Every one loves Steve McQueen, but what about this early offering for ‘Steven McQueen’? Well I can tell you it’s dreadful and Steve rightly dropped the ‘N’ to avoid association with this turkey. To be fair it would probably never have seen light after its initial release if it wasn’t for the appearance of the star man who was 'a getting on a bit' 28 when the film was made.
Steven plays ‘Steve’ a high school kid out on a no nonsense date with his stuffy girlfriend. They see a meteor land and go to have a look. Meanwhile the object has already been found by a hill billy farmer who pokes it with a broom handle. Huge mistake as a blob of jelly affixes itself to his arm. He goes running about in the road and is picked up by Steve who administers the time honoured cure of putting a jacket over him.
They head into town and dump the old coot with a doctor who summons his nurse to help. Soon the two are absorbed by the blob which is gaining size and a reddish colour. Steve meanwhile wastes ten minutes facing off some dudes who want a drag race but eventually he realises the blob is a threat to the town and starts to annoy the police. He narrowly escapes its blobby clutches when hiding out in a meat freezer (remember that for later!) before the blob heads to a movie theatre for some people popcorn.
After some off screen horror the police and the fire department show up, but Steve, his date, a cute kid and some Italian stereotypes are trapped in a diner which is now enveloped in the massive blob. Can they be saved and can this red menace be defeated?
This was a laughable piece of nonsense, but it was also boring and badly acted. The special effects were very poor with the blob being either shown in forced perspective or in a form of animation that Walt Disney’s dog could have bettered.
McQueen shows none of the charisma he’s later known for and looks too skinny and old for the high school hero role. He isn’t helped much by a uniformly dreadful cast who look like they have been pulled off the street to deliver their stilted dialogue.
I’m not sure if there was a metaphor in place here - the red menace was a bit on the nose and it was hardly a clever ‘body snatchers’ type analogy. Basically what you get is people screaming and being absorbed off screen. At one point the police chief says ‘it must have killed at least 50 or 60 people’ thanks very much for the zero we saw - even the dog escaping wasn’t shown, and only mentioned.
I was surprised the film was in colour, but apart from that it was just as dreadful as I’d imagined and I just wish I’d kept avoiding it. You may get some jollies laughing at the rubbish special effects and some early McQueen embarrassment, but I’d advise that you avoid ‘The Blob’ - not to avoid absorption but to avoid boredom.
THE Tag Line : Bad Job Blob 32%
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