109: Blob ’88 (with Meg Shields)

The writer Meg Shields (Film School Rejects) returns to the show for a look at one of the highlights of Criterion Channel’s lineup of 80s Horror, Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of the fifties cult classic The Blob. Not as celebrated as two other eighties Body Horror remakes of fifties sci-fi (Carpenter’s The Thing and Cronenberg’s The Fly), The Blob is ripe for rediscovery with it’s incredible use of practical special effects and miniatures to tell the tale of a goopy pink organism that terrorizes a small ski town in California which is revealed not to be an alien creature but in fact a secret biological weapon on the loose when government agents seize control of the area in an attempt to contain it. But a pair of plucky local teens (Shawnee Smith and Kevin Dillon) might be mankind’s only hope for survival. The Blob succeeds thanks to a smart screenplay by Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont that leans into the ridiculousness of the premise while showing a gleeful disregard for genre expectations throughout. A box office flop at the time thanks to a bad marketing campaign, sometimes movies like The Blob take a long time to find an audience. Plus: Meg recommends some other highlights of Criterion’s well-chosen lineup of eighties horror offerings. Sign up for the Junk Filter Patreon to support the show directly and to access dozens of bonus episodes! https://www.patreon.com/junkfilter Follow Meg Shields on Twitter. “Slime and Space Dust: How They Built The Blob”, by Meg Shields, for Film School Rejects, August 19, 2020 Theme from The Blob by “The Five Blobs” (written by a young Burt Bacharach, 1958) Trailer for Beware! The Blob (Larry Hagman, 1972) Trailer for The Blob (Chuck Russell, 1988) Trailer for Junglee (Chuck Russell, 2019)