The Blob is a 1988 remake of the original 1958 horror film starring Steve McQueen, the plot revolving around a teenage motorcycle-riding rebel who finds himself at the epicentre of a horiffic massacre by a deadly, amorphous pink blob that attacks his mid-western rural American town, dissolving its victims and absorbing them into its mass and gradually increasing in size as the film goes on.

Similar to John Carpenter's masterpiece The Thing in many ways (which was also a remake of a low budget 50s horror), The Blob manages to mix a knowingly cliche, 1950s B-movie style (the setting is in the 50s rather than the modern day) with some excellent and genuinely frightening gunge-and-latex-based special effects. There are plenty of great scares on offer, such as when one character gets sucked down a plughole, or when another is attacked from above, the blob enveloping his body whilst his girlfiriend pulls desperately at his free arm, only for the arm to come away in her hands. Faces are melted; local sweethearts are dissolved alive as they make out in their cars; and in one wonderfully self-referential scene moviegoers at the town's local cinema are plucked from their seats and consumed as they sit watching a horror film, oblivious to their peril.

Eventually the blob grows to a gargantuan size and the military turn up to try and contain the situation (wearing classic white radiation suits and carrying assault rifles, in classic B-movie style) at which point the film resorts to some endearing, archaic-looking stop-frame animation effects. There is also no shortage of grimly-comic moments present throughout, such as when an army general is crushed by a giant arm of the blob, managing to gurn and pull the pins out of two grenades attached to his chest moments before he is squashed flat.

With a refeshingly unknown cast and some great over-the top acting and dialogue and some excellent direction, The Blob manages to be funny, atmospheric, exciting and geuninely scary all at once, and is a much underrated 80s horror gem, that comes especially recommended to fans of John Carpenter's The Thing.