We’re kickin’ it old-skool this week with a trip back to the 50’s. Rock ‘n’ Roll was a burgeoning force, youth culture was just entering into existence and you could still get away with dragging a black man 20 miles down the road without some pinko calling you a racist. Glory days indeed. More importantly, the 50’s saw sci-fi take over from westerns as the prime b-movie genre of choice. Starring Steve McQueen as the least convincing 17 year old in cinema history, The Blob pretty much defines the ‘classic’ b-movie as we know it.

Watching The Blob is like bearing witness to the platonic form of all b-movies. Its plot is so precisely moulded in the shape of every horror film in existence I can barely recall any details. There is a monster, teenagers find it, no one believes them, it attacks people and then everyone believes them. That’s it. With a healthy dose of interpretation there is perhaps one genuinely inventive twist. The horror/sci-fi trope of defeating the monster with a mundane facet of human existence is explored in the context of what may be a War Of The Worlds reference. Where the martians were vulnerable to the common cold, The Blob is vulnerable to simply being cold. I’ll admit it’s a bit of a stretch but you’ll just have to forgive me, I need to rationalise the time I spent watching this film somehow.

For me, the most interesting aspect of a movie like The Blob is that it reinforces a theory I have long believed in regarding the use of special effects. Specifically, I am convinced that moving away from the increasingly sophisticated animatronics, puppetry and make-up of the 80’s into the CGI era of the 90’s and beyond has made convincing performances increasingly rare. Not rare across all genres of cinema of course, just rare in the context of a horror or sci-fi movie. The Blob, in its own quaint little way, typifies this phenomenon. Just as I believe actors today must have great difficulty acting in front of a green screen, the actors of yesteryear must have struggled to react to events that only took place in post-production.

It’s hard to reccommend The Blob as a genuinely entertaining piece of cinema. It lacks the campy, spoofy vibe of the 80’s b-movies I usually review. Rather than a genuinely underground and subversive film, or even a knowing parody, The Blob is a b-movie in the truest sense of the term. It existed as a cheap, throwaway movie intended to supplement a more successful piece of sci-fi. The Blob’s continuing renown amongst b-movie fans is primarily due to it being one of Steve McQueen’s earliest feature films.

Personally I’ll remember The Blob for one reason above all others. There’s a scene where The Blob attacks a cinema and as the crowds run out into the street, a brief shot of the marquee is on screen. The marquee advertises that the cinema is “healthfully” air conditioned. Yes you read it right, “healthfully”. I may not get the 88 minutes it took me to watch The Blob back but at least I and now you have learned a new word. Remember kids, whatever you do – do it healthfully.