I don't think I've ever seen this (sort of famous) monster-from-outer-space movie. Apparently a recent book by Jeff Sharlet connects it with a shadowy world of theocratic fundamentalism, Cold War anti-communism and American neo-imperialism. Rudy Nelson, who worked on the film, thinks Sharlet makes some good points but that he's wrong about The Blob (and some other things).
Well, I haven't seen it, and this kind of thing is not exactly in my purview. It's more B-Movie Catechism territory (although The Blob might be too upscale for his tastes...!) Anyways, I'll just leave you with this amusing quote from Nelson's article:
But now it was high time for us to fill a serious scripting gap. We knew how the film would end (for sure, not by blowing up the town). An Air Force cargo plane would drop the frozen, cut-up carcass over the Arctic ice cap. But as yet we had not written any closing dialogue for the main characters. We decided on a line for Dave, the chief of police, the voice of official authority: "I don't think it can be killed, but at least we've stopped it." That didn't quite do it. No one said anything for a moment or two. Then, in a rare moment of inspiration, I suggested a closing line for Steve McQueen: "As long as the Arctic stays cold." The term "global warming" hadn't yet entered the environmental lexicon, nor had any of us entertained the thought that the Arctic would ever be anything but a solid ice pack. But there you are. My chief claim to Blob Immortality over the years has always been that I wrote that prescient last line. And since I was (as you may recall) Third Assistant Director in Charge of Daily Script Revision, who is out there to argue the point? I rest my case.
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5 comments:
Too upscale? With that Burt Bacharach theme song? Never!
Wow, The Blob as a metaphor for theocracy? I know I make some pretty far stretches with my stuff, but that one seems a little too much of a reach.
Actually, I think the claim was that the Blob was a metaphor for Communism, which theocrats were using to scare us with. (Because there's nothing inherently scary about Communism, of course.)
I saw the movie on TV a long time ago, and I didn't perceive any political subtext. Apparently the '80s remake (which I have not seen) had the monster be a result of a U.S. military experiment gone horribly wrong, so I guess it's politically correct now.
Generally though, I think horror movies work best without overt politics. They just look like whatever scares you.
I enjoyed both the original and the remake of The Blob. I didn't see much subtext in either, though in the remake, I did see a whole lot of gruesome deaths.
I sometimes wonder if there's a tendency these days to automatically assume there's communistic subtext in every movie from the 50s. I just don't see it in the blob. If anything, I think it plays more into the angsty "you adults are so hung up, while we kids see the truth in things" genre. Remember, it's only the teens in the movie who at first notice the cancerous thing eating their community. The dumb grown-ups don't believe it until it's almost too late.
"...though in the remake, I did see a whole lot of gruesome deaths."
I saw the sequel, Beware! The Blob, on TV as a little boy and there's a scene where a barber turns on a faucet and the Blob pours out onto his arms and into someone's hair. I tried to shower with my eyes open for weeks.
I can remember, as a child, seeing "The Blob" at my local theater with about 300 other screaming kids. (Steve McQueen? Who he?) I can distinctly remember being disturbed that the Blob wasn't killed but only frozen. After all, I reasoned, ice can melt. So I had the "unthinkable" thought at the age of 11. I'm sure I wasn't the only one.
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