Get Your Reps In: Beware the Radioactive Pink Ooze of “The Blob”

The Blob (1988)

If we ever build a proper Movie Hall of Fame, there oughta be a wing labeled “Remakes With a Reason.” And marking its entrance should be a jar containing a little dollop of The Blob.

Director Chuck Russell’s remake of the 1958 B-movie maintains the notion of an all-consuming ooze gorging itself on a small town but infuses it with body horror, fluorescent jelly, and a nothing-is-sacred disaster movie attitude.

The film’s radioactive pink ooze, by the way, is a food-thickening agent, piped into silk quilts to create a menacing Goopzilla. Of course, special effects artist Nick Benson can share far more on-set detail when he appears at Cinemagic for a screening of The Blob.

The remake arrived in a wave of practical-effects masterpieces that reimagined sci-fi monuments (The Fly, The Thing, Little Shop of Horrors) with visceral, imaginative exhibitionism. Of them all, you could argue The Blob has the most fun riffing on its original tableau, as the monster attacks a small ski town still operating on a system of jocks, greasers and diners. Cinemagic, March 16.

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