The Blob

The Blob is the titular villain from the 1958 horror movie of the same name, and its 1988 remake. It's an amoeboidal alien from outer space and grows bigger by digesting humans and animals. The Blob cannot be killed, it can only be stopped. The only way to stop the Blob is to freeze it.

History[]

The original movie[]

The Blob comes from a small meteorite which falls on Earth. An old man finds it and pokes it using a piece of tree branch, making the meteorite hatch like an egg and revealing the small blob inside. He pokes it again, but the blob climbs up to his hand, dissolving it. The old man is found by a couple, who take him to a doctor. Unfortunately, the blob dissolves the old man and the doctor, growing in proportion. The couple try to alert the police, to no avail. At the same time the blob is rampaging in the city, eating everyone in his path. The couple continue on trying to alert the populace, being heard only when the blob shows himself, now with gigantic proportions. While the police try to stop the thing with firearms, the couple find the thing's weakness when they use a fire extinguisher on him. The blob is frozen solid and taken to the Artic by Air Force heavy-lift cargo aircraft.

15 years later, an oil pipeline layer named Chester Hargis returns to his suburban Los Angeles home from the North Pole, bringing with him a small sample of a mysterious frozen substance uncovered by a bulldozer on a job site. Chester places the substance container in his freezer, but his wife, Mariane takes it out after reading that the container contains a specimen. The container pops open and the substance is revealed to be the Blob, which thaws out and revives. The Blob first consumes a fly that lands on it, then going after Mariane's cat, Samuel. When Mariane goes outside looking for Samuel, the Blob ambushes her. As Chester gets ready to watch a movie, the Blob crawls up his seat and patiently waits for Chester to absentmindedly sit down.

Later, Chester's friend named Lisa Clark walks in to see him being devoured by the Blob. She flees to notify the police and her boyfriend Bobby Hartford, but when they investigate Chester's house, the Blob has disappeared and Lisa's claims are dismissed. Meanwhile, the Blob begins its hunt on the town with some of its victims being a police officer and presumably two hippies in a storm drain, a barber and his client, transients, a scoutmaster, and a farm full of chickens.

Later, when Lisa and Bobby drive back to Bobby's farm, the Blob descends down to try to get inside Lisa's truck. Despite the two's attempt to escape, the Blob covers the truck and squeezes in through the gap in the door. In a panic, Lisa accidentally turns on the air conditioner, making the Blob retreat, establishing its vulnerability to cold as in the original film (though the characters, also as in the 1958 original, do not immediately make the connection).

As Joe, Lisa and Bobby's friend, drives down the road, he sees the now-massive Blob blocking the path ahead of him and tries to turn around, but he's going to fast to stop and he ends up steering out of control, crashing straight into the Blob. Later, Lisa, Bobby, and another friend of theirs, Leslie drive by and see the Blob and Joe's car. Despite Lisa and Bobby's attempt to stop her, Leslie tries to go help Joe, only to end up as the Blob's next victim.

The Blob then invades a bowling alley, where it starts off with a repairman's assistant and then the repairman himself before it starts feeding on the customers. It then oozes into an ice rink where it consumes more people before chasing Lisa, Bobby, and the ice rink manager into the commentator's booth. Bobby attempts to fry the Blob with electricity, but it fails (like in the 1958 original). Sheriff Jones and Deputy Davis enter the ice rink and spot the Blob. Davis tries to shoot it down with his gun, but it fails and Davis gets eaten. Jones fires a few shots before realizing that bullets are not going to work and flees. Back in the booth, Lisa, the manager, and Bobby get on the counter to avoid the Blob, and in the process Bobby almost knocks down a refrigerator and spills out all of the ice onto the floor, making the Blob retreat and Bobby realizes the Blob's weakness to cold. Bobby tries to inform the police about the Blob's weakness but fails due to the microphone being busted. Bobby then asks the manager how to freeze the rink and makes his way to the fuse box despite the Blob's attempt to catch him and successfully activates the rink's ice mechanism, freezing it.

While the frozen Blob is being filmed by a television crew, one of the crew's bright lights that is positioned on the ground melts a small portion of it, which oozes toward Jones and envelopes his feet as he is speaking on camera. The movie ends with a cliffhanger, not knowing if the Blob is stopped, as it is about to engulf Jones.

The Remake[]

Some things changed aside from the characters, as now the blob is a result of a failed military experiment, using some virus and outer-space radiation. But the focus remained the same, the blob eating an entire city and growing bigger and bigger.

Nature of the Blob[]

The Blob is an amorphous, jelly-like creature who digests flesh on contact, assimilating it to grow bigger and bigger. Because it has no proper form, it can change it's shape and squeeze through narrow passages and openings. As it grows bigger, it can engulf and smash things under its weight.

Trivia[]

There is a festival in America based on the film called Blobfest.