The Blob (1958)

To listen/download, click here!

Bullitt. The Great Escape. The Towering Inferno. The Magnificent Seven. What do they all have in common, aside from being straight-up awesome and, because of that, they will most likely never be discussed on this podcast? They all starred Steve goddamn McQueen, that's what.

McQueen had a helluva career. He started out as a television actor, but eventually felt it was time to step up and hit the big screen with a two-fer in 1958: the forgettable Never Love a Stranger and the spectacularly weird movie we watched for this episode, The Blob.

JOIN USSSSSSS...

"Young" Steven Andrews (McQueen, who was 27 at the time) is on a date with his best girl, a cardboard cutout named Janie (Aneta Corsaut), and he is putting the moves on her hard (which, by 1958 Pennsylvania standards, means "gently holding hands and gazing wistfully into each other's eyes") when they see and hear something fall from the sky. They decide to investigate, and they drive off toward where they think it landed.

At the same time, an old man who looks like mid-eighties Lloyd Bridges (Olin Howland) also hears the noise and, since it landed only a few feet from his Evil Dead cabin, does what any of us would do: He goes and pokes it with a stick. It turns out to be a small meteorite, but poking it causes it to break open, revealing its gooey center. He collects the goo on the end of his stick, and it oozes down onto his arm, causing him immense pain.

His joy at discovering an extraterrestrial money shot is short-lived.

Steve and Janie are still driving toward the site when the old man lunges out of the woods, right in front of Steve's car. They stop to help the man, discover the goo attached to his arm, and throw him in the back of Steve's car to take him to the town's doctor, Dr. Hallen (Stephen Chase).

They catch the doctor just as he's leaving for the day, and he quickly ushers them inside his office. He takes a look at what's going on under the coat Steve wrapped the old man in and immediately calls his nurse/assistant, then tells Steve and Janie to go find the impact site because he has this covered.

They leave, only to find a group of middle-aged teenagers hanging all over Steve's car, demanding a drag race.(Because it's the fifties!) Steve agrees, but only if they do the race backwards. The "teens" agree, and Steve beats them easily, only to get busted by Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe), the town's "good cop" who can "relate" to the "teenagers" because they are the "same age" as he is, which is to say, in their "early" thirties.

Lieutenant Dave is not "hep"to Steve's "jive".

Dr. Hallen decides the old guy's arm has to go, and his nurse arrives. He tells her to go have a look at the old guy, but when she enters the examination room, the table is empty. As she looks around, the one lamp in the room falls over, causing the one fuse the office's entire electrical system apparently runs on, causing the entire building to go dark. Dr. Hallen goes to the basement to fix it, and when the lights come back on, the nurse finds herself face-to-...er...amorphous globule with an angry murder snot, which attacks and kills her, and then the doctor, just as Steve and Janie show up outside the office to see how things are going.

Cold-and-flu season in rural Pennsylvania is hell.

Steve and Janie go to the police station to tell them what happened, and Lieutenant Dave sort of believes them. His partner, Officer Bert (John Benson) doesn't buy it, though, insisting it's all a prank to mock him personally because of his war record. Seriously; he actually says that. However, the "kids" persist, and they all go to Dr. Hallen's office to check on him.

When they get there, there is nothing; no doctor,no nurse, no victim, and no blob. There is, however, an elderly woman who says Dr. Hallen is supposed to be out of town, so there is no reason for him to be there. Vindicated, Officer Bert drags Steve and Janie back to the station and calls their fathers (Hugh Graham and Elbert Smith), who make stern faces and take the kids home.Minutes later, both Steve and Janie sneak out of their respective houses and go looking for the other retirement-age teenagers to hunt down whatever Steve claims he saw eating Dr. Hallen.

Steve and Janie eventually end up at the local grocery store, which has been inexplicably left unlocked, even though it is well past closing time. Also, Janie finds the old guy's tiny dog, which she scoops up to bribe her brother from telling their parents where she went. When the blob shows up. Janie throws the dog at it, and then he and Steve hide in the walk-in cooler, but the blob doesn't follow them. Instead, it oozes down the street to the movie theater.

"Blob" is short for "Blobert".

Steve and Janie grab their friends and start honking horns and setting off air raid alarms to get the people in town to listen to them so they can fight the blob. It works, for the most part, but a bitter and spiteful Bert refuses to buy it until the crowd that was in the theater comes running around the corner, screaming in terror. But they still need a plan...

Will that plan, which involves giving Bert a weapon around a bunch of the teenagers he so hates, work? Or will it get derailed by Janie's idiot little brother? How close to retirement age are the teens? What happened to the dog? And what's up with the cop playing chess over the radio back at the station? You'll have to tune in to find out!

Derek unabashedly loves this movie, despite the terrible acting that everybody is doing. Or perhaps because of it. He is, however, upset by Janie's lack of emotion. Even worse, when she tries, it looks like she's having all the emotions at once, and they hurt.

Jake liked it, too. He is pretty upset about just how old the "teens" look. Especially McQueen. It's like they didn't even try to hide it. Also, he questions McQueen's acting chops, as it appears the guy has only scanned his copy of the script.

So put on your most neat-o slacks and cardigan, gather your pensioner-teenage friends together, take some antihistamines, and tune in to the latest episode!