The Blob (1958)
Like many monster movies, The Blob can be enjoyed purely at face value. It tells the story of a formless, jellylike alien creature that crash lands on Earth via a meteorite no bigger than a basketball. It terrorizes a small town, not eating people so much as absorbing them, and it gets bigger with every meal; what starts out as a fist-sized ball of goo ends up a viscous monstrosity that can envelope an entire diner. What a perfect life form for a B-grade sci-fi/horror movie – unusual in that it has no teeth, no claws, and no mouth, but instantly familiar in that it also has no conscience, no apparent ability (or willingness) to communicate, and a voracious appetite. Monster movie fans and alien invasion aficionados should have no trouble getting into this one.
Neither, and this is surprising, should audiences who prefer their B-movie fare with some subtext, some depth. The plot involves a group of local teenagers, led by Steven McQueen and Aneta Corseaut, discovering the existence of the alien blob, only to fight an uphill battle when trying to warn the skeptical adults that their town is in danger. An old hermit (Olin Howlin), on whose hand the creature attaches itself, gets devoured before he has a chance to say anything. So too does the doctor who attempts to treat the hermit (Stephen Chase), along with his nurse (Lee Payton) and, after the creature escapes from the doctor’s home, a mechanic (Ralph Roseman). To the investigating police, especially the teen-hating Sgt. Bert (John Benson), all this is nothing more than an elaborate prank, made to make the adults look bad.
“How do you get people to protect themselves from something they don’t believe in?” asks McQueen. A more apt question would have been: “How do we get adults to take us seriously?” Indeed, American culture of the 1950s has been greatly defined by anti-teenage attitudes, in part because of an actual rise in juvenile delinquency but more so because of media sensationalism, especially in movies like The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, One Way Ticket to Hell, and High School Confidential. Essentially, the message of the decade – besides, obviously, about why you should hate pinko commies – was that teenagers were not to be trusted. The Blob is an antidote to those movies, a way to send the message that not all teens are delinquents, that sometimes, when they say something outrageous to adults, they really are telling the truth.
To help drive the point home, the film is given one adult character who isn’t prejudiced against teens. This would be another cop, Lt. Dave (Earl Rowe). It’s not that he immediately believes McQueen and Corseaut’s story about an alien jelly monster creeping through the city. However, he is willing to listen to them. And he does seem to believe that something is going on – perhaps not a monster, but certainly something important enough to be investigated. There’s no question that the teens of this town have given the police, Lt. Dave included, some grief. But to him, that points to nothing more serious than kids being kids. This is in stark contrast to the embittered, stubborn, borderline paranoid Sgt. Bert. Lt. Dave tries to put it in perspective: “Just because some kid smacks into your wife on the turnpike doesn’t make it a crime to be seventeen years old!”
This line, I’m sorry to say, is inadvertently funny; simply by looking at them, you can tell that the actors playing teens were obviously much older than seventeen during production. McQueen, I’ve found out, was twenty-eight at the time, and Corseaut was twenty-five. I’d be surprised if any of the rest were under twenty-one. Even with the casting of the older James Dean, at least Rebel Without a Cause had Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo, both authentic teenagers during filming. While I’m being critical of The Blob, I also have to mention a pop song played during the opening credits; though catchy, it’s glaringly inappropriate and adds a camp factor the film simply doesn’t need. Frankly, the basic concept is campy enough as it is. A jelly monster from outer space that eats people? Don’t make me laugh!
What elevates the material, what glosses over those flaws, is the subtext of being a teenager at a time when that was to be feared. Can you imagine the frustration? You know something is wrong. You’ve seen something bad happen firsthand. And yet when you try to warn your elders, when all you want to do is make sure nobody gets hurt or killed, you’re met with suspicion and disbelief. This is the true scary aspect of The Blob; a failure to listen leads to a multitude of other failures, none more damning than a failure to act. I suppose, then, that adults are the real villains of this story. The title character is merely acting according to its natural instincts. But the adults, with the exception of Lt. Dave, made the choice to ignore their kids. When they finally see the consequences of that choice, they will have no one but themselves to blame.
