Editorials
It Fell From the Sky: One of Horror’s Best Remakes, ‘The Blob’ Turns 30!
Sometimes the success of a movie hinges completely on its timing. When the remake of The Blob crash landed into theaters on August 5, 1988, it didn’t quite earn even half of its budget back. It was a flop. Perhaps audiences were tired of creature features, as the golden age of practical effects were winding down. Perhaps it was just a slow period at the box office. For whatever reason, what should’ve been a success simply wasn’t. Though the film did eventually build a cult following upon home video release, The Blob still doesn’t have the popularity it should have received 30 years ago. It’s a damn shame. One of the best horror films to emerge from the ‘80s, this horror remake is the perfect blend of characters worth rooting for, fantastic special effects, gruesome kills, and a ton of heart.
One of the ironies of this film’s failure is that it came directly on the heels of one of horror’s most beloved films of the decade; A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. Released a year apart from each other, both Dream Warriors and The Blob featured screenplays co-written by Frank Darabont (The Mist, The Walking Dead) and Chuck Russell, with Russell serving as director. Both films share that spirit of fun and a cast of characters the viewer loves to root for, but The Blob manages to do it even better.
Shawnee Smith’s Meg Penny remains one of horror’s most overlooked and underappreciated final girls to this day, though I suspect it was this movie that led to Smith’s casting in Saw (give her more roles, please). She begins the narrative as the sweet cheerleader and ends as an amorphous blob fighting badass by the film’s end. It’s a brilliant role reversal when paired with Kevin Dillon’s Brian Flagg, the tough outcast who’s ultimately revealed to be a big softie. The clever character work that Darabont and Russell do with both leads is great on its own, but the first act twist with football player Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch) is absolute brilliance.
Everything about Paul screams “hero.” The definitive nice guy who does everything right (except choose his friends wisely), Paul and Meg seem like the perfect team to lead the front lines against the amorphous man-eating amoeba from space. They do the right thing without hesitation in taking the homeless man to the clinic when they run across him on their first date, the first brush with the Blob, when Brian Flagg would rather flee to avoid dealing with the police. No one would have suspected Paul to suffer such a gnarly death, and so soon.
That’s a large part of what makes The Blob so effective, even 30 years later; this weird pink blob from space kills at random. No one is safe. Not the nice guy, not the caring Sheriff Herb Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn), not even children. Granted, even the bad guys die too, like would be date rapist Scott at the scene of his own crime. But this monster has an insatiable appetite, and anything in its path enters its buffet line. Dying in horror movies is never easy but being digested whole by this monster must rank among the worst.
Special makeup effects artist Tony Gardner (Zombieland, Cult of Chucky) deserves a lot of accolades for how great the effects look, and how well this film still holds up today. The deaths are memorably icky, from Paul’s unnerving digestion to the massive theater feast, this Blob functions like a massive stomach breaking down food with acid. The death of the poor waitress, though, who escapes to the phone booth to call the Sheriff for help only to find him already there, is brutal. If you haven’t yet seen this movie, I’ll let you discover how that plays out. It’s one of the best death sequences of all time.
The Blob is one of horror’s best remakes in existence. It pays proper homage to the 1958 original but shed much of the cheesiness in favor of loveable characters and glorious practical effects. The updated origins of the creature work even better than its 1958 counterpart. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how horrible Kevin Dillon’s mullet is in the film, but don’t hold it against him. Russell pushed him into it, and his character is great regardless of ‘80s hairstyles.
Stunning practical effects work, a great story with great characters, and a huge sense of fun, it’s a shame that The Blob doesn’t have as big of a following as it should have. It’s also a shame that it’s never quite gotten a proper release (Arrow, Scream Factory, anyone; I’m begging for a proper collector’s edition here). This is one of my all-time favorites, so I’m clearly biased, but I don’t know that anyone could ever be disappointed with The Blob. Yet, if you somehow need even more incentive, then give it a watch to pick up all the Stephen King references Darabont snuck into the script. Either way, even 30 years later, The Blob is still an underdog, and one of horror’s all-time greatest.
Having grown up in a religious family, Christian movie night was something that happened a lot more often than I care to admit. However, back when I was a teenager, my parents showed up one night with an unusually cool-looking DVD of a movie that had been recommended to them by a church leader. Curious to see what new kind of evangelical propaganda my parents had rented this time, I proceeded to watch the film with them expecting a heavy-handed snoozefest.
To my surprise, I was a few minutes in when Denzel Washington proceeded to dismember a band of cannibal raiders when I realized that this was in fact a real movie. My mom was horrified by the flick’s extreme violence and dark subject matter, but I instantly became a fan of the Hughes Brothers’ faith-based 2010 thriller, The Book of Eli. And with the film’s atomic apocalypse having apparently taken place in 2024, I think this is the perfect time to dive into why this grim parable might also be entertaining for horror fans.
Originally penned by gaming journalist and The Walking Dead: The Game co-writer Gary Whitta, the spec script for The Book of Eli was already making waves back in 2007 when it appeared on the coveted Blacklist. It wasn’t long before Columbia and Warner Bros. snatched up the rights to the project, hiring From Hell directors Albert and Allen Hughes while also garnering attention from industry heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Gary Oldman.
After a series of revisions by Anthony Peckham meant to make the story more consumer-friendly, the picture was finally released in January of 2010, with the finished film following Denzel as a mysterious wanderer making his way across a post-apocalyptic America while protecting a sacred book. Along the way, he encounters a run-down settlement controlled by Bill Carnegie (Gary Oldman), a man desperate to get his hands on Eli’s book so he can motivate his underlings to expand his empire. Unwilling to let this power fall into the wrong hands, Eli embarks on a dangerous journey that will test the limits of his faith.
SO WHY IS IT WORTH WATCHING?
Judging by the film’s box-office success, mainstream audiences appear to have enjoyed the Hughes’ bleak vision of a future where everything went wrong, but critics were left divided by the flick’s trope-heavy narrative and unapologetic religious elements. And while I’ll be the first to admit that The Book of Eli isn’t particularly subtle or original, I appreciate the film’s earnest execution of familiar ideas.
For starters, I’d like to address the religious elephant in the room, as I understand the hesitation that some folks (myself included) might have about watching something that sounds like Christian propaganda. Faith does indeed play a huge part in the narrative here, but I’d argue that the film is more about the power of stories than a specific religion. The entire point of Oldman’s character is that he needs a unifying narrative that he can take advantage of in order to manipulate others, while Eli ultimately chooses to deliver his gift to a community of scholars. In fact, the movie even makes a point of placing the Bible in between equally culturally important books like the Torah and Quran, which I think is pretty poignant for a flick inspired by exploitation cinema.
Sure, the film has its fair share of logical inconsistencies (ranging from the extent of Eli’s Daredevil superpowers to his impossibly small Braille Bible), but I think the film more than makes up for these nitpicks with a genuine passion for classic post-apocalyptic cinema. Several critics accused the film of being a knockoff of superior productions, but I’d argue that both Whitta and the Hughes knowingly crafted a loving pastiche of genre influences like Mad Max and A Boy and His Dog.
Lastly, it’s no surprise that the cast here absolutely kicks ass. Denzel plays the title role of a stoic badass perfectly (going so far as to train with Bruce Lee’s protégée in order to perform his own stunts) while Oldman effortlessly assumes a surprisingly subdued yet incredibly intimidating persona. Even Mila Kunis is remarkably charming here, though I wish the script had taken the time to develop these secondary characters a little further. And hey, did I mention that Tom Waits is in this?
AND WHAT MAKES IT HORROR ADJACENT?
Denzel’s very first interaction with another human being in this movie results in a gory fight scene culminating in a face-off against a masked brute wielding a chainsaw (which he presumably uses to butcher travelers before eating them), so I think it’s safe to say that this dog-eat-dog vision of America will likely appeal to horror fans.
From diseased cannibals to hyper-violent motorcycle gangs roaming the wasteland, there’s plenty of disturbing R-rated material here – which is even more impressive when you remember that this story revolves around the bible. And while there are a few too many references to sexual assault for my taste, even if it does make sense in-universe, the flick does a great job of immersing you in this post-nuclear nightmare.
The excessively depressing color palette and obvious green screen effects may take some viewers out of the experience, but the beat-up and lived-in sets and costume design do their best to bring this dead world to life – which might just be the scariest part of the experience.
Ultimately, I believe your enjoyment of The Book of Eli will largely depend on how willing you are to overlook some ham-fisted biblical references in order to enjoy some brutal post-apocalyptic shenanigans. And while I can’t really blame folks who’d rather not deal with that, I think it would be a shame to miss out on a genuinely engaging thrill-ride because of one minor detail.
With that in mind, I’m incredibly curious to see what Whitta and the Hughes Brothers have planned for the upcoming prequel series starring John Boyega…
There’s no understating the importance of a balanced media diet, and since bloody and disgusting entertainment isn’t exclusive to the horror genre, we’ve come up with Horror Adjacent – a recurring column where we recommend non-horror movies that horror fans might enjoy.
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