The Blob (1988 film)

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The Blob is a 1988 horror film distributed by Tristar Pictures. It is a remake of the 1958 film The Blob, which starred Steve McQueen. Directed by Chuck Russell. Screenplay by Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont. 95 minutes, rated R. The film was shot in Abbeville, Louisiana

[edit] Cast

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

One night in the small town of Arborville, California, a meteorite falls from the sky and crashes in the nearby forest. An elderly transient investigates the rock and discovers a bizarre, jelly-like substance within it. He picks it up on the end of a stick, and the strange goo slides down the branch and attaches itself to his hand. He runs into the forest, screaming in agony.

Also in the forest that night is Brian Flagg (Dillon), the local high school outcast who is fixing his motorcycle. The vagrant comes bursting out of the trees with a hand axe, frantically trying to chop his own hand off. Brian manages to wrestle the weapon out of his grasp and at the same moment notices the slime covering the old man's hand. The thing slides up his forearm and sucks at the bleeding axe wound on the man's arm. The transient once again runs into the surrounding woods, with Brian chasing after him in an attempt to offer help.

Meg Penny (Smith) and her date Paul (Leitch), two clean-cut kids from Brian's high school, are driving along a nearly deserted road when the transient jumps out of the forest and runs into the middle of the road, where Paul is unable to stop before running into him. Brian, Meg, and Paul take the man to a local hospital, and after he is taken to an examining room Brian leaves, stating that if the authorities have any questions they can come and find him. Meg and Paul sit down to wait. A little while later Paul goes to get Meg a soft drink from a vending machine. He notices the old man lying on an examining table. He goes into the room, and the man's head turns to him, his eyes completely white. Paul runs and gets a doctor. When they return to the examining room the doctor (played by Jack Nance), takes off the blanket covering the man only to discover that his torso has been completely dissolved below the chest line by the organism that was attached to him. Paul runs into an office to call the police, but unbeknownst to him the creature silently creeps up the wall behind him. Paul notices two drops of corrosive liquid fall onto the desktop and eat away the wood. When he looks up he sees the organism, now considerably larger, hanging above him. Paul screams as the thing drops down onto him. Meg hears his scream and runs to find him. She discovers Paul in the doctor's office, completely covered by the slimy creature. As she watches in horror she can see Paul being dissolved within the mass. She attempts to rescue Paul by grabbing an arm that he had managed to work free from the goo, but she accidentally rips off the appendage and passes out.

Following this the police pick up Brian and take him in for questioning, but with no evidence and no motive they let him go. As he leaves the police station Meg drives up in a car. She tells him that she snuck off from her house to bail him out because she needs to talk to him. Brian thanks her for the offer and says that he is sorry about Paul, but he doesn't feel like conversation. Brian leaves her standing there and goes into a diner for something to eat. Meg follows him and tells him that the thing on the old man's hand killed both him and Paul, and that it is getting bigger. Brian is highly skeptical, as were the police when she told them her story. Meg is initially angry at Brian's refusal to believe her, but he calms her down and they talk about what happened earlier that night.

In the diner's kitchen the handyman is trying to plunge a clog out of the sink, only to have a pseudopod shoot up and drag his entire body down the drain. Brian and Meg hear the waitress' screams from the kitchen and run in to see what it going on. At that moment the organism shoots up out of the sink, now much larger. It chases after Brian and Meg, and they retreat to the diner's walk-in freezer. The gooey mass attempts to follow them, but for some reason it retreats from the freezer. Brian and Meg decide to wait for a few minutes to make sure it is gone.

Meanwhile, the waitress (Clark) escapes from the diner and runs into a phone booth to call the police. While she is placing the call the goop encircles the phone booth, and she is treated to the grisly sight of the sheriff's (DeMunn) partially digested corpse within the creature's body. She is unable to keep the thing out and is devoured when it bursts into the booth. After the organism is finished with her it slides down a storm drain, which is witnessed by the town's priest (Close). He goes into the diner to see if anyone needs help. He finds it deserted (Meg and Brian escaped a few minutes earlier), but makes a strange discovery in front of the freezer door: frozen samples of strange, blood-colored crystals. Little does the priest know that he is collecting pieces of the frozen Blob.

Meg and Brian go to the police station, not knowing that the sheriff is dead. The dispatcher on duty tells them that she hasn't been able to reach the sheriff, but that deputy Briggs (McCrane) is up around Elkins Grove, which just happens to be where Brian found the old man. They go in search of Briggs and discover a military operation in the area, led by a scientist named Dr. Meddows (Seneca). Meddows tells them that he thinks it is possible that the meteorite that crashed in the vicinity several hours earlier was carrying a kind of germ from outer space. Meg and Brian tell the doctor what they know about the creature, and are then put in a military van to be taken back to town, which has been placed under quarantine. Brian argues that they should escape town, but Meg counters that she has family who are worried about her. After she rebuffs his offer Brian jumps out of the van and goes to recover his bike.

Meg is taken back to town where she sees her mother and father, but not her little brother, Kevin. Her mother reveals that he had probably snuck off to a movie that she had forbidden him to watch earlier in the evening. While the guards are distracted Meg sneaks off to the theater. She arrives just as a horde of people come storming out of the lobby, and she goes into the auditorium to see the creature, now grown to mammoth proportions, sucking up victims by the dozen. She locates her kid brother and his friend Eddie and together they escape into the sewer system of the town.

After picking up his motorcycle Brian starts to make his way out of the forest when he notices Meddows talking to some of his subordinates by the site of the meteor's crash. The rock is lifted out of the ground and Brian sees that it isn't actually a meteor at all, but a man-made vessel of some kind that has been disguised to look like a meteor. As he listens to Meddows Brian learns that the creature was a biological warfare experiment. Though the resulting plasmic organism is not what Meddows was expecting (he states that the environment of outer space had a mutating effect on the bacteria), he is nevertheless ecstatic about the possibilities that the thing represents, particularly the edge in germ warfare that he thinks it will give the U.S. government over the Russians. Brian also overhears a tense conversation between Meddows and one of his subordinates in which the junior officer states his disgust at the proceedings and at the needless waste of human life that has resulted because of Meddows' actions. Meddows tells the man that the fate of entire countries depends on this kind of experiment, and that that is more important than a handful of people in this small town. Meddows is told by one of his soldiers that the organism has chased three people into the sewer system. The scientist says that this is the perfect opportunity to contain the creature, and that the civilains are expendable. At that moment a rifle barrel is pushed into Brian's back by a soldier that had managed to sneak up on him. Brian incapacitates the soldier by striking him across the face with a wrench. With the entire camp now alerted to his presence, Brian starts his motorcycle and is chased by the troops. Brian's bike proves to be far more maneuverable in the forest than the trucks and jeeps of the soldiers and he avoids detection by fleeing into the opening of an aqueduct that leads into the sewer system.

Meg, Kevin, and Eddie are trying to find a way out of the sewer, making their way through water that is chest high. Meg sees a rat sucked underneath the water and realizes that the creature has found them. They attempt to flee up a water pipe to escape through a storm drain opening, but Eddie is dragged underneath the water. Meg tries to rescue him, only to have his screaming, partially melted body pop up out of the water before being pulled under again. Meg and Kevin scramble up the pipe as the enormous organism rises out of the water. Kevin is able to escape through the storm drain, but Meg is too big to fit through. She makes Kevin leave her and run to town hall. Meg is saved when the creature is distracted by the arrival of some of Meddows' soldiers. It moves away from her to absorb them, and she drops back into the water and attempts to flee by climbing out of a large hatch opening that leads into the aqueduct drainage system. Unfortunately for her the diagonally-slanted hatch is too slippery to crawl out of. Just as the goo is about to reach her Brian comes to the rescue. He pulls her out of the hatch and they try to escape on his bike. They crash the bike and are forced to flee on foot. They run into one of Meddows' soldiers (played by Bill Moseley) who managed to escape the blob and they all run to a manhole hatch in the street. But Meddows has already arrived on the scene and orders it to be closed before they can escape, most likely to prevent Brian from revealing the truth about the creature's origin. Trapped and with nowhere to run they wait for death...until Meg notices the soldier's rocket launcher. Brian uses it to blast open the manhole and they crawl out. Meddows, now fearing that the townspeople will learn the truth, attempts to frighten them by telling them that Brian is infected with a contagious disease. Brian, however, points out two valid facts. One, why would guys in plastic suits show up over a simple meteorite? Two, how did they know to get there so fast? He tells the entire town that the creature was actually an experiment in bio warfare that Meddows had screwed up. Half-crazed with anger and desperation, the scientist attempts to shoot Brian. But his sudden movement attracts the attention of the organism, which had just reached the manhole. The thing shoots out a pseudopod and snatches Meddows, dragging the wailing doctor down into the manhole. The remaining soldeirs attempt to kill it by throwing an explosive charge down into the sewer, but this does nothing more than anger the creature.

It uses its entire body mass to burst out of the sewer and begins to feast upon the assembled population of the town. Meg gets a fire extinguisher, and when it tries to grab her she blasts the creature with it. The thing squeals and backs off, and Meg suddenly realizes why it did not come into the freezer: it can't stand cold. Brian also had the same idea, because he goes to the town's garage and gets a truck that has two canisters of liquid nitrogen attached to it. He drives it to town hall, where the creature has cornered the remaining citizens. The creature knocks the truck over and attempts to kill Brian, but Meg distracts it by shooting at it. She uses an explosive charge lifted from the body of a soldier and plants it on the nitrogen canisters. She and Brian run away from the creature, and as it begins to give chase the canisters explode, covering the organism with the liquid nitrogen, freezing it.

The film cuts to sometime later, and the town's priest, crazed by the creature's rampage, has set up a doomsday congregation on the town's outskirts. A female congregant asks when the time of reckoning will be upon them, and he replies soon...then holds up a fragment of the blob that he had taken from the freezer in the diner. He put the frozen pieces in a glass jar, and the pieces have long since thawed...and the blob is squirming.

[edit] Trivia

  • Director Chris Walas asked Frank Darabont to rewrite the script for The Fly II because he liked his screenplay for this film.
  • The story is set in California, but filming took place in Louisiana.
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