost any facet of artistic endeavours.

This adage seems to be upheld here. The Blob has become a sci-fi cult classic. And like all cult classics, luck is what made it so. No one can predict - nobody - what and will not be a classic. If they could read people's minds, I doubt they would be making films. They would probably seek to conquer the world or something. Machiavelli did not fathom nor cover such power in The Prince. I digress. Suffice to say that if movie producers would be able to tell what would be a cult there would be no classics to speak of.

The Blob was an independent film. I'm even willing to say, without fact, that when the makers of this film approached established movie people it was met with skepticism. That's the standard origin for all classic pieces of art. Next thing you know some guy is writing in his biography, "Who knew?" or "Who would have thunk it?"

For me, what makes this B-type flick work is the unbelievability factor. Watching that Blob, slowly ooze out of a vent was devilishly hilariously. The script and pace of the film is so flawed it's irresistible. At the end of the movie the town figured out that The Blob hated the cold. The solution was to freeze it with fire extinguishers. But where to find, like, hundreds of extiguishers in the middle of the night? Why at the local school of course! With a dozen or so people jamming into the school they each instantly ran out with an extinguher. What's more, the whole town zoomed up to the diner where The Blob had taken over with, you guessed it, extinguishers - if one paid attention the extras approaching the diner were hardly taking their roles that seriously as they smiled while they ran. By my best calculations, and my math is terrible, it took about two minutes to identify the problem, mobilize the town and quell the sucker. It was almost too comically surreal to resist. You wonder if it was all done on purpose or tongue in cheek.

Another thing to consider about the original make, is that along the way (30 years in this case) something gets lost in translation. We rely way too much on technology now. The goal is to make everything as close to real life as possible. We want to reenact everything so that it mirrors our existence. The line between reality and fiction is now blurred. While this has an undeniable and impressive impact on our visual senses it does stunt our imagination. We don't necessarily appreciate or tolerate flaws as a normal human fact. After all, humans are flawed.

They didn't make films like they used too.Like the good old days or music when Rock'n Roll was pure and maintained its essence. The same can be applied to movies. Not all movies need to have the big stars, budgets or directors. Sometimes the ones that resonate are the ones we least suspect. Ah, but this is what makes The Blob and all others like it so much fun. They weren't meant to be part of "the machine."

The result? People latched on. There is no doubt that the 1958 version stuck with me more. I feel like some Chuck Berry. Good night.