The Blob

Seriously, what could be sillier than a movie about a big, gelatinous blob of pink goo that fell out of the sky in a meteor, and now goes around engulfing people like an overgrown amoeba? The fact that this 1988 remake of the 60s sci-fi/horror classic manages to make something so ludicrous seem almost frightening, makes it a successful film in my book.

In a smallish American town, where everyone knows everyone else, cheerleader Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith) has gotten a date with high school football star Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch). However, their romantic evening is interrupted by the local drape Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon), a long-haired, motorcycle-riding orphan, who runs out in front of their car leading a homeless guy (Billy Beck). They notice that he has a strange, white, glutinous mass attached to his hand, and they rush him to the hospital.

At the hospital, the old man is put into a room to wait while the doctor finishes with another patient. By the time the doctor finally sees him, he looks like a burnt cheese pizza from the waist down, and the blob is nowhere to be found. When Paul goes to call the sheriff, he fails to notice the great, pulsating reddish mass hovering over his head - and within seconds, he's blob food.

Nobody believes Meg's story about a killer blob, though, and soon the cops have arrested Brian Flagg - he must have been jealous of Paul, after all, doesn't every motorcycle punk secretly want to be a football star?

The blob, increasing in size every time it digests a person, soon grows to the size of a Volkswagen bus, pulling people down drains, engulfing phone booths, and generally wreaking havoc on the town. Sleazy Scott Jeske (Ricky Paull Goldin), Paul Taylor's football buddy, is in the process of "scoring" with blonde bimbo Vickie De Soto (Erika Eleniak), when suddenly her face implodes and tentacles reach out of her bra and wrap around Scott, turning him into a meal for our amoeboid antagonist.

The plot, much like the blob, thickens when our odd-couple heroes, Meg and Brian, encounter Dr. Meddows and a whole team of men in haz-mat suits with little flourescent lights inside of them. Meddows, seemingly a good-natured old man, tells the kids that he's with a microbiological research team, and the city's under quarantine. However, Brian does some snooping to discover that the blob is actually a Cold War biological warfare device, sent into space by the U.S. government! The "meteor" that contained the blob was no more than a satellite, crudely disguised as a rock, and the "quarantine" imposed by Dr. Meddows is for the safety of his precious creation, not the safety of the people.

Meanwhile, Meg rescues her little brother Kevin (Michael Kenworthy) and his mischevious friend Eddie (Douglas Emerson) from the movie theater, where the now-enormous blob has rudely interrupted the showing of "Garden Tool Massacre" by oozing out through the screen and plopping onto the audience in a gooey feeding frenzy. Meg and the boys descend into the sewer, narrowly escaping the blob, and run around through the muck, Meg's white t-shirt now quite transparent.

Anyway, after a lot of explosions, the kids (minus Eddie, who was eaten) escape from the sewer, to the dismay of Dr. Meddows. However, Meddows himself is soon consumed by his creation, and the rest of the scientists start firing weapons into the sewer, and even throw a big explosive device down to kill the blob once and for all.

Big mistake. Like the "big loogie" in Ivan Reitman's "Evolution", the blob isn't destroyed by fire - in fact, it needs heat to live, and grows to the size of a small building. As the ever-articulate Kevin Dillon put it, "I think you pissed it off." It shoots up out of the sewer like a great, fleshy tower, and comes crashing down on the crew of scientists. It then begins bubbling towards the town hall, where the city's population huddles in fear, slurping up everyone in its path, and wraps itself around the building, sending in tentacles to scout for edible humans. It seems all is lost, until Meg Penny remembers that she and Brian were safe from the blob when they were in a meat freezer.

She grabs a fire extinguisher and begins spraying at the tentacles, which recoil with cries of pain (where does the blob keep its vocal cords, one wonders?). Meanwhile, Brian drives up with a fake snow machine, preparing to blast the blob, but somehow gets flipped over. Meg rushes out, steals a big firearm and an explosive device from a partially-digested guy in a haz-mat suit - who croaks "help me" as she pulls the device from his liquified shoulder - and plants the bomb on a take of liquid nitrogen, using the gun to distract the blob. When the bomb goes off, it starts to "snow", and the blob is instantly turned into a field of beautiful pink crystals.

However, the world isn't safe - the Reverend (Del Close), who considered the blob attack "the day of reckoning", managed to save some blob crystals from the blob's earlier encounter with the meat freezer. After his fire-and-brimstone sermon in a crude tent on the outskirts of town, a woman asks him when the "day of reckoning" will occur. Pulling out a jar that contains an adorable pink "bloblet", he mutters, "Soon, madame. The lord will give me a sign."

Chilling...