'THE BLOB'. Original or remake? Your choice. (1 Viewer)

[Inspector Hammer!]

After having watched both this past week, I have to say most definitly I prefer the remake! It just capitalizes and expands (no pun intended) on all the themes from the Steve McQueen classic. Plus, I find the blob in the newer film to be WORLDS more threatening than the slow ball of silly putty from the original.

Don't get me wrong, I like the original, but I didn't find it's titular monster all that threatening, it was too slow IMO. I like the new one because it's closer to what was probably intended for the original, but was unable to be realized with effects of the time. However with the effects they had in the late 80's, were able to create a blob that was lightning fast, erupted into rooms like lava, lashed out with tenticals, chase down it's victims and dissolve them in increasingly sicker ways.

One of the last big monster films to use the old optical printer style effects, stop-motion animation and puppetry, and it still holds up well. But I won't lie and say I wouldn't love to see what could be done with the blob using CGI! I know a lot of you have a problem with CGI, but that technology could do wonders with the blob if either another remake or sequel were to spring up. However, that's niether here nor their, the effects in the remake kick ass as they are!

I also love how the film throws all the rules out the window in terms of who is supposed to die and who isn't, nobody is safe in this film! Not the good jock, old people or even children! You see that scene and you know that horror films then had balls, do you think they'd do that now? I don't think so. I also find the classic movie theater scene sequence to be quite terrifying in the remake, with the ever expanding blob visible through the strobe lights.

Anyway, I think Chuck Russel did a fantastic job with this, he took the original elements and change some things around, and that's alright because he always kept the spirit of the original as the films core.

You may have trouble getting past Kevin Dillon's very 80's mullet though if you haven't seen the film in awhile.

So, which do you guys and gals prefer?

 

[Malcolm R]

The remake has always been a favorite guilty pleasure of mine. I'm not sure I've ever watched the original in its entirety, since it seemed a bit silly to try and be scared of something that looks like a molded salad at Thanksgiving.

 

[Alex Spindler]

Remake absolutely. I have it proudly displayed among my collection.

I've been quite impressed by how well the special effects hold up considering how much time has passed. I also loved that they killed the goody two-shoes football star instead of the outsider
.

Favorite bit: A gung ho soldier type pulls the pins on his grenades and is ingested. A few seconds later you can see the Blob flash internally to no ill effect. Great touch.

Trivia - Was co-written by Frank Darabont and has Erika Eleniak and Charlie Spradling.

 

[Robert Crawford]

The original is pure 1950s' camp and will always have a place in my heart as a guilty pleasure. Anybody that is a fan of the original should take an opportunity to see the Criterion DVD release of it with some good insight into the making of the film. I'm also a fan of the remake, but for different reasons.

 

[Lew Crippen]

What Robert wrote.

 

[Chuck L]

Another person who agrees with Robert.

The original is perfect...for it's time. It is still very effective and I remember when I was a child enjoying the hell out of this movie and now, I still enjoy it, but I am astonished at what they were able to do with the effects at that time.

The remake, I enjoy that one as well, but it is because they did take it in a different direction. I also like the fact that they upped the violence.

Both of these films sit proudly on my shelf.

 

[Steve Phillips]

I have a great affection for the original film (even the sequel!) but the 1988 remake is one of my favorites.

 

[Rob P S]

Love that remake! Cheesy as hell but great fun.

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

Maybe those here with the Criterion edition can answer a question for me that i've always wanted to know, how did they do the blob in the original? What substance was used?

 

[Scott Weinberg]

Nice to see a blob-centric thread. I really dig both movies, though in very different ways.

The original is a film that absolutely fascinated me as a kid. (I must have seen it 5 times back then.) I think it's a very quaint and colorful monster movie, a perfect snapshot of Good 50s Horror.

The remake is nastier and gorier, so therefore the grown-up me likes it a lot more. I can't STAND Kevin Dillon, but other than that there's very little I dislike about the remake.

Anyone wanna help me pen a screenplay for a new remake??

 

[Ashley Seymour]

I have tried to get involved to watch the sequel, but never caught it in time on the satelite.

The original has always been my favorite sci-fi quilty pleasure. I am old enough to have seen it as a first run at a theater. It was on with I Married a Monster From Outer Space that scared the crap out of me. The Blob was actually pretty cool. How can you not like a movie with Steve McQueen? That fall he starred in a new TV series Wanted Dead or Alive and I was a fan till he died.

The slow moving blob was what was cool. He/it was silent and could sneak up on a victim. Very elegent in it's simplicity. I am sure Ash from Alien would have approved.

Now if in 1958 you took your girl to the drive-in creature feature show you probably would not have been able to remember the plot. Well at least Mrs. Robinson didn't go there for the movie.

 

[Matt Pelham]

I love and own both. The original Blob was my first owned movie ever, and I wore out the tape watching it as a kid.

The remake is also great, but it doesn't have the great theme song of the 1958 version.

 

[Lew Crippen]

Maybe those here with the Criterion edition can answer a question for me that i've always wanted to know, how did they do the blob in the original? What substance was used?

I think that the extras indicated that it was silicone, John. And they had to keep stirring it, to keep the color consistent. But some of the shots used a weather balloon. May have to listen to the commentary again to be sure.

 

[Andy Olivera]

Well, it looks like I'm one of the few who hasn't seen both. I've only seen the remake, but I loved it so much I never had much desire to see the original aside from mere curiosity. Though the effects in the remake fail to impress me as they used to, I just don't see a film made in the 50s being able to compete with it. The necessary effects just weren't there.

 

[Henry Gale]

Kate Phillips, who played mostly supporting roles on Broadway and in more than 50 films in the 1930s and ’40s and who later was a co-writer of the 1958 horror film “The Blob,” died on April 18 in Keene, N.H. She was 94.

The death was confirmed by Lawrence Benaquist, chairman of film studies at Keene State College. Mrs. Phillips, known during her acting career as Kay Linaker, taught at the college from 1980 until two years ago.

In 1956, while working with Theodore Simonson on the script for a movie that was supposed to be called “The Molten Meteor,” Mrs. Phillips referred to the giant jellylike creature from another planet that had plopped into a field outside of a small town as “the blob.” Overhearing her, the producers changed the name of what became something of a cult classic.

“The Blob” gave a fresh-faced Steve McQueen his first starring role, as one of two teenagers whose warnings about the voracious appetite of the enlarging monster are ignored until many people are engulfed.

 

[RobertR]

I thought the remake was ok up until the "big bad know it all government military-scientists" showed up. That made it unwatchable for me after that. If they had made the last half more like what happened in the original, I would have liked it.

 

[Jerome Grate]

Hard to choose, the remake has great cheesy factor with fun, but the original, I truly enjoyed. In fact I still remember dreaming about it when they didn't kill it but:dumped it in the Antartic to keep it cold and inactive.]

 

[Ockeghem]

I prefer the original to the remake by a longshot. I liked the original cast much more than the cast of the remake, and the creature in the original was IMO more realistic. I also feel the original left a lot more to the imagination, which for my own part is always more frightening than having something not left to the imagination.

 

[JonZ]

I read that another remake is in the works.

 

[Andy Sheets]

Kevin Dillon is laughable, but the remake is superior in just about every way. The original is appealing, though, in a camp way. Stuff like Steve McQueen playing the oldest teenager in history and the kids getting all those lectures from their elders on good behavior