My daughter’s staying with me for the month of July, and we can’t wait to see the upcoming upcoming Blob Festival here in Phoenixville. It’s the weekend of July 15.
We watched the movie, and it’s a trip. I hadn’t seen it since I was her age, a crummy pan and scan broadcast on TV. So it was a treat to see it remastered and in its full glory on the Criterion DVD.
Steve McQueen was 28, playing a teenager.
This movie did so many things that you see as tropes in other movies since — the question mark at the close of the movie “The End ?” for example. Also, it may be the first horror movie to pull the little postmodern trick of having people getting attacked in a theater during another horror movie. (Pre-Scream!) Also, now that I’ve seen the new War of the Worlds, I can’t help but think Spielberg’s rendition of the cellar scene was in part inspired by an exposure to the cellar scene in The Blob — the menacing red stuff at the cellar window seems just too similar in some respects, and the claustrophobic feeling of being in a cellar of a structure that’s enveloped by something unspeakable that devours human blood. I don’t recall a scene like that in the original novel or the older versions of the film, but I could be wrong (and I’m too lazy to look it up right now).

At any rate, here are some links about the upcoming Blob Festival, and other info related.

• Phoenixville, Pennsylvania – Blobfest – Theater Panic Re-enactment
• Blog writeup on 2005
• 2 Camels writeup for 2005
• The definitive blob info site
• Colonial Theater History
• Info on Blobfest 2002
• The movie playing during the infamous Blob Theater scene.