In his first starring role, Steve McQueen closes out the monster movie drive-in classic with words that have become even more terrifying since the film’s 1958 release: “As long as the Arctic stays cold.” His teenage hero echoes the words of authorities describing the temporary solution to their small town’s monster problem. They fly the creature — a pulsating jelly-like creature from outer space that grows larger with each new victim it consumes and only seems to be vulnerable to extreme cold — to the Arctic to keep it frozen because they can’t figure out how to destroy it. It’s a troublingly short-sighted solution, one that offers less and less comfort as climate change continues to accelerate.
Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont’s 1988 remake of The Blob addresses that threat more directly and with far more cynicism, turning the titular blob into a symbol for the unstoppable mess that corporate greed, reactionary politics, and jingoistic aggression have made of the world. You can’t kill the Blob, but you can keep it on ice for a while… as long as the Arctic stays cold.
Now, with the release of a new SteelBook 4K Blu-ray edition of The Blob (1988) from Shout Factory, there’s never been a better time to enjoy this sci-fi classic. Here’s why it’s still worth checking out.
Brian (Kevin Dillon) is the remake’s teenage hero, a small-town outcast ignored by most people (including his own mother) but always on the local cops’ radar. He finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy theory with his classmate Meg (Shawnee Smith) after they take a homeless man to the hospital with a strange slime attached to his hand. The slime comes from inside a glowing rock that falls from the sky, but this is no random meteorite.
While 1958’s Blob was an alien organism that crash-landed on Earth, 1988’s Blob is far more sinister. The remake’s monster is a secret government experiment, a new form of biological warfare that has taken on a terrifying life of its own amid America’s quest to stay ahead of the Russians at any cost. Brian and Meg find themselves in a war of their own on multiple fronts: against the adults in town who want them to do as they’re told, against the government agents who want them to shut up and stop asking questions, and against the malevolent experimental menace killing its way through their town.
The key to a good horror remake is combining the timely with the timeless; reworking a concept that explores a universal fear so that you can interrogate newer, more urgent fears. It’s no coincidence that American horror cinema produced its best remakes — all of which deal with alienation, distrust, betrayal, and abuse of power — in the 15 years after Watergate. Premiering just four years after President Richard Nixon’s resignation, 1978’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the clearest example of horror cinema recontextualizing Atomic Age horror for a post-Watergate world. However, perhaps the most celebrated remake of this era (after its long-overdue but much-deserved critical reappraisal) is John Carpenter’s The Thing. Rob Bottin’s special effects for the horrific otherworldly creature are as jaw-dropping today as they were when the film was released in 1982, and Carpenter’s direction of Bill Lancaster’s screenplay (with phenomenal work from cinematographer Dean Cundey) make the film a masterclass in paranoia.
The Blob and The Thing have an interesting relationship with each other. Both have ominously amorphous names. The former’s creature can only be slowed down with ice, the latter with fire. In addition to being a remake of 1951’s The Thing from Another World, Carpenter’s film also pays homage to the original version of The Blob; MacReady’s (Kurt Russell) computer chess game is a nod to George Karas’s chess-playing cop in The Blob, and The Thing’s Blair (A. Wilford Brimley) throws a gun after running out of bullets just like young Danny (Keith Almoney) throws his pop gun at the Blob. In turn, Tony Gardner’s special effects in the 1988 version of The Blob take a few cues from Bottin’s work on The Thing, particularly in the way the newer, nastier Blob attacks and integrates its victims. Gardner’s work more than stands on its own, though, creating some of horror’s most indelible images as the film lingers on the characters’ pain and terror.
The Blob’s focus on suffering is hardly sadistic or gratuitous. Rather, it’s an indictment of the power-hungry political decisions that have caused the slow death of an entire town due to a combination of climate change and Reaganomics. Shots of empty streets show storefronts with signs exhorting nobody in particular to stock up on supplies for ski season. The most popular topics of conversation before the Blob shows up are the weather and the town’s economic troubles (it’s an unseasonably warm October, and the lack of snow for the past few years has decimated tourist revenue).
Many of the death scenes themselves reflect the town’s (and America’s) dire economic reality. The hospital staff ignore the homeless man with the slime on his hand because he doesn’t have medical insurance — the intake nurse (Margaret Smith) sniffs, “Does he have Blue Cross?” — giving the biological weapon time to devour half his body. When the plunger that diner employee George (Clayton Landey) keeps next to the kitchen sink doesn’t work, he reaches into the clogged drain to find the Blob waiting to pull him through, folding him up like a closed umbrella in a sickening and devastating effects sequence. It’s the ultimate injustice: George is dragged through the pipes at his dead-end job where nothing works right by a vicious government experiment that works all too well.
The temporary nature of the solution in The Blob’s 1958 ending grows more concerning by the day, and the 1988 version takes an even more pessimistic view of humanity’s chances. The unsettling Reverend Meeker (Del Close) is always lurking nearby, ready to judge someone for missing Sunday services or proclaim that the Blob is a prophecy come true. He collects a few pieces of the frozen Blob that he discovers in the diner’s freezer, and the film’s finale shows him leading a tent revival where he promises a congregant that the “Day of Reckoning” is coming very soon as he clutches the jar with the pulsating monster contained within it. It’s a clear critique of evangelical political movements like the Moral Majority, and his closing words — “The Lord will give me a sign” — add layers of menace to the already terrifying story of people fighting back against the harm caused by authority figures driven by ego, greed, and the thirst for power.
Horror remakes can bring fresh context to enduring stories and illuminate ways to understand and navigate new iterations of universal fears. The 1988 remake of The Blob is the perfect example of a remake done right. Its cynicism was well-earned in an era with increasing concerns about climate change, economic disparity, blurred lines between church and state, and governments that target and lie to their citizens. The increased violence of its special effects merely reflected the sociopolitical reality of the dangers it was warning about. The Blob was a vital addition to horror cinema in 1988. It is just as relevant today, and it will be relevant when the Arctic is no longer cold.
