Blob ’88
People who (rightfully) complain about today’s abundance of remakes have literally every justification to do so, as most of the original versions of these movies were still already produced in the “modern” era of films, that period being after the mid to late 1960s when the old (censorship) Production Code was abolished and the current ratings system was created, effectively opening the doors for movies to now have profanity, sexual content, and most notably, gruesome and gory graphic violence, obviously a boon for the actual horror industry in and of itself after such a shift in allowable content that resulted in more of a quantum leap forward in the history of cinema than even the changeover from silent films to sound. What all of this meant more than anything was that now that the old style, antiquated forms of acting and storytelling had become a thing of the past (and good riddance, since those movies had seemed to take place in a fantasy realm where no one ever acted like actual human beings) along with the older horror films of those days, now considered to be so tame by today’s standards that they could still be appropriate for a 5 year old, which is why “modern” (80s) remakes of horror classics like The Thing and this 1988 release were more than acceptable given the advancement in special effects techniques and the willingness of filmmakers to push the envelope with adult content as far as they were willing to go, which is exactly what director Chuck Russell did here, working from a script co written by Frank (Shawshank Redemption) Darabont to properly update the original (solid) core concept of the 1958 version which had offered us the first appearance of Steve McQueen in a major leading role and a bizarre allegory on the nature of Communism through the strange title creature that just rolls on through consuming everything and everyone in a quaint little town where everybody knows everyone else’s name. The film even goes so far as to take the trouble of having us guess just exactly WHO is going to be taking on the lead hero role that McQueen once had, giving us as our two choices either the town’s notorious bad boy (Kevin Dillon sporting a way too elaborate hairstyle for a juvenile delinquent) or the town’s straight arrow star football player (Donovan Leitch). One thing’s for sure: Shawnee Smith’s spunky cheerleader definitely turned some heads with her resourceful female heroine whom after watching one major character get swallowed up spends the rest of the movie in a thankfully fearless mode even when facing seemingly certain death. Russell begins the film by taking a page out of Carpenter’s Halloween, painstakingly painting this small town as just being utterly typical, and thus portraying the residents within as totally conventional, nondescript, average down home Americans (even Dillon’s rebel without a cause comes across as being rather ordinary for someone of his character type), which in many ways sets things up pretty nicely for the horror that is to come, as the meteorite crashes down to Earth and (just like in the original) a homeless bum picks at it with a stick only to have it attach itself to his arm, leading to him being run over (with Dillon in tow) by a car containing Leitch and Smith (who are out on their first date). They take the suffering old timer to the local hospital (where we get some scathing social satire regarding the money up front first nature of the modern American medical industry), and then we get the first major attack of The Blob itself, completely consuming the old man before attacking other major characters. What makes The Blob so frightening in many ways is the up close look that we get at just HOW it kills its victims, completely enveloping them while they’re still alive and then using some kind of acidic based substance that slowly, painfully dissolves them until virtually nothing remains, which is no doubt a truly scary, excruciating way to die, and since most of the characters are portrayed here as being simple, decent folk who don’t deserve at all in any conceivable way to suffer such a screaming, melting death, the horror becomes all the more palpable for the viewer when someone does go down this way, notwithstanding the fact that it’s made very clear from the getgo that NOBODY (not even major characters or even a child) is safe from this monster’s wrath. There are other top flight character actors on hand here including Candy Clark as the local diner owner, Jeffrey DeMunn as the reasonable town sheriff, Paul McCrane as the reactionary deputy, Art LaFleur as the town pharmacist (and Smith’s father), and best of all Del Close (the legendarily offbeat improv comedy specialist who upon his death bequeathed his own skull to a theatre company just so that he could play the already dead Yorick in a stage production of Hamlet) as the rather mild mannered town preacher who (rather accurately) surmises that The Blob’s appearance and its very existence is actually indeed God’s wrath being put upon humanity and the first signs of the impending apocalypse. The real truth though, is that the creature (in a major departure from the original) is not really from outer space at all but is actually man made, the latest advancement in biological warfare designed to be something that it would appear you can just drop into any enemy territory and then just sit back and laugh while it consumes your most hated adversaries and their families too. The government stooges come equipped with their own gently reassuring, bullshit spewing Head Scientist / Mouthpiece (Joe Seneca) who tells everyone in the town that everything will be alright while also telling his own men that these same people will basically all have to die just for simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that is exactly what we get here, with the film being faithful to its predecessor by featuring random preprocessed teens having a hot makeout session prior to being surprised by their own untimely deaths, and of course the big movie theatre massacre (considered a showpiece scene in the original) only now containing the requisite amount of gory F/X (including a girl with her face half melted off) that the first film could never have duly shown us. We also see the foolhardy government scientists with all their big talk about “containing” the creature ultimately seeing their own ranks as well become completely consumed by the rampant panic and anarchy that would be the result of such an apocalyptic occurance happening in their very presence. And as director Russell keeps things going on a rollercoaster like pace, even allowing the monster to at times have the foresight of knowing just which humans are most deserving of being consumed and treated to a nice fizzling death via meticulous disintegration while also showing the unfairness of how certain obviously good people suffer through the same gruesome demise as well. Rarely has a horror movie given a viewer so few chances to just really BREATHE properly, and even with some of the B horror movie tropes on hand, there’s still a freshness and giddy creative vibe being felt here as now we know that the awfully sanitized by today’s standards 1958 version will NEVER have to be remade again as the 80s and their advancements in special effects technology are put to full use on this occasion, with the dated Communist allegories of the 50s having been replaced by just the simple everlasting fear of painful, all consuming death, which in the end is the final ultimate fear of every human being on this Earth, whether it comes through mere coincidence or by the preconceived plans of others, death itself is something that has no real prejudice nor any actual motivations whatsoever. And thus we have here, to put it plainly and simply, a horror movie…
9/10