by A.J.
Night 11: Remake Night
“Terror has no shape.”
Horror in the 1980s was dominated by slashers, sequels, and remakes. When it came to remakes, this may have been the only era in which they were justifiable. Advances in special effects technology and makeup, along with the replacement of the oppressive Production Code with the ratings system, allowed filmmakers to do and show more than previous films while also putting their own stamp on the material. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) are widely recognized as the best horror remakes, perhaps the best remakes of any genre. I would argue that the 1988 remake of The Blob also belongs in the top ranks of remakes as well.
The creative team of director Chuck Russell and screenwriter Frank Darabont did not make very many movies, but they made some good ones. They were the main creative force behind A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, usually considered the best of the Nightmare sequels. The Blob was their follow up. There are enough changes that this could be considered a reboot or reimagining, but the basic premise of the original remains: a goopy, amorphous slime life form crashes to Earth on the outskirts of a small town and threatens to take over the town and then the world. Like in the original, it is the teenagers who are the heroes, but unlike the original they do not work with the police and authorities. In this version, authority cannot be trusted. The lead teens are Shawnee Smith as Meg, the cheerleader, Kevin Dillon as Flagg, the mysterious motorcycle riding outsider, and Donovan Leitch, Jr as Paul, the letterman jacket-wearing athlete. At first it seems like Donovan is set up to be the lead, but he’s easily outshown by Dillon’s rogue mystique. The real lead turns out to be Shawnee Smith; she is the only consistently reliable character and though she has to be rescued she also rescues others and his wielding an assault rifle by the end of the movie.
To keep their remake from being a rehash, Russell and Darabont decided to draw on Hitchcock and do the unexpected to throw off the audience. So, they decided to break the unwritten rule that kids and dogs do not die in horror movies. No matter how sympathetic or central a character may seem, they are all equally in danger from the blob. This often gets called a “mean movie” but I disagree. Russell and Darabont take the time for the audience to get to know the people that live in this small town. None of the characters, no matter how big or small their role, feel disposable, aside from the mostly nameless government agents in hazmat suits. So death matters and the horror of a pink slime is emotional as well as visual.
Nearly every special effects shot holds up and looks impressive. Chuck Russell thought that if a special effect is done only one way the audience will get used to it, so the blob was created and shown in different ways. Silk sacks were filled with the blob and squeezed to the point that the sack became invisible. Process shots, green screen, miniatures, and gravity effects (putting a set on its side or upside down to make the blob look like it is defying gravity) were all put to use. The scene of the blob attacking a movie theater uses a strobe light effect that makes the whole sequence feel very chaotic and frantic, but Russell admits in the DVD/Blu-ray commentary that the strobe light was also used to cover up what he thought were the movie’s weakest effects (Trigger warning to viewers with photosensitive epilepsy or aversion to strobe lights). He also admits that the effects team proved him wrong about a life size dummy for a death by blob in a phone booth. The effect worked and ends up being one of the most intense deaths of the movie. Surprisingly, the most impressive stunt in the movie has nothing to do with the blob. It happens when Flagg jumps a broken bridge while being pursued by trucks and helicopter all in one well rehearsed shot.
While I do not believe that this film is mean, I do readily admit that it can be difficult to watch. It is goopy and gory and gross. However, this is not a geek show. This is not a slasher where the whole point is to watch disposable characters die one by one in elaborate ways. Russell and Darabont were smart enough to know that the weakest part of The Blob is that the villain is a pile of goo, so they created strong characters and focused on recognizable themes to engage the audience on an intellectual level while the effects and makeup team worked their magic to engage the audience on a visceral level.
The Blob (1988) is available to stream on Tubi and Plutotv.
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