4) The Blob (1958)
The Blob has long been considered a B-movie classic, even managing to finagle itself a release from the Criterion Collection. But, even that kind of laudable treatment does nothing to make its central monster anywhere close to being scary.
The movie features a 28-year-old Steve McQueen playing a teenager out for a night of necking with his girlfriend; the very night when an alien life-force has crash-landed in his town to wreak havoc on some of the dumber inhabitants. The Blob begins its reign of terror after being poked with a stick – like ya do – and proceeding onwards from there, consuming hapless idiots and growing larger every minute. No one believes Mr. McQueen and his girlfriend, try as they might to warn of the encroaching terror of the Blob, which naturally results in our monster growing bigger and meaner.
The Blob is one of those monsters that tries to creep up on you as an apparently innocuous substance, and as such sustains itself for the first ten minutes of its appearance. Why would anyone suspect such nice ooze? At first, the film has a sort of B-movie charm to it – check out that opening theme song – until you realize that the central monster is a massive hunk of moving Jello. Very slow-moving Jello. As with many of the monsters on our list, you have to be pretty damn stupid to get eaten by The Blob. When you can avoid a monster simply by walking away, there’s a serious problem.
Published: Oct 8, 2014 01:39 am