The Blob DVD: Review By brianroche

I was all set to write about a 1980s horror remake, but instead I sit here, itching to write about mullets. Kevin Dillon (brother of Matt, seen also in "Platoon" and "The Doors") is the star of the 1988 remake of the "The Blob", playing Brian Flagg. As Flagg, the film's juvenile delinquent, he wears his hair in a ridiculous mullet, one so long, curly, moussed, fake-casual (the top, or 'business' half almost qualifies as long hair by itself, I guess because his business is to be the town bad ass, and business is good). Dillon's hair is so overly thought-out and distracting that it almost obliterates any chance, in our mullet-mocking times, of this movie being seen for itself.

Dillon's mullet is understandable, given the release date. 1988 was the true height of genuine, unexamined mullet love, when the short-long was a legitimate male hairstyle choice. I even had one for several months in 1989. Today, the much-mocked miscalculation that was The Mullet is practically the center of our 80s nostalgia.

Actually, mullet nostalgia is inaccurate. Mullets were a late 80s thing, a relatively brief trend that was over for most people before the 90s got underway. But in retro comedies like "The Wedding Singer" and "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" the mullet is depicted as the Official Hairstyle of the 1980s. To hear them tell it, on January 1, 1980, every man in the United States went to their local barbershop and said, bravely, "A little off the top and the sides. But not the back - please, not the back." As someone with parents who lived through the sixties but who couldn't name three Beatles songs, I can tell you there are lies, damn lies, statistics, and nostalgia.

Dillon's character's 'toughness' is further expressed by having him wear a white puffy-sleeved shirt with one of those triangular flaps on the front. This hilarious pirate shirt does nothing to reveal his character, where he comes from, or what he's about. The shirt doesn't even work as a wink-nudge indication of his sexuality; this is poor costuming, pure and simple. In movies from Hollywood's studio era, men wore plain suits, and women wore dresses. I've heard a lot of criticism of old black and white movies, but I've never heard, " . . . and the people looked weird." Yet I have seen plenty of movies made since the late 60s, both good and bad, where an actor's hair or wardrobe was completely laughable. It's sobering to think that a movie from the 1940s is more watchable for the way its characters look than stuff that's been produced within your lifetime.

Hair and pirate shirts aside, "The Blob" remake is an okay movie. I hadn't seen it in years when I saw it at my local video store; so I brought it home in hopes of being able to talk about modern remakes. I have a soft spot for the late 70s-into-the 80s genre remakes, stuff like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "The Postman Always Rings Twice", "Scarface", and "The Thing". At their best, these movies take an existing story and look at it again with a different set of eyes, giving us films that aren't necessarily better than the originals (though some are) but are thrillingly different. The '88 "Blob", however doesn't really use a new set of eyes. It's more cynical, and just regurgitates the original movie with modern equipment. It does however have some nice touches. If it pops up on the Sci-Fi channel or beckons you from the video shelf, go for it.

This version was directed by Chuck Russell and written by Russell and Frank Darabont. They had previously done the same jobs on "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors".

The "Elm Street" movies were unlike most genre series, in that every director who worked on it got invited to The Show. Jack Sholder, Renny Harlin, Stephen Hopkins, Rachel Talalay, and of course Wes Craven each got their chance at a big studio career after "Elm Street". Some of them, like Harlin and Craven, are still there. I haven't seen Sholder's name on anything for a while. Chuck Russell falls somewhere in the middle, a guy who's had some mainstream success, with "The Mask" and "Eraser", but faltered with the Kim Basinger vehicle "Bless the Child" and the "Mummy" prequel, "The Scorpion King".

Darabont has gone onto to a more prestigious career, with "Shawshank Redemption", "The Green Mile". Of course, he's also writing the new Indiana Jones movie.

Together, they've created a movie that hews closely to the original formula. A small spaceship crash-lands in the small town of Arborville, releasing pink goo, which has the ability to crawl, and to grow exponentially. Soon, this 'blob' is massive and has overrun the town, until some teenagers figure out how to stop it.

Russell gives us a nice foreboding credit sequence, all low angles and under-populated streets, letting us know that something is coming. Since we know the title of the movie, we know that a blob is what's coming, but a little atmosphere is always welcome. (About that title, as it appears during the title sequence: It's awful strange seeing such a silly word given such a stark, slick, James Cameron presentation).

Despite it's supposedly gelatinous omnipresence, the Blob's key role in this version is like that of an axe murderer in a slasher movie, killing characters one by one. Since the movie has set up so much dating activity within the town, this slasher-Blob acts as a kind of coitus interrupter, eliminating the community's life force by ceasing the activity that, well, perpetuates that life. It attacks a couple parked at the local lover's lane, two earnest suitors, and an audience watching a slasher film at a movie theater.

The two 'blobbed' suitors are the most interesting. The first, football player Donovan Leitch, supposedly the movie's star, is attacked suddenly while nobly helping the Blob's first victim, a homeless man. Russell and Darabont seem to be pulling a quasi-"Psycho" on us here, using Leitch as a fake-out so they can then push Kevin Dillon's pirate-shirt mullet delinquent to the forefront. The second attack is one of the more memorable from the movie's ad campaign, and features the owner of the local diner (Candy Clark, Oscar nominee for "American Graffiti"). As her restaurant has been Blobbed (by coming up through the drain and devouring her short-order cook), she runs out into the street to call the sheriff from the payphone, who asked her out on a date just hours before. The blob of course engulfs the phone booth, and just as Clark is dialing the sheriff's number unsuccessfully, his face rolls over the booth's glass wall, looking right at her. Wodehouse can breathe easy, but folks, that is wit.

The movie theater attack features the movie's best line. In the slasher film-within-the-film, a couple is necking around a campfire when they notice a guy in a hockey-mask trimming some nearby hedges - in the middle of the night. Anyway, when the guy notices the hockey mask killer, he says, "Hey, hockey season ended months ago!"

The special effects are as good as they can be for a B movie like this, and seem selected and developed to maximize the Blob in close scenes, like the attacks I've mentioned. In later scenes, when the blob has grown big enough to cover the whole town, it's kind of, not bad, just non-threatening. In several shots, the actors are placed in front of blue screens and the blob is added later.

The film's casting is fine. It's always nice to see late Second City founder Del Close, here playing the town priest, who becomes integral to a sub plot that sets up a sequel. And while I want to give Russell and Co., points for trying with Joe Seneca as an evil government scientist, I just can't. Seneca played the Devil in the Walter Hill/Ralph Macchio vehicle "Crossroads", but he's basically a nice old man, too nice and too old to be a palpable threat.

This disc has no features save for some trailers, for "The Blob", as well as "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" and a couple others.

"The Blob" was shot in 1.85:1, and looks as good as it has a right to. If John Carpenter had directed this movie and the DVD looks the way this one does, I'd cry foul, yell that it's too bright in some scenes, too soft in others, demand a reissue. I don't have the will to complain too strongly about this one.

Style-wise, Russell does okay. It's mostly efficiently stylish in the way you'd expect from an 80s horror film directed by a guy who directed one of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" movies, and he gets in plenty of Spielbergian beams of light shot through fog in the dark.

As far as the sound goes, it's in 2.0 English, Spanish and French. You can hear each option clearly.

You know, I've run out of stuff to write about this 80s "Blob". The thing with horror films is that people who like them will even see the bad ones, but people who hate them won't even see the good ones. If you like them, you'll like this one okay. If you don't like them, you wouldn't have read this far.