Aaaaarghhh!!!! I'm Being Attacked By A Giant Pink Jelly!!! (The Blob (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	The Blob (DVD)
Date:	03/11/01 (30 review reads)
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The Blob is a remake of the 1950 sci-fi chiller...ermm "The Blob". It never ceases to amaze me that firstly people would want to remake a movie when there is already a perfectly good one(or bad one) sitting around somewhere, or why when they do so, they seem to choose such abysmal movies TO remake. The original 50s movie starred Steve McQueen and was a heap of campy nonsense in which a rather large 'pink jelly'(ok alien slime monster) went on the rampage devouring an entire town. Of course the 80s remake is that EXACT SAME heap of campy nonsense, with absolutely no attempt to improve upon the original in any way shape or form. The 80s saw a lot of movie makers remaking old sci-fi classics such as The Fly, The Thing(from outer space), Invasion of the Body Snatachers to name a few all of which were actually rather good movies(well with the exception of the later which was merely 'ok'). The directors here realised that the reason for remaking them was not to make a quick buck by playing on the name of an older movie, but rather to create a new movie based around the already firmly defined and rather excellent concepts which their precedecessors had formulated but didn't have the special effects capabilities to put into full effect. Hence, Cronenberg's The Fly is a masterpiece of the genre, John Carpenter's The Thing is both a chilling and visually spectacular trip...whilst Chuck Russell's(who?) The Blob is ermmm...pants.

It is a shame because it begins quite well, well sort of. We are introduced to our hero, a well coiffured biker attempting to jump a bridge in the woods, whilst being watched by a bum. His engine starts playing up and both he and bike end up in the ditch much to the amusement of the bum who wanders off. We have just met our hero - a rather inauspicous start. Well, our bum wanders back to his hovel where a special effect(sorry a meteor) is about to crash land. Of course, being our first victim our smel
ly, scruffy hobo has to get inquisitive and poke the object with a stick...and get his hand engulfed by a strange pink erm...jelly which clings to him and refuses to be removed!! It also starts devouring him so he starts trying to hack off his arm with an axe, which is where our biker hero finds him again and naturally concerned chases him...into the path of a truck. Now you might be thinking at this point that our hero isn't that much of a hero having totalled his bike and got someone run over within the first few minutes of the movie...

...anyway...

I hate giving detailed plot outlines so this is basically what happends next. Our bum gets taken to the hospital wherethey stick him on a trolley and leave him. Our hero wanders off again and when he comes back he sees the blanket wrihing around...but its not our bum getting amorous with one of the nurses, but rather the now much larger blob chowing down on him...before going on a munchfest thoughout the town getting larger all the time until someone eventually works out how to defeat it - something which has been obvious to us for over an hour by that time...

A much shorter plot outline? A big pink jelly goes on the rampage munching its way through a small town whilst the incredibly dumb citizens try to make it chill out.

The Blob is a bad movie for a number of reasons. Firstly the original concept quite frankly stank and this movie does absolutely nothing to change that. People were scared by this sort of thing in the 50s because they didn't know any better, whilst people in the 80s and beyond aren't about to be scared by a cr*p special effect. Its not scary and being a modern movie it can't claim campness value, nostalgia or even naff b-movie appeal either. It does begin quite well and is pretty gorey until the blob gets bigger, when it becomes a really bad special effect and the movie becomes funny rather than scary but for all the wrong reasons. The bum trying to
hack off his arm, another scene has a guy plunging a 'blocked' sink and then in true dumbass horror movie bloke style proceeds to shove his arm down it to investigate the blockage...great stuff, but it gores rapidly downhill from there. The Blob is naturally nothing original but it would have been nice if there were a few updates to the old story. Oh, there is one, which is the typical horror movie idea that sex equally death where it seems that anyone who gets a little amorous ends up being chopped, slashed or in this case munched for their ermmm 'crime'. The Blob could have then been a clever metaphor for the AIDS virus again, bringing the older movie's ideas into an 80s context. It could have been a biological experiment gone awry, especially after a secretive government agency turn up and quarantine the whole place...but noooooo...nothing even that intelligent at play here. Instread its the perfect example of yet another director unable to cope with even the most obvious of good ideas. Maybe these were his intentions and he just didn't bring them across very well...or at all...who knows. What I do know is that The Blob isn't very good.

Like I said, horror cliche's abound here and we have a clean cut virginal teenage heroine in the form of Shawnee Smith and bad boy teenage hero who comes to her rescue in the form of Matt Dillon's younger brother Kevin. These two play their parts adequately but are not too brightly shining lights in a weak cast of actors. Most people are either here to get munched upon, or to push the plot along with one line plot shufflers. I seem to remember the only good thing I found the first time I watche this movie was that Shawnee Smith was kinda cute...then the next time I decided that I must have been really reaching to find something interesting about it. It managed to hold my attention at the beginning when the special effects were ok - that is all a movie which this dumb a plot has to go o
n - but its like they realised theoir budget as the movie went on and they get progressively worse...the final big blob is hilariosly bad. I wouldn't recommend the 80s version of The Blob to you - I'm not that cruel. Check out the 50s version if you want to see it, at least that has Steve McQueen's wooden performance and a kind of campy charm to it...this has nothing worth seeing.

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