Yesterday was our 7-year wedding anniversary (married in 1998), and to “celebrate” Berta and I went out to Phoenixville to attend a screening of “The Blob” at Blobfest 2005.
The Blob (no, not “Blob the Builder”) is a film about a meteor that falls to Earth containing some kind of blob-like creature that gets bigger when it dissolves human flesh. The main character, played by Steve McQueen tries to warn the town against this terror, but he simply can’t get people to believe him.
So you might wonder why there is a Blobfest for such a B-movie horror flick. Well, it’s because The Blob was filmed right in this area. In fact, the theater in which we watched The Blob yesterday was actually in the movie!
Moreover, the movie takes place in Downingtown, which is the town where we live. There is a diner at the end of movie where they hide from the blob. My mom used to work in that diner. The diner has changed hands many times over the years, but it was at one time named “The Blob Diner” and was decorated all in 50’s style, complete with pink countertops and neon.
For the 1950’s, The Blob wasn’t too bad for special effects. We learned that the blob was actually a glob of silicone that they rolled around miniature sets to make it look as if it was very large. They would tilt the mini-set to make the blob roll. We got to see the actual blob of red silicone (now dyed red because of the bloody people it consumed) that was used inthe movie, and one fo the small sets that they used to film the scene.
In the part of the movie where the blob oozes through the holes in the projector room of the on-screen theater, everyone turned to look back toward the projection booth, maybe to compare the theater on the screen to the one in real life, or maybe to make sure they were safe from the blob.
There were a couple of speakers befoe the movie, who had informative things to say about it. The first guy was apparently hired as a grip, but he ended up slating most of the scenes, so he ended up being one of the first people running out of the theater when they realize they’re about to be eaten. The second guy was the caretaker of the blob, which must be kept on ice to prevent it from eating people. No kidding.
The best part of the movie, apart from seeing places I actually knew, was when Steve convinces his friends to come out of the theater to help him find the blob. The one friend says something like, “Ok, so now that I’ve wasted my 80 cents on this movie, what do you what?” 80 cents? We paid $7 per person!
I think that The Blob deserves a good remake. And I’m not talking about the cheesy remakes where they re-imagine the whole movie, I’m just saying they should fix up the theater, use basically the same dialogue that they used in the 1950’s version, and just have a higher-quality print. And maybe it could use computer effects to make the blob scenes look a little more fluid. It’s really a shame that old B-movies don’t hold up so well over the years. I wonder if there’s a DVD copy of The Blob to be had.
Anyway, we had a good time. I bought a t-shirt from the Blobfest, and I got a free Colonial Theater poster. Maybe next year we’ll go up on the day that they do the escape from the theater, for which they get everyone inside and make them run out to re-enact the scene from the movie.
