The Blob was a one-off monster that was interesting just based on how popular it became. There were only three films that featured this creature; 1958’s The Blob, a sequel in 1972 called Beware! The Blob, and the 1988 remake of the original film. However, it has been referenced in countless movies and shows since then, and has become popular enough to inspire an annual celebration in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania called “Blobfest”.
The nature of what the Blob actually is depends on which film you’re watching. In the original film, the Blob is an alien creature. Not an intelligent alien, mind you, but definitely something that came from outer space. This was around the time when the science fiction genre was becoming really popular, so a lot of the monsters that were introduced around this time either came from space or were created in a lab.
In the remake, the Blob was a biological weapon created during the Cold War. The scientists that created it deemed it to be too dangerous, and shot it into space. The fact that it later landed on an American city tells me that firing it into space was probably a bad call.
Regardless of where the Blob came from, the creature itself is always a mass of slime that devours everything it comes across. The creature also grows the more that it eats, leading to it eventually becoming colossal in size. The only thing that can stop it in either the original film or the remake is coldness. In fact, the original film ends with the Blob being transported to the Arctic, with the characters joking that the Blob will only be stopped as long as the Arctic stays cold. Ha ha! It’s funny because climate change is going to release an unstoppable slime monster that will devour us all!
The sequel has an oil pipeline attorney retrieve a piece of the Blob from the Arctic. Apparently, no one thought to post a warning sign or anything near the deadly menace from outer space. The creature is restored when it thaws out, and proceeds to consume most of a small town before being frozen again.
I think the reason that the Blob has stuck around in the public’s imagination is because of how unique it is. There are no other man-eating slime monsters in film or literature, so the Blob stands out as a wholly original monster. Granted, there are man-eating slime monsters in game series like Dungeons & Dragons, Dragon Quest, Wizardry, Dark Souls, Earthbound, Final Fantasy, Monster Rancher, Pokemon, and Slime Rancher, but none of those reach the level of where they can devour entire cities.
Huh. I didn’t think a post about the Blob would be this short. Well, hopefully I’ll have more to talk about with tomorrow’s subject: The Thing From Another World!
Think Inkelaar 