Johnny Shaw: one, the blob is pretty scrotal. Like it's
Jay: Hahaha
Johnny Shaw: like it's not it's not a it's not a jelly.
Jay: And it's a character in this movie the blob is a character in this movie. It's it's you know
Johnny Shaw: It it is. The blob is a character, but I'm saying like if you have a model for what it was, it's not like jelly or whipped cream or cool whip or whatever. It's
Jay: Getting the title right first time. Welcome to Crowdpleasers, the podcast about B movies. There are no other podcasts like in the world, really, about anything. it's Us and Serial. Is Serial still a thing? I don't know. Anyway, I'm Jay, that's Johnny, and today we're talking about Blobs. plural. We're talking about the 1958 original, we're talking about the 1980s remake, and in between that, we're talking about the sequel. And a movie about stuff called The Stuff. So here we go. Right. The Blob. Now. was thinking about this for whole 10 minutes yesterday and I just like that in the warm up episode you did a whole thing about B movies being street food and comparing art to food and cooking and we're starting really with a story just about a sailor who's wandering into town and just wants some street food.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah. thing is like I I I'll start by saying like the I s fr I remember first seeing this movie and I saw it on again, dating myself in Innumerable ways. I saw it on a black and white television. And so in my mind's eye, it's always in black and white. And I know the movie's
Jay: Mmm.
Johnny Shaw: in color. I know it's in color. But I s like when I think of it, it's in black and white. And then seeing this, whatever was the recent print, I think it's a Criterion Collection thing. And It's it was absolutely gorgeous and the color is s an essential part of it. so it's
Jay: Colors are great.
Johnny Shaw: nice that I mean it's a really, really pretty print,
Jay: So I first saw the 58 blob, I can remember it. It wasn't even one of my late night specials on channel four. I saw this at my grandparents' house on a Sunday afternoon. If I'd go out to my grandparents on a Sunday, they would sit and watch Westerns. That's what they did. They'd sit and watch whatever John Ford Western was on TV that day. But this, remember, just vividly remember an afternoon when for whatever reason the blob was on at like 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. So that was my introduction to it.
Johnny Shaw: How old were you? How old were you when you saw it?
Jay: 12, 13 I want to say. was,
Johnny Shaw: Okay, perfect age, perfect age.
Jay: I mean we'll get to, because my first awareness of the blob would have been the 88 one. But we'll get to that.
Johnny Shaw: Okay.
Jay: We've got context. Movies like, since we're talking about movies that exist within an ecosystem of other movies, with B movies. 1958, the big movies, you've got things like South Pacific, The Vikings, Vertigo, I think the best Dracula movie, the very first Christopher Lee one was 1958. And speaking of color, obviously a big thing about that movie was the first time you saw blood in a Dracula movie like Bright Red Blood. And the fly, just if we're gonna compare what other kind of B movies were we looking at at the time. We have the fly.
Johnny Shaw: But the fly is the same year.
Jay: Yeah, 58, 58. Directed by Irwin. Yeoworth Jr. who's an interesting guy who went on to build theme park rides. That's fun. Written by Theodore Simonson and Kate Phillips. So written by a woman. I didn't mean to sound surprised as I did then. A woman wrote a script? What? And produced by Jack Harris who I'm sure we will come back to. So we know how we both saw it. Let's talk about the movie.
Johnny Shaw: Well, I think the one one of the main influences of this movie that is probably because it's non gen well, kind of genre, you s I I feel like I saw a lot of Rebel Without a Cause in it. And I don't know because even though everyone compares it, if you read about it, they're gonna tell you that it's like nineteen fifties paranoia, the bomb, the cold war. It's kinda not what's happening in the story. It's actually about the youth not being listened to And this is actually true in the sequel as well, where the youth not being listened to by the older generation. And it's it's it feels like it's much more about that than the and so it's kind of in a way combining these two subgenres. Because Run Without a Cause it's borderline B movie itself. Like in in terms of being the you know, teenage that's not quite a delinquent movie, but like that kind of movie combined with the misunderstood youth combined with with a monster. You put a monster in it. You know. So it's interesting to see that influence whereas where I was expecting to see kind of much more like, is it, you know, trying to think about it, is it like just a version of them or one of those other giant monster monster movies that was happening during the fifties?
Jay: Yeah, I think you're right. It really does feel more like that kind of youth rebellion, youth not being listened to kind of movie that just happens to be a monster movie, which is fun, right? It's not, I mean, it is a monster movie and it's almost like the movie split into two halves because the pacing is weird, I found going back.
Johnny Shaw: it's yeah, it's it's fantastic that it's not saved the cat and it's not the like because the the eighty-eight is like a UCLA. This happens, this happens, this h it's like already we're at that place where the structure of it is is predictable. The blob shows up at fifteen minutes, this happens at at twenty seven minutes or whatever. Like it it's very, very structured. Whereas this one, the blob hits the ground running, blob meteor like very quickly. on the hand and then no blob for a long time. And right right, right. And so it becomes about that disaffected youth. It becomes about the fact that that I don't even know if that was a word, that like the it about the youth not being listened to. It becomes much more about Not the relationship. There's almost no like characterization in the movie. That's not an insult. There's also strangely not a lot of humor in it. It's almost humorless. other than the events that are happening. the f
Jay: I noticed that the humor, there's moments, and again, we'll get to the later blog, but there's moments in this one when the humor happens and then goes away again. There's a bit when Mouch Miller, by the way, the best character name, I think, in cinema history,
Johnny Shaw: Absolutely.
Jay: they find kind of the kissing couple, they say, I'm sorry, we're looking for a monster. You have those little flashes of it, and I think that's
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: probably what we remember it for, but then that's not what the movie is.
Johnny Shaw: No, it's pla I mean it's it is the it's important when you make a B movie to play it straight. It isn't till and I'm I'm gonna talk about this a bunch later, about the rise of the horror comedy, which kind of doesn't exist in the 70s and then kinda shows up in the eighties. And and is there. There's a there's a ton of them. the seventies is gonna be something more like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and it's not gonna be actually scary, it's gonna be more a straight comedy. It's gonna be Love at First Bite or something like that. That's in the horror genre, but there's no attempt to scare you. And then you get to things like Return of the Living Dead or Fright Knight or or things that are combining comedy and horror in a much more interesting way. so
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: here, if you're gonna make a low-budget movie and you want people to take you seriously, there's no winking at the camera. It's it's played very, very straight everyone. It has surprisingly good acting.
Jay: To be fair, Steve McQueen was playing a character called Steve, so I don't know how much acting went into it.
Johnny Shaw: yeah, and I and and within limits, I'm I'm not saying it was like the greatest pr I think it's actually interesting if you look at all the movies we watched and you look at the like what the origin story of the blob is. So in this case, in the first movie, it's a meteor. Which means it's not like nuclear testing or it's not one of those things. It's this thing from outer space. It's not whereas like them and was a lot of the giant animal movies was bec Godzilla, whatever, is bec they're kinda man made, which spoiler alert for the the remake, we we think it's a meteor. wahwa.
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: then we go. I absolutely think Beware the Blob handles this the best. I think the sequel is a guy brings a canister home. He's apparently some kind of scientist. He's supposed to leave the canister in the freezer, and he wants to get drunk, so he leaves it on the counter. Then blob. I mean, come on. Come on. Because it. I know. We'll get to it, but what I'm saying is like, and
Jay: Yeah, yeah, I have an issue with that. I have an issue with that movie. We'll do it. We'll cover it. We'll get to it.
Johnny Shaw: then you compare them, and then even the stuff is just like, hey, there's some stuff on the ground. Like. And they start eating it. I mean it's fantastic. So if
Jay: That's that yeah, well I'll cover that as well. But yes, yes I
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: mean I suppose it's so and you're already touching on but a fun thing watching the 58 movie for me is how it kind of it exists outside of what my Perception of like the timeline of B movies was like everything you've outlined there the atomic threat and this and that and you know The movie just seems to exist completely outside of that even though it is one of the most influential of its kind really, you it's It created something. But it's not what that movie almost isn't how we talk about B movies of the era.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, I think some of that is and this is something that I think is gonna be interesting to talk about the eighties, but I think what is stunning about this movie in a way is is when we get to the eighties and you s and you have some of this earlier on where the effects are the star. Like where like you in the and in the fifties into the sixties you ha you have Ray Harryhausen and you have like effects movies that nobody's going to see the Sinbad movies for the acting. Or Jason and the Argonauts. They're going to see it because of the spectacle, because of the effects. And that continues into the eighties and when like by the time Fangoria is around in like late seventies, it's you're starting to see a straight effects movies that that's the star of the movie. I think that combined with I mean honestly, Steve McQueen helped this movie stay alive. He he's a he's a major star. That is in this small movie and it's an early role. So if it was somebody else, if it was Sal Minio, I think the movie might have gone away.
Jay: Also when I was reading up on the history of it, I think it does something fun. When we look at the logistical role of B-movies, being the secondary feature that you could tack on to things.
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: It had its initial life, but then there were a couple of times in the 60s when they reused it and it would be tacked on to something else, which again helps to keep it alive. And I'm sure Steve McQueen is part of that. But yeah, it's just fun that the movie can kind of have a longer life and certainly longer than... than a movie will have now when it's just like it's in the theater for a week and then it's streaming. But it can just get reused like twice a decade for a while as this additional, well we have to have a B feature. Well we've got this one in the drawer, let's just shove it on, it's cheap. You know, it's fun, it's fun.
Johnny Shaw: Right. Or you can do exactly what they do in the movie. It's like, it's a midnight what do they call it in the movie? Like it's a midnight monster show or whatever. Like th that you can put two or three of these together and then you you know, you have a show at the movie theater. Or you can yeah, Second Run is another aspect of any movie. A lot of times the theater would own it, you know. and they would just play it whenever they could. because nobody's nobody's
Jay: And it.
Johnny Shaw: gonna be bummed out when the blob comes on. They're gonna be
Jay: Yeah, well you get the music at beginning which again sets up a kind of movie that it isn't. You know, get that fun song marketing basically, but you get the pop song.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah. You get a pop song written, co-written by Bert Baccarat. and that's that's true. That's absolutely true. that that sets a tone that, yeah, is is not what the movie is. I find that absolutely f it's it's so catchy. and
Jay: Yep. Yep.
Johnny Shaw: then they don't use the song in the sequel, which is named or what one of the titles is the song.
Jay: Yeah, exactly. ignore it. And we'll almost one day when we do the Meg or the Megs, I don't know if we do both, but...
Johnny Shaw: I don't know if we do.
Jay: It almost reminds me of the trailer for the Meg when it came out. It had a fun kind of summer pop song that sold everyone on this idea of this wonderful cheesy carnage movie. And then you go and watch the movie and the first one, they kind of play it straight. And you sit there and this isn't what the trailer sold me. And I think the blob does that a little bit, but not the trailer, like within its own bounds.
Johnny Shaw: Right, but it has to. I mean it has to play it straight. It doesn't work if it's if it's goofy. Like it's genuinely probably this and the and the remake. I mean th th the remake probably works the best as a horror movie. Just as a horror movie. I would say I'm not gonna rank them, but I think my favorite is the original. I think there's a charm to it. I think there's I think there's other things happening in it. And I do like the weird pace of it rather than the predictable pace of it. Even though the remake which we will get to subverts tons of tropes, purposefully, it still has a c fairly familiar shape.
Jay: And the first one feels more like a hangout movie as well. like the, you you've got the kids not being listened to, but you've also, you've got the scene when the cop is kind of catching him racing backwards and then they have a bit of a back and forth in the car. And it just, it's like a hangout vibe. You've got the authority figure and the rebellious kid like teasing each other.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: You know, it's just fun.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, we I mean they're setting it up like Rebel Without a Cause, like where it's like, these kids are gonna they're gonna play chicken or they're gonna do this thing and they go they go through it and they have the chase and the police show up. And then they're all just like pals. And you're like, no, they're just pals. They they're they're
Jay: Yeah, yeah, no.
Johnny Shaw: like, hey, let's go get those guys. You mean those guys that were just like giving you a hard time? Yeah, let's go get them. They'll help. Like, you know, come on. Yeah, they do.
Jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they do, they do.
Johnny Shaw: Because Mooch Mooch Miller, you can always you can always rely on Mooch Miller.
Jay: Mouch Miller is like, he's the hero of the town needed, you know?
Johnny Shaw: also this is this is such just not even a pertinent, but I'm just looking at my notes and I wrote it down. I am I am preconditioned to like any movie that has animated electricity or lightning. And I I it's Highlander, Big Trouble in Little China. I don't care. If it's if it's animated, 2D animated lightning, A plus, top of the list. Love it. And so when they try to shock it and I see that, I'm like, nope, that's but that's the best.
Jay: Highlander was when my brain went straight away with that, was Highlander.
Johnny Shaw: Amazing, amazing. And and so here, because the practical effects using 2D, I mean you can s you can kind of see how they do stuff. They do they have a couple miniatures, but not a ton. And they're using other kind of layered effects, or they're just running it over a picture of something, or like running some goo over a picture of the movie theater. It's fantastic. But the illusion is always there. I In my mind's eye it coming through the vent is always like a big a big thing.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: You're just like 'cause to me a big part of horror, like horror the the entire genre is about trying to escape the inescapable. Like you create a situation where it it's seemingly inescapable, it's seemingly so big, you're stuck in a cabin in the woods or an island or wherever you can't get away or in your dreams or wherever it is, somewhere you can't escape. That's at the heart of horror in a lot of ways. And so it's creating like that moment it goes through the vents, you're like, you're screwed.
Jay: got certain memories from when I was younger of like defining moments of watching things and this is one of them the blob because there's just And and even rewatching it. It's not quite what my memory was, but it's close enough of the scene at the doctor's place when when the nurse is in And then firstly the doctor just like you stand there and don't move I'll be back stand there and don't move which is a bit unfair Just stay there, it's all right. And then for whatever reason, she trips and falls. I think I wouldn't trip and fall if there was a monster, like I'd be checking where I put my feet, but she trips and falls. And then she's just dead. And like my youthful memory of it and the impact on me was just a scene of like, you can do that? Like she's just, this is a character with dialogue. Like she's a character who exists and... you know, and then suddenly she's gone off screen. I don't know why I just clicked and destroyed the microphone. And suddenly it's like she's gone off screen like brutally, know, like brutally in terms of the speed and the
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. And nobody ever s says anything about her. From not never meant like the doc, like they're worried about the doc. But like, nope,
Jay: did the doctor really do anything to check? I mean, at that point, he didn't really have anything to tell him. Oh, that thing definitely ate her. He just sees like the shadow of this thing and then starts shooting at it and just assumes that, oh, well, that's what's happened. She's been eaten by this blob thing that I've never seen.
Johnny Shaw: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he doesn't go he absolutely doesn't go and check. I do like that they do this thing toward the end. This is fantastic because this is way before the like kind of well actually crowd, like of people that need the details. They make it a point to say, you know, make sure to get the CO two fire extinguishers. We can only use the CO2 fire extinguishers. Because it felt like it was almost in response to being like someone saying, Well, actually, fire extinguishers actually aren't cold. They're use compound that you know what like they're like, nope, nope, these do. Shut up, shut your mouth.
Jay: knew it.
Johnny Shaw: we we know what w we know what we're talking about. We we research this.
Jay: So they've figured out part way through the movie, as we did, that cold can stop it. And to go to your point about kind of the inescapable element in horror, is it's almost like a lot of this strand of horror has to basically just do the H.G. Wells thing, right? Of we can't even ultimately save ourselves from it. We have to be saved by an element. There has to be something else. We can't do it ourselves. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: Right, we're or we can get away from it. We can it can we can get off the island or whatever whatever that looks like. the or we sacrifice ourselves. We or it's the thing. Like it's we lost,
Jay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: but it'll get well, I guess you're right, then it's frozen. It's a lot of things are frozen. There's a lot of stuff
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: in the freezing. You don't wanna go to the freezing.
Jay: Can you imagine? It's like you've got the warehouse from the end of Razors, right? If you just keep going and kind of turn right at the end, there's a big freezer there that's just full of all the other stuff, you know.
Johnny Shaw: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Just don't yeah, don't go to the refrigerated section. Like that's just the that's the
Jay: Yeah,
Johnny Shaw: that's the worst part. I I
Jay: So speaking of, so they freeze it never to be seen again until like a decade later.
Johnny Shaw: Although I and I do I had I did not research this because obviously I don't do that much research. it that I believe this is one of the definitely within horror, one of the very early the end question marks. Like I can't think of a movie that the I don't know if there's a history of the end question mark, but
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: I it's the earliest use I can think of in a movie.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: And it's it and that has that playful tone.
Jay: Yeah, well, I was thinking that because to go back to something else we talked about in the warm up episode that I think an important part of B movies as we see them is knowing your audience. But then this movie is an interesting one because it kind of it's almost like it created an audience. You know what mean? So it's like I think people come out
Johnny Shaw: For sure.
Jay: of that movie like wanting a kind of a movie that didn't exist before that movie existed. And that playful ending is part of it. That ties into the more the comedy idea of the movie and the playful idea of the movie that the movie by and large isn't but you come out of it then thinking, that was fun I don't want to do that again.
Johnny Shaw: It's almost like a c it's it's almost like asking the audience, you know. Do you want do you want us to bring this back? It's not like the sequel didn't exist, Son of Kong and all the different Draculanism, but like they people were, you know, it's still a business. And so is like, hey, you guys like this? We can make all we s we still got a big jar of jelly, you know, like we can we'll this stuff does not go bad. I mean it doesn't smell good,
Jay: It's in the freezer, right?
Johnny Shaw: but we'll we'll you know we'll throw it on a couple actresses and nobody'll know the difference. Like we'll, you know.
Jay: Yeah, we won't be able to afford Steve McQueen next time, but we can do it again.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, well yeah.
Jay: You
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, we get horse buckles and everyone's happy.
Jay: So 1970... I should have looked... 1972.
Johnny Shaw: Two. Seventy two.
Jay: Beware the Blob. I like the main version of the title. It's Beware, Slammer the Blob. I do like that. So it's not
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay: like a Hammer Horror, Dracula-like Beware the Blob. It's more like Beware the Blob.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, why? the blob. Yeah, it's it's like a call and response.
Jay: I love that about the film. Directed by Larry Hagman, which
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: created a tagline that was used in some of marketing of the film that JR shot.
Johnny Shaw: That would have been later.
Jay: Yeah, sure that must have been... Yeah, yeah.
Johnny Shaw: J Jr was shot in like nineteen eighty something.
Jay: This is why you're here, right? To correct the historical record.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, you didn't have He was he was coming off of like I dream a genie at this point.
Jay: yeah, yeah, yeah. Still an interesting career move. Now, something that I haven't looked up at all. I remember taking the note down and thinking, I was going to look that up, but why not just admit that I haven't looked it up and roll with it instead? So written by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods III, produced by Anthony Harris and Jack Harris. We didn't talk about Jack Harris, actually, so let's do it now. I wonder if Anthony and Jack are related, is this like a family thing?
Johnny Shaw: It's got it's probably his son. I literally have no idea. I'd I never
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: care about producers 'cause they're just the money guys. I know writers, I know who the camera operator was was on this movie. because it's Dean Cundy. He shot all of Carpenter's movies. He
Jay: Come on.
Johnny Shaw: shot Back to the Future. Like he's
Jay: did he work on Darkstar?
Johnny Shaw: I think he starts on Halloween. I'm sorry. He starts
Jay: Okay.
Johnny Shaw: on Halloween. He shot Big Trouble in Little China. He shot The Fog. He shot Back to the Future. He shot Hooframe Roger Rabbit. Like he's a he's not a small I might be confusing people, but he shot all the carpenter things. He's like a major dude.
Jay: Because Jack Harris, the producer on the sequel, we didn't mention for the first one, but he was an important part of the first one. He's the
Johnny Shaw: yeah.
Jay: one who kind of packaged it and then sold it on for bigger money to someone else. He comes back to produce the sequel. He goes on to produce, or to distribute, to buy and distribute Darkstar.
Johnny Shaw: Okay, so there's all li that th this is why I like this movie and why why we're talking about it. Because one of the things when I was a kid growing up and when I or y a as I was starting to decide that I wanted to be working in film, it was always important for me to sit through and watch the credits because the credits were always like all of these people were paid To work on this movie. It was it was this reminder that this is a job. But it was also when you start watching movies and when you start looking at those credits, the links you see become really evident of people working with the same people over and over again, or and this one, because Larry Hagman just had all his buddies show up, has got it's got a ridiculous cast. But it it also is not a bad time capsule of kind of hippie culture where r
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: rather than like somebody looking back and dressing people as hippies, they just put a bunch of hippies in it. There's a couple like kind of beatnics or whatever, like they there are some comedic hippies, but for the most part, it's just it God, if if the first half hour wasn't so terrible, it could have been a good movie.
Jay: The funny thing, it's funny that you mentioned the time capsule, beatnik hippie element, because one of the first thoughts I had rewatching this last week, this week, whenever it was, rewatching this, was that this is like a Ross Mayer movie without the Nazi paraphernalia and the boobs. It just feels like that's all that's missing to make it a Ross Mayer movie. You know, if at some point some woman dressed in a skin tight outfit, like, was running down the side of a road and then you cut to an old man wearing a Nazi hat whipping someone, I'd be like, we've got Russ Meyer people. It feels like exactly that time, but slower. It doesn't have the pace of some of those movies.
Johnny Shaw: I yeah, I think it I I think it's going, much like those movies, it's going for this like comedy horror thing. I think it does, and at times it actually gets close. I just think tonally it it's just too all over the place and it never settles in. It again and and the beginning is is all everything with I mean, I love Godfrey Cambridge and but like everything with him, he's obviously just ad-lipping lines. There's like an hour and a half of a woman opening a tunican. I it it you're just like that was your take. Like one one, why did you put it in? But also that was the take you were gonna use that she she's struggling to open this. I don't know, maybe it's funny. I I have no idea. But the beginning it just it drags and drags and drags. And that but then once it gets going, it's actually a decent blood. All the stuff in the bowling alley's good, the
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: kind of end is good. There's some there's some genuinely funny parts. there's things that do
Jay: I can't
Johnny Shaw: work in it. The f the effects are pretty nice.
Jay: Yeah, but the effects are interesting. This is, and we'll come more to like the blob itself as an entity, as a character in the remake, but this one feels like a middle step in the, I mean, in the first one, the blob's this kind of slow moving thing that just gets bigger and bigger. This one, like we see it moving more within the shot, right? We see it kind of grabbing onto things and doing things, and it feels more like it has more of a personality here. It's more of a, almost more of a character. in this movie, like you see them kind of figuring that out in the movie, I think in real time.
Johnny Shaw: Right. Yeah, yeah. I I I I also this is not it's not they watch a scene from the blob in this movie. which means it's you know, that's either it's meta, but it's but it is a part of when you make remakes that there's a there's it's the Easter egg thing. It's casting certain like you just watched whatever, the new masters of the universe and like Dolph Lundgrid shows up and there's this like kind of nod to the past. The and it's not like that was new. I mean I well, it's a movie we'll never watch, which is the remake of well maybe we will because the original's a B movie, but the remake the seventies remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which has, you know, what's his name? Kevin McCarthy in it screaming you're next at the begin like it's almost like a direct from the end of the one into the other. That nod, or having Don Siegels in it too, that having those like acknowledgments of the past is kind of become a part of making remakes or making si you know, to acknowledge w the the original. but in this case it's just yeah, I mean it's there. It is an acknowledgement, but then you You know, you made this.
Jay: And this one exists, I think, in an interesting time because the 50s one kind of, it's got the youth rebellion thing, right, not being listened to. It's literally got a red menace, right? So you you can't think, okay, I can kind of place it. This one, there's a lot going on in the 70s that this movie, don't really think is, that it almost exists as almost counterculture to the fact that a lot of movies in the 70s were starting to deal with deep topics, you know, and.
Johnny Shaw: Right, but but it it actually does share that same like nobody's listening to the youth
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: theme does run through this one as well. It's the whatever, here here's here's the here's the connection
Jay: That's true. That's true. With a little twist of...
Johnny Shaw: to Masters of the Universe. The what's it the the actress the that's playing the woman that's plays the Courtney Cox's mother in the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe. That's Chris Pine's
Jay: I didn't connect that. I didn't connect that.
Johnny Shaw: mom.
Jay: it.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, Gwen Guilford, is her name. I mean that that's the thing, is like here's the people that are in this movie, if you haven't seen it. Godfrey Cambridge, Burgess Meredith, Larry Hagman does showed up. Garrett Graham, if you're a fan of the movie Used Cars, he shows up. He's in the gorilla suit. Cindy Williams, television Shirley from Laverne and Shirley. A very wacky Shelley Berman, who's a comedian, he's the barber. A a c a scene that just has no function, him being weird. The great Richard Stahl, who is just a character actor, Dick Van Patten, who was in every movie at the time. this I only know who Randy Stonehill is, because he I wrote a book about Christian music and he's a major like Christian music guy. He plays the musician hippie, wrote some songs for it. But yeah.
Jay: There's actually another connection there. Erwin Yeworth Jr. who directed the first one
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: went on to be like, he was really big in Christian music and Christian music.
Johnny Shaw: really?
Jay: The whole second half of his life was taking people on tours to like Jordan and Israel and building theme parks there and theme park rides there. And he was directing, like he would do videos for... Graham, the older Graham, whose name, I always get the superstar Billy Graham mixed up with the pasta, but the pasta one. does. So that's
Johnny Shaw: Sure.
Jay: an interesting connection that I literally didn't make until you mentioned it there, but.
Johnny Shaw: No, no, th there's that. There's I really like Tiger Joe Marsh, who was a wrestler at the time, like the big Turk guy who like he he and the guy I don't know the actor's name, the guy who played Black Samson. If you if we ever do Black Exploitation, that's a good one. And then did you spot Sid Haig? Sid Haig shows up. But I think I think it's I say I say all those names because that's when we talk about Corman, that's what we talk about. All these people who got their start, you know, Demi or Couple or whatever that and and that that's a that's a big thing that is important about B movies. Is that this is where people can get we you know, you're we're working maybe for less, it's non-union, it's a bunch of there's a bunch of different reasons, but it creates opportunities for people to gain experience. So someone
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: like like Dean Coody like shooting this or being the camera op is like this could be his first movie, it's a definitely an early one, it's before he's a cinematographer. Without B movies, where does he get that opportunity? So when you're making movies, you rarely care whether they're good or bad. When you're doing your job, you care about you. Doing your job well, knowing that if everyone does their job well, you'll make a good movie.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: I'm gonna I I'm thinking might have been the one of the Cohen brothers, so I'm just gonna paraphrase. But he basically said, like, and this is true if you've ever made films, just getting a movie made is is so incredibly difficult to get a a film finished. Making it good feels impossible.
Jay: And then the other thing is to kind of go with what you're saying there, when you're making movies on any level, you've got that, there's that inbuilt horror thing of like the things you can't escape, like, you you're losing daylight, you know, and on a big budget movie, so what, you'll just come back in the next day.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: On a small budget movie, if you don't get the shot, you don't get the shot. That's it.
Johnny Shaw: Right, and it it ultimately just fell because it kinda got stuck between comedy and satire and horror like it didn't it couldn't there's good stuff in it. People are capable, the the performances for the most part are fine. You know, it's it's gonna be called a bad movie, but it the i i th I don't believe in that good and bad. Like there's there is stuff worth looking at in it that I I think are are for sure worthwhile.
Jay: I know we both have similar feelings about the whole, you know, so bad it's good kind of vibe and, you know, like, it feels cruel to a large degree. I'm of a generation who grew up in the wake of, I'll name it, Mystery Science Theatre, you know, and I you would have seen like, like the start of it, you know.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah yeah.
Jay: Just the whole thing of like poking fun at movies, which just like people set out to make a movie, it doesn't always work, but people trying their best.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah and and And I love Mystery Science Theater. I don't because it's that's just a that's just comedy take. It's like it's like chatting with your friend about it, and they can be very funny. but there is there, yeah, there is it's it's also like, God, it's just fish in a barrel at times. It's like there's Mystery Science Science Theater, people that think they're mystery science theater are like a drag. Mystery science theater is fine, they're actually genuinely funny. That just making the obvious jokes or just looking at old they're thinking old. Technology is funny. You know, it's just
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: like all that kind of stuff. It's like there's come on, it's it's even and I'll I'll call beware of the blob. It's art. It's art. You have to do some of the work. You have to be like you have to look at it and appreciate it either in its historical context or you have to find things to like about it. I remember I had a professor I I when I was a film student, when I was an undergrad. I'm a Ed Branagan. Edward Brannigan. He's a major film theory guy. And you could put anything in front of Edward Branigan, and he'd have something to talk about. He'd be like, you know, he you would just show him it didn't matter what you showed. I show him Beware the Blob, and he'll say, There's a fascinating use between the non diagetic. and the dead diegetic sound within these scenes. Whatever. He he just and so one point, I think it was my buddy Lee. we we we were talking they were he was just really great guy. Very mad scientist, like crazy gray hair and walking. He'd go every day to a place called Smart Cookie and get his daily cookie. We saw him walking one time. We were like, hey Ed you going to get your cookie? He just looked at us with wide eyes and he's just like, I'm gonna get a cinnamon roll today. that's the kind of guy he was. He's fantastic.
Jay: you
Johnny Shaw: so but but Lee asked him he's like, is there a movie? you don't like? Is it just because you always seem to find like you'll you'll go to the music or the performance or way, just you'll find something in it to like. And he just looked at us kind of dead eyed and he just said the horror of party beach. And then that was it. He
Jay: Yeah
Johnny Shaw: did no no absolutely no explanation.
Jay: You
Johnny Shaw: just with absolute hate for that movie. Like just whatever his relationship or what happened while he was watching that movie. And I was like, my in my mind it was like, that movie ain't so bad. Like what anyway. that I feel like what we're doing is like I'm trying to be Ed Brandy. I'm trying to look at these films and do a little work because it's more fun to like something than to not like something. And so it's why not I'm not trying to, I don't I I'm past being able to be cool. So I'm I'm trying to actually just try and see what I can learn and see why I like movies or see why I like why I like what I like and why I don't some things don't read for me. The reason the beginning of this is doesn't work is just because it's boring. Boring and slow. Now I'll watch a slow movie if it's on purpose, but it's just boring. It's just you know.
Jay: Yeah, and they kill a cat. So I just, you
Johnny Shaw: I don't w I I I was gonna get to that. Well, they kill a dog, they kill a cat. They kill a l quite a few things it like animal wise.
Jay: Yeah, was, the minute the blob attacked the cat, was like, this movie's gonna have to work really hard with me now to get me back,
Johnny Shaw: To get you back.
Jay: you I mean, it is, well, was gonna say, fun's the wrong word, because I don't think this is a fun, certainly not on the level of the first one, but you can still see the ingredients.
Johnny Shaw: no, but it's the lightest of all of them.
Jay: Yeah, you can see all the ingredients, right? It's like,
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: this is the cooking, this is the meal that doesn't quite come together, but you can still find the flavors and the tastes that you like.
Johnny Shaw: And ultimately it's a film by a first time director, as far as I know. You know?
Jay: Yeah, I think so. think so.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah. I think it's the only thing he's directed. Well, I mean, obviously that wasn't a great calling card for the next project. Yeah.
Jay: Didn't get, yeah, taking that into meetings didn't help. But okay, so from here, there's a branch, it's almost like there's a branch in history that we'll come back to at some point later, I'm sure. But as I said, so this is after this, Jack Harris, who produced the first one, produced the second one, through connections that I don't know if it's made on this movie or otherwise, then kind of is the person that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon take Dark Star II.
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: He puts money in, makes them cut certain things, he makes them re-edit it, makes them change it, but anyway, so there's a whole branch in our lineage, in our history that will come back to a future date. But where this goes next, so I think we should probably, the next two movies are a companion piece to each other, but one of them does come first. So we should probably mention the stuff first.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, I I mean I I requested that the stuff be included, partly because I think it's the tonal bridge between Beware the Blob and the blob the eighty eight blob remake. It also precedes
Jay: Absolutely.
Johnny Shaw: the blob it's it's around eighty five, I think it comes out. And it's it it embraces satire in a in a way that I think i is interesting. It's pr story wise it's more invasion of the body snatchers. I think, but plot kind of wise. But it ha it's it's a movie about a goo. It's obviously the the the you know, the title, everything about it. It has it has a theme song, much like the original blob.
Jay: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.
Johnny Shaw: so it there are companions. It's still stuck in between and comedy a little. I don't think the tone or sat bec partly because it's trying to be a satire. I think there's a lot of good stuff in it. Michael Moriarty is j I mean, come on. Whatever like you see I'm just gonna
Jay: And that dude had range. When you look at his resume, you're like, that dude had range. was... Yeah. do you not? How do you not do
Johnny Shaw: We're for sure gonna do Q. It's we're gonna do Q. We're gonna I mean, th without question that's gonna happen.
Jay: So I guess, almost like, so this is written and directed by Larry Cohen. And I guess almost the pitch for it could kind of be, imagine if when the blob turned up, people picked it up and started eating it.
Johnny Shaw: it's
Jay: I love the opening. I just love because it says so much about us deeply, almost more than the rest of the movie. This old guy finds a white thing in the ground. Within seconds he's shoving it in his mouth to see what it tastes like.
Johnny Shaw: It's structurally fascinating in the same way. Like it hits the ground running and then and then it becomes like a story of s like corporate espionage. It has a fun cast too, again. that, you know, with Michael Moriarty and then Paul Ser Paul Servino and Danny Aello, who honestly looks like he's reading off cue cards, Garrett Morris shows up.
Jay: Anytime I Danny Aiello though, just think of Hudson Hawk. Like doesn't matter what else he's done, when
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: he's on screen, I'm picturing him singing with Bruce Willis.
Johnny Shaw: it it handles the kind of paranoia that even the original Blob doesn't quite have. Like it it is about this conspiracy. And that's the other thing. It's and the other movie that comes later, the eighty eight version, this is the first one where the blob isn't the only villain. Like where
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: there's the blob and then there's the the the Organizate like this, whatever, the the bad guys, right? So this one pre because this one precedes, that's why I wanted to talk about because this one precedes the remake, it does the same thing in a different way. Not in this in a slightly satirical way, but it it it does it in the same way. And so at that move Because like he destroys the blob and then there's still movie because he has to face the or get revenge on the two guys. Or the I'm sorry, I said the blob. The stuff completely different. Com
Jay: stuff. Stuff. Whole different thing, different colour. It's a different colour Johnny, it's a whole different thing.
Johnny Shaw: still tons of practical effects, still some
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: a just only a few miniatures at di but it's pretty clever in terms of how it handles it. And the fact that it's food and it kinda turns people in these like I don't know what they are. They're like zombie kind of things. Yeah.
Jay: It never really explains it, it doesn't need to, but you you get it, you get it. I think, mean, just to call out the things that don't quite work before I talk about the things I really like about the movie,
Johnny Shaw: Sure.
Jay: I think it's, you mentioned it kind of being similar to Beware the Blum, and I think it's, some, for kind of a whole chunk of the movie, it's very, it feels, it's got the same pacing issues, you know, it's got that same kind of tone when it can't quite settle on what it's gonna be. some of the but but along with that as much as sometimes the movie slows right down to focus on what it's kind of trying to do there's also times when they just speed up that i think the wrong plot bits like he he turns up and talks to this the the the the female character's name i'm forgetting pretending to be an oil billionaire, you know, and
Johnny Shaw: All right.
Jay: within seconds, you're like, they're on side with each other. And then the next time she pops up, she's one of the good guys. You know, I just think there's this kind of shortcuts taken there that I don't think quite work. But then the things to love about the movie, sort of like, I love the kid. precocious kids in movies can be a trap, but he's a smart kid.
Johnny Shaw: That kid's great.
Jay: He's a smart kid. And you see him figuring out in real time how to escape from his parents. You
Johnny Shaw: Yeah yeah.
Jay: just see smart choices that I think are really, good.
Johnny Shaw: Him g him getting in the tanker isn't the smartest choice. He does make that
Jay: No. No.
Johnny Shaw: J just saying, like he's not he's not flawless. yeah.
Jay: still a kid. And when you place this in its time, it feels very they live. It also feels a bit Robocopy with the
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: adverts and stuff. It's like an interesting companion piece to either of those movies as well. I think... If you can look past the pacing, if you can look past some of the limitations, I mean the scene in the recording booth at the end, you can tell that they're kind of editing together something that they just don't have. They just clearly didn't have the shots to make the scene.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay: If you can forgive all that, it's a really good, fun movie.
Johnny Shaw: It is. It's it's super fun.
Jay: I just love any time a movie is willing to let characters be smart and make smart decisions. know, I
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: mean, we see Michael Moriarty's character constantly being smart and figuring things out, you know. And even after the tanker crash at the end, when they've got the guy coming over and like that again, female character's name, I could have even looked this up since the last time I said, can't remember her name, kind of turns to the kid and just is like, pretend to eat and you just see them figuring out on screen a way to get
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: out of the situation that they're in. I just love scenes like that, know, just shows people being smart.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. I I I think it's I think it's a movie that's limited just by its budget. I don't think I think that and that's what I th those are the movies I admire. I always I mean, I don't know how you feel about this, but like I I it's it's kind of the punk rock is that I like I admire ambition. Like I
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: and the execution you get as far. Something that doesn't aspire to anything or doesn't really have high aspirations, and succeeds, that's fine, but it's just kind of like that's a well made you know, kind of mundane thing, but something that tries and doesn't quite get to a hundred percent of
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: the execution, but is trying, you can see that there's a lot of and Larry Cohen, like, you can go back and put like again, Q, we will of course watch, but like, I th I think he d I this it's it's a movie that's worth seeing, for sure. That because there's
Jay: There's a
Johnny Shaw: just so much interesting, cool stuff in it and it's kind of it's a mess, but that's what makes it great.
Jay: Yeah, and to go back to things that I ages ago now about like the big thing that you can't escape, even the ending, right? They get through it and then they get their revenge, but then it's gonna start being sold on the black market because human nature, know? So even then the threat isn't as much as the stuff is the threat. The threat is human nature there. The threat is just the fact that you can, you can't stop this from happening. The genie's out in the bottle. It's AI, it's whatever it is. know, it's...
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: It's out there now, you can't stop
Johnny Shaw: And and it throws it it throws a the end question mark at us. That's its nod.
Jay: Yeah, I mean, Larry Cohen knew what he was influenced by there, obviously. He
Johnny Shaw: But but
Jay: knows what he's making, which is interesting that then clearly he's influenced by the blob and then they, like a couple of years later, just make the blob again.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like the it wasn't the exploitation movie like you would expect where the blob just the remake of the blob came and he made the stuff a year later. It's not piranha or something like that or Death Race two thousand where you're responding to a successful movie with
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: your low budget version of the or not version but in the
Jay: Yeah, it was the other way around. It's basically, both of these, both this and the remake are obviously inspired by the blob.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: And the remake, which is the point historically, like this is where I come in, right? This is my first awareness as a kid of this whole thing. Context again, 1988 for movies. Die Hard, Scrooged, Action Jackson, Midnight Run, they live. Police Academy 5, which is at that point we can all agree that the Police Academy franchise has jumped the shark with Police Academy 5. know, it's nothing but quality until then.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, police academy jumped the shark about twenty minutes into the first movie.
Jay: For extra context, my cinema trips that year would have been Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Land Before Time. That's the level I was operating on when this movie came out. I would have seen it... maybe a year or so, but whenever it came to like home video rental, because I watched it, I remember watching it with one of my uncles, he rented it. So I saw this like in his bedroom, basically, when he rented the movie. And I'm still at this point, I'm still at the point when I just engage with movies like this as horror movies. I don't get that they're all so funny, right? This is the point when I still thought the 60s Batman was straight, This is still a level when I think Ghostbusters is just a straight movie about scientists who fight ghosts. It takes an extra
Johnny Shaw: Sure.
Jay: couple of years before you start to go, like, hold on. So that's where I first encountered this movie.
Johnny Shaw: Right. I I well I'll just start with my my my big bombshell take. I don't think it's a B movie.
Jay: you know, it's so funny. Cause when I said there's something I was going to ask, it's, I was going to ask if it was because I was looking it up and I don't know.
Johnny Shaw: No, it's it's the fly and the thing. It's the same it's in the same era. The fly and the thing aren't B movies. The remakes. They're remakes
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: of B movies. They honor those B movies. But this is a ten million dollar budget. And the only reason it's not more is because Kevin Dillon and his Diego Maradonawig is n is he's the star and they didn't pay for they didn't pay for a big star. yeah, they I appr I appre
Jay: dealings. They got the budget Matt Dillon, which is his brother.
Johnny Shaw: Right. They I appreciate that the money that is on the screen. I do appreciate that. But I mean it's got a bigger budget than Bull Durham, than Fish Called
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: Wanda. I mean there's plenty of movies that were made that aren't B movies that are like just but like for ten million and eighty eight to me is a is not a B movie.
Jay: Yeah, Batman, first Burton Batman, which comes out the following year, I think the budget on that was like 40 million. So
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: at this point, for people listening now, if we took like one of the Avengers movies and then said, well, okay, we're gonna talk about a movie that's like a quarter of that budget, we're still talking about a huge budget.
Johnny Shaw: Well, it's it this is a horror movie. Like I said, like Fish Called Wander is seven and a half million. Like that you know, that this is a horror movie. It's playing to a certain crowd. I th I think I think the money's on the screen. I th I'm impressed by that. But I don't think there's any way Like I just can't it's it's not just the b it's not the budget. Like I said, it's it's got this Hollywood shape. Like the f like I like the fly and the thing. They're amazing and I like this movie, but they are not B movies. by my standards, we can we could of course argue that they're a movie remakes of B movies. that capture the spirit of those movies.
Jay: well, just very briefly to kind of put a cap on that bit. Yeah, because this was going to be my question because I was sitting trying to think about this earlier on as to do I think it's a B-movie or not? I think it does so many B-movie things, right? It's your point about influenced by or what point does something stop being
Johnny Shaw: For sure.
Jay: a B-movie? I think I could argue this both ways. mean, the budget probably just, the budget alone says no. But so much about it,
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, I
Jay: there's still the spirit of it, you know?
Johnny Shaw: yeah, I and I and it's not just the spirit of it, it's the it it I think it respects the original, but at the same time it subverts tons of tropes. Like it it kind of s gently psychos the main like we think this guy's gonna be the hero and then he he gets killed. It kills
Jay: and then he dead.
Johnny Shaw: it it kills a kid. I mean, that that that
Jay: Yeah, love that.
Johnny Shaw: kills Candy Clark, you know. She's it she's
Jay: yeah, yeah.
Johnny Shaw: in Q. Q comes back again. just saying, like, you can't you can't escape the movie Q.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, let's just talk about them. Because I mean, first things first, as much as this is one of those movies, I can crack jokes about this movie all day, you know, especially I can crack jokes like they couldn't afford Matt Dillon. So they went for the budget Matt Dillon, which was just
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: another Dillon, right? I can be cruel, but I also just unashamedly love this film. You know, I can't remove
Johnny Shaw: Good movie.
Jay: myself from when I first saw it. But I think also, it just goes for it, you know, from the beginning. And we've got the kind of save the cat-ish structure that you've talked about, you know, yes. It doesn't have the kind of free and experimental style of the earlier versions, you know, it's figuring things out as it goes. But I also just love how bold, it takes big swings that the character you think is the male lead and then he dies brutally and we watch him die.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: so many of the deaths, again, it's just fun that the one in the car with Erica, that's
Johnny Shaw: Eric Alaniac, yeah.
Jay: just brutal, brutal stuff. It keeps taking big, big swings, I think, right up to
Johnny Shaw: No it
Jay: the way that it subverts the original, you know, we've talked about it. This now is, it's a government created thing. it plays with that a little bit, it doesn't feel that straight away, it's not an alien, it's created by the
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: government.
Johnny Shaw: is it is it body horror?
Jay: I don't think, I think it skirts it. Again, it's a movie that skirts a whole bunch of things. I'm also like, body horror is one of the things I don't really go for.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah yeah, but I'm saying there's there's I mean one, the blob is pretty scrotal. Like it's
Jay: Hahaha
Johnny Shaw: like it's not it's not a it's not a jelly. It it is. The blob is a character,
Jay: it's a character in this movie the blob is a character in this movie. It's it's you know
Johnny Shaw: but I'm saying like if you have a model for what it was, it's not like jelly or whipped cream or cool whip or whatever. It's got little like art like it's it's much more it's more fleshy. Like it's more even though the the obviously the the phone booth thing is fantastic. 'cause she kinda like drowns in it. I mean it's like Candy Clark.
Jay: Loved the phone booth scene. Again, that's one of those moments where it just goes all in. You're like, where's the sheriff? Is the sheriff gonna help or is the sheriff gonna, no, no, the sheriff's dead.
Johnny Shaw: yeah. that the smash in the face of the the sheriff, that's fantastic. That's a it's a great moment. but it's yeah, it's it's gooey. It has that almost like video drumy kinda like yeah. It's kinda icky, you know.
Jay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: but it's also like it has it's the big monster in the water and and particularly in the water in the
Jay: and then again, kid dies, loved it, loved it. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: Right. It's a force of nature at some point. It's that they're trying to escape a tornado. But it's it's yeah, you get the sen you get the real sense that it's like a thinking being.
Jay: And the other thing is getting that certainly by the time we get to that point in the film when we're in the sewer, in the water, and it's just kind of the girl and the boy left for a moment. That was when it kind of thing. This is also like a post-aliens movie. Like this is riffing on Ripley in a way that obviously the previous movies didn't have that framework, you know?
Johnny Shaw: Right, for sure. Like in and again it it takes like a very familiar shape to me. Like the I could break it down structurally and it would it would hit its marks. That's happening a lot in the eighties and especially into the nineties. 'cause this is Frank Derabont, right? What
Jay: Yeah, Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell.
Johnny Shaw: It and Chuck Russell. Like is Chuck Russell UCLA? Like you do see a lot. I don't I don't know if they're UCLA or not, but UCLA has like where I went to grad school has a really structured program in that you see the people coming out of there and you see the shape of the movies in the eighties, nineties. And you can
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: you can kinda get a sense of who went to UCLA. I don't know if either of did.
Jay: Therabon's an interesting writer because he can, he's got a weird mix. He can be very, very sentimental or he can be very, very brutal. And he can kind of flip between the two. Even his, the mist has some very callous, brutal moments in it. He can just go for it that way sometimes.
Johnny Shaw: Right Jesus, yes. and he's y he's gotta be young writing this. And you could even see bits of the mist in this, like, you know, that for sure.
Jay: Yes, yeah, 100%. 100%. So big government conspiracy. They kind of blow the blob up in this one, but then it's gonna break up into those little fragments.
Johnny Shaw: They still freeze it.
Jay: The fun thing here is this one of sets up a sequel in a way that's then just never happened. know, like...
Johnny Shaw: yeah, and and it's Del Close who is in Beware the Blob. He's one of the hobos, yeah, with Burgess Meredith
Jay: Yeah, he's the hobo, Yeah, yeah.
Johnny Shaw: and Larry Hagman. Yeah, so he shows that he's the only connection I I think between any of and Del Close is the the the crazy reverend.
Jay: But it is fun, because I guess just to kind of start wrapping this bit up then, I think the remake of the blob feels like it's remaking what people remember the blob as and not what
Johnny Shaw: Well
Jay: the blob was, if that makes sense.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, it's it it knows the original but it's it's for sure modern and it's it's what I was saying, it's I think that it's one of those films where the effects are the star. There's it's all practical effects as far as I know. and they're fantastic. They're fantastic
Jay: Yeah, it has to be.
Johnny Shaw: throughout.
Jay: No, no, no cartoon lightning or anything in this one though. So that knocks it down. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: I know, I know. I think they dropped the ball because it's we're still in the window.
Jay: Yeah. Could still do it. Knocks it down. Knocks it down. I think the only other, the only other limiting thing to kind of tie back to the thing about the, the big threat that you can't escape is looking at it now in the continuum, looking across all of them. I think it loses something. At the point when we start to make it all about government conspiracies and self-created monsters, it loses a little bit of the elemental fear, I think, of the big unexplainable, inescapable thing,
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yep, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think the I think it takes
Jay: But.
Johnny Shaw: a while to get back to like the big monster movies. Which I've never
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: found scary. Like I don't find them scary like I find more intimate stuff scary. This one's
Jay: Yeah, I agree.
Johnny Shaw: this one I think is pretty effective from being a scary monster movie, which usually for me isn't that doesn't really work.
Jay: It's still, I think it's still small. A lot of the deaths are like small up close, you know, it manages to do both. manages to do both.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's right. It feels like a force in nature movie, like in terms of like something the thing you can't escape. It's it's whatever, it's it's a virus. That's scary.
Jay: And it's also cruel, a lot of the deaths are people who were just trying to do the right things sometimes, you know, like even...
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, it has well it has no judgment. That's why I say force of nature. It it's just
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: there. It's just if you're in its way, youink.
Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And as you said, we're not gonna rate them. But I guess, I
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: mean, the takeaway, think, from thinking about all of them is, I mean, I don't think anyone would waste any time by watching any of these movies. beware of the blob, you can't really watch in isolation, would be what I think. Like, you have to watch compared to the blob.
Johnny Shaw: Just start it at the twenty five minute point. You'll be fine.
Jay: Yeah, I think the stuff you can watch on its own, you don't have to know
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: the history. think, and then either the first blob or the remake, you can watch on their own. And all of them have stuff going for them to one degree or another.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. I don't like I mean I don't I don't care what other people watch. we're not I'm not recommending anything or not recommending anything. Watch movies. If you if you want to watch a movie,
Jay: It's taking no responsibility for this.
Johnny Shaw: no, I don't care. Like watch what you want.
Jay: That feels like an ending of an episode right
Jay: Hahaha
Johnny Shaw: like it's not it's not a it's not a jelly.
Jay: And it's a character in this movie the blob is a character in this movie. It's it's you know
Johnny Shaw: It it is. The blob is a character, but I'm saying like if you have a model for what it was, it's not like jelly or whipped cream or cool whip or whatever. It's
Jay: Getting the title right first time. Welcome to Crowdpleasers, the podcast about B movies. There are no other podcasts like in the world, really, about anything. it's Us and Serial. Is Serial still a thing? I don't know. Anyway, I'm Jay, that's Johnny, and today we're talking about Blobs. plural. We're talking about the 1958 original, we're talking about the 1980s remake, and in between that, we're talking about the sequel. And a movie about stuff called The Stuff. So here we go. Right. The Blob. Now. was thinking about this for whole 10 minutes yesterday and I just like that in the warm up episode you did a whole thing about B movies being street food and comparing art to food and cooking and we're starting really with a story just about a sailor who's wandering into town and just wants some street food.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah. thing is like I I I'll start by saying like the I s fr I remember first seeing this movie and I saw it on again, dating myself in Innumerable ways. I saw it on a black and white television. And so in my mind's eye, it's always in black and white. And I know the movie's
Jay: Mmm.
Johnny Shaw: in color. I know it's in color. But I s like when I think of it, it's in black and white. And then seeing this, whatever was the recent print, I think it's a Criterion Collection thing. And It's it was absolutely gorgeous and the color is s an essential part of it. so it's
Jay: Colors are great.
Johnny Shaw: nice that I mean it's a really, really pretty print,
Jay: So I first saw the 58 blob, I can remember it. It wasn't even one of my late night specials on channel four. I saw this at my grandparents' house on a Sunday afternoon. If I'd go out to my grandparents on a Sunday, they would sit and watch Westerns. That's what they did. They'd sit and watch whatever John Ford Western was on TV that day. But this, remember, just vividly remember an afternoon when for whatever reason the blob was on at like 2 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon. So that was my introduction to it.
Johnny Shaw: How old were you? How old were you when you saw it?
Jay: 12, 13 I want to say. was,
Johnny Shaw: Okay, perfect age, perfect age.
Jay: I mean we'll get to, because my first awareness of the blob would have been the 88 one. But we'll get to that.
Johnny Shaw: Okay.
Jay: We've got context. Movies like, since we're talking about movies that exist within an ecosystem of other movies, with B movies. 1958, the big movies, you've got things like South Pacific, The Vikings, Vertigo, I think the best Dracula movie, the very first Christopher Lee one was 1958. And speaking of color, obviously a big thing about that movie was the first time you saw blood in a Dracula movie like Bright Red Blood. And the fly, just if we're gonna compare what other kind of B movies were we looking at at the time. We have the fly.
Johnny Shaw: But the fly is the same year.
Jay: Yeah, 58, 58. Directed by Irwin. Yeoworth Jr. who's an interesting guy who went on to build theme park rides. That's fun. Written by Theodore Simonson and Kate Phillips. So written by a woman. I didn't mean to sound surprised as I did then. A woman wrote a script? What? And produced by Jack Harris who I'm sure we will come back to. So we know how we both saw it. Let's talk about the movie.
Johnny Shaw: Well, I think the one one of the main influences of this movie that is probably because it's non gen well, kind of genre, you s I I feel like I saw a lot of Rebel Without a Cause in it. And I don't know because even though everyone compares it, if you read about it, they're gonna tell you that it's like nineteen fifties paranoia, the bomb, the cold war. It's kinda not what's happening in the story. It's actually about the youth not being listened to And this is actually true in the sequel as well, where the youth not being listened to by the older generation. And it's it's it feels like it's much more about that than the and so it's kind of in a way combining these two subgenres. Because Run Without a Cause it's borderline B movie itself. Like in in terms of being the you know, teenage that's not quite a delinquent movie, but like that kind of movie combined with the misunderstood youth combined with with a monster. You put a monster in it. You know. So it's interesting to see that influence whereas where I was expecting to see kind of much more like, is it, you know, trying to think about it, is it like just a version of them or one of those other giant monster monster movies that was happening during the fifties?
Jay: Yeah, I think you're right. It really does feel more like that kind of youth rebellion, youth not being listened to kind of movie that just happens to be a monster movie, which is fun, right? It's not, I mean, it is a monster movie and it's almost like the movie split into two halves because the pacing is weird, I found going back.
Johnny Shaw: it's yeah, it's it's fantastic that it's not saved the cat and it's not the like because the the eighty-eight is like a UCLA. This happens, this happens, this h it's like already we're at that place where the structure of it is is predictable. The blob shows up at fifteen minutes, this happens at at twenty seven minutes or whatever. Like it it's very, very structured. Whereas this one, the blob hits the ground running, blob meteor like very quickly. on the hand and then no blob for a long time. And right right, right. And so it becomes about that disaffected youth. It becomes about the fact that that I don't even know if that was a word, that like the it about the youth not being listened to. It becomes much more about Not the relationship. There's almost no like characterization in the movie. That's not an insult. There's also strangely not a lot of humor in it. It's almost humorless. other than the events that are happening. the f
Jay: I noticed that the humor, there's moments, and again, we'll get to the later blog, but there's moments in this one when the humor happens and then goes away again. There's a bit when Mouch Miller, by the way, the best character name, I think, in cinema history,
Johnny Shaw: Absolutely.
Jay: they find kind of the kissing couple, they say, I'm sorry, we're looking for a monster. You have those little flashes of it, and I think that's
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: probably what we remember it for, but then that's not what the movie is.
Johnny Shaw: No, it's pla I mean it's it is the it's important when you make a B movie to play it straight. It isn't till and I'm I'm gonna talk about this a bunch later, about the rise of the horror comedy, which kind of doesn't exist in the 70s and then kinda shows up in the eighties. And and is there. There's a there's a ton of them. the seventies is gonna be something more like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and it's not gonna be actually scary, it's gonna be more a straight comedy. It's gonna be Love at First Bite or something like that. That's in the horror genre, but there's no attempt to scare you. And then you get to things like Return of the Living Dead or Fright Knight or or things that are combining comedy and horror in a much more interesting way. so
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: here, if you're gonna make a low-budget movie and you want people to take you seriously, there's no winking at the camera. It's it's played very, very straight everyone. It has surprisingly good acting.
Jay: To be fair, Steve McQueen was playing a character called Steve, so I don't know how much acting went into it.
Johnny Shaw: yeah, and I and and within limits, I'm I'm not saying it was like the greatest pr I think it's actually interesting if you look at all the movies we watched and you look at the like what the origin story of the blob is. So in this case, in the first movie, it's a meteor. Which means it's not like nuclear testing or it's not one of those things. It's this thing from outer space. It's not whereas like them and was a lot of the giant animal movies was bec Godzilla, whatever, is bec they're kinda man made, which spoiler alert for the the remake, we we think it's a meteor. wahwa.
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: then we go. I absolutely think Beware the Blob handles this the best. I think the sequel is a guy brings a canister home. He's apparently some kind of scientist. He's supposed to leave the canister in the freezer, and he wants to get drunk, so he leaves it on the counter. Then blob. I mean, come on. Come on. Because it. I know. We'll get to it, but what I'm saying is like, and
Jay: Yeah, yeah, I have an issue with that. I have an issue with that movie. We'll do it. We'll cover it. We'll get to it.
Johnny Shaw: then you compare them, and then even the stuff is just like, hey, there's some stuff on the ground. Like. And they start eating it. I mean it's fantastic. So if
Jay: That's that yeah, well I'll cover that as well. But yes, yes I
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: mean I suppose it's so and you're already touching on but a fun thing watching the 58 movie for me is how it kind of it exists outside of what my Perception of like the timeline of B movies was like everything you've outlined there the atomic threat and this and that and you know The movie just seems to exist completely outside of that even though it is one of the most influential of its kind really, you it's It created something. But it's not what that movie almost isn't how we talk about B movies of the era.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, I think some of that is and this is something that I think is gonna be interesting to talk about the eighties, but I think what is stunning about this movie in a way is is when we get to the eighties and you s and you have some of this earlier on where the effects are the star. Like where like you in the and in the fifties into the sixties you ha you have Ray Harryhausen and you have like effects movies that nobody's going to see the Sinbad movies for the acting. Or Jason and the Argonauts. They're going to see it because of the spectacle, because of the effects. And that continues into the eighties and when like by the time Fangoria is around in like late seventies, it's you're starting to see a straight effects movies that that's the star of the movie. I think that combined with I mean honestly, Steve McQueen helped this movie stay alive. He he's a he's a major star. That is in this small movie and it's an early role. So if it was somebody else, if it was Sal Minio, I think the movie might have gone away.
Jay: Also when I was reading up on the history of it, I think it does something fun. When we look at the logistical role of B-movies, being the secondary feature that you could tack on to things.
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: It had its initial life, but then there were a couple of times in the 60s when they reused it and it would be tacked on to something else, which again helps to keep it alive. And I'm sure Steve McQueen is part of that. But yeah, it's just fun that the movie can kind of have a longer life and certainly longer than... than a movie will have now when it's just like it's in the theater for a week and then it's streaming. But it can just get reused like twice a decade for a while as this additional, well we have to have a B feature. Well we've got this one in the drawer, let's just shove it on, it's cheap. You know, it's fun, it's fun.
Johnny Shaw: Right. Or you can do exactly what they do in the movie. It's like, it's a midnight what do they call it in the movie? Like it's a midnight monster show or whatever. Like th that you can put two or three of these together and then you you know, you have a show at the movie theater. Or you can yeah, Second Run is another aspect of any movie. A lot of times the theater would own it, you know. and they would just play it whenever they could. because nobody's nobody's
Jay: And it.
Johnny Shaw: gonna be bummed out when the blob comes on. They're gonna be
Jay: Yeah, well you get the music at beginning which again sets up a kind of movie that it isn't. You know, get that fun song marketing basically, but you get the pop song.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah. You get a pop song written, co-written by Bert Baccarat. and that's that's true. That's absolutely true. that that sets a tone that, yeah, is is not what the movie is. I find that absolutely f it's it's so catchy. and
Jay: Yep. Yep.
Johnny Shaw: then they don't use the song in the sequel, which is named or what one of the titles is the song.
Jay: Yeah, exactly. ignore it. And we'll almost one day when we do the Meg or the Megs, I don't know if we do both, but...
Johnny Shaw: I don't know if we do.
Jay: It almost reminds me of the trailer for the Meg when it came out. It had a fun kind of summer pop song that sold everyone on this idea of this wonderful cheesy carnage movie. And then you go and watch the movie and the first one, they kind of play it straight. And you sit there and this isn't what the trailer sold me. And I think the blob does that a little bit, but not the trailer, like within its own bounds.
Johnny Shaw: Right, but it has to. I mean it has to play it straight. It doesn't work if it's if it's goofy. Like it's genuinely probably this and the and the remake. I mean th th the remake probably works the best as a horror movie. Just as a horror movie. I would say I'm not gonna rank them, but I think my favorite is the original. I think there's a charm to it. I think there's I think there's other things happening in it. And I do like the weird pace of it rather than the predictable pace of it. Even though the remake which we will get to subverts tons of tropes, purposefully, it still has a c fairly familiar shape.
Jay: And the first one feels more like a hangout movie as well. like the, you you've got the kids not being listened to, but you've also, you've got the scene when the cop is kind of catching him racing backwards and then they have a bit of a back and forth in the car. And it just, it's like a hangout vibe. You've got the authority figure and the rebellious kid like teasing each other.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: You know, it's just fun.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, we I mean they're setting it up like Rebel Without a Cause, like where it's like, these kids are gonna they're gonna play chicken or they're gonna do this thing and they go they go through it and they have the chase and the police show up. And then they're all just like pals. And you're like, no, they're just pals. They they're they're
Jay: Yeah, yeah, no.
Johnny Shaw: like, hey, let's go get those guys. You mean those guys that were just like giving you a hard time? Yeah, let's go get them. They'll help. Like, you know, come on. Yeah, they do.
Jay: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and they do, they do.
Johnny Shaw: Because Mooch Mooch Miller, you can always you can always rely on Mooch Miller.
Jay: Mouch Miller is like, he's the hero of the town needed, you know?
Johnny Shaw: also this is this is such just not even a pertinent, but I'm just looking at my notes and I wrote it down. I am I am preconditioned to like any movie that has animated electricity or lightning. And I I it's Highlander, Big Trouble in Little China. I don't care. If it's if it's animated, 2D animated lightning, A plus, top of the list. Love it. And so when they try to shock it and I see that, I'm like, nope, that's but that's the best.
Jay: Highlander was when my brain went straight away with that, was Highlander.
Johnny Shaw: Amazing, amazing. And and so here, because the practical effects using 2D, I mean you can s you can kind of see how they do stuff. They do they have a couple miniatures, but not a ton. And they're using other kind of layered effects, or they're just running it over a picture of something, or like running some goo over a picture of the movie theater. It's fantastic. But the illusion is always there. I In my mind's eye it coming through the vent is always like a big a big thing.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: You're just like 'cause to me a big part of horror, like horror the the entire genre is about trying to escape the inescapable. Like you create a situation where it it's seemingly inescapable, it's seemingly so big, you're stuck in a cabin in the woods or an island or wherever you can't get away or in your dreams or wherever it is, somewhere you can't escape. That's at the heart of horror in a lot of ways. And so it's creating like that moment it goes through the vents, you're like, you're screwed.
Jay: got certain memories from when I was younger of like defining moments of watching things and this is one of them the blob because there's just And and even rewatching it. It's not quite what my memory was, but it's close enough of the scene at the doctor's place when when the nurse is in And then firstly the doctor just like you stand there and don't move I'll be back stand there and don't move which is a bit unfair Just stay there, it's all right. And then for whatever reason, she trips and falls. I think I wouldn't trip and fall if there was a monster, like I'd be checking where I put my feet, but she trips and falls. And then she's just dead. And like my youthful memory of it and the impact on me was just a scene of like, you can do that? Like she's just, this is a character with dialogue. Like she's a character who exists and... you know, and then suddenly she's gone off screen. I don't know why I just clicked and destroyed the microphone. And suddenly it's like she's gone off screen like brutally, know, like brutally in terms of the speed and the
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. And nobody ever s says anything about her. From not never meant like the doc, like they're worried about the doc. But like, nope,
Jay: did the doctor really do anything to check? I mean, at that point, he didn't really have anything to tell him. Oh, that thing definitely ate her. He just sees like the shadow of this thing and then starts shooting at it and just assumes that, oh, well, that's what's happened. She's been eaten by this blob thing that I've never seen.
Johnny Shaw: Right, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he doesn't go he absolutely doesn't go and check. I do like that they do this thing toward the end. This is fantastic because this is way before the like kind of well actually crowd, like of people that need the details. They make it a point to say, you know, make sure to get the CO two fire extinguishers. We can only use the CO2 fire extinguishers. Because it felt like it was almost in response to being like someone saying, Well, actually, fire extinguishers actually aren't cold. They're use compound that you know what like they're like, nope, nope, these do. Shut up, shut your mouth.
Jay: knew it.
Johnny Shaw: we we know what w we know what we're talking about. We we research this.
Jay: So they've figured out part way through the movie, as we did, that cold can stop it. And to go to your point about kind of the inescapable element in horror, is it's almost like a lot of this strand of horror has to basically just do the H.G. Wells thing, right? Of we can't even ultimately save ourselves from it. We have to be saved by an element. There has to be something else. We can't do it ourselves. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: Right, we're or we can get away from it. We can it can we can get off the island or whatever whatever that looks like. the or we sacrifice ourselves. We or it's the thing. Like it's we lost,
Jay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: but it'll get well, I guess you're right, then it's frozen. It's a lot of things are frozen. There's a lot of stuff
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: in the freezing. You don't wanna go to the freezing.
Jay: Can you imagine? It's like you've got the warehouse from the end of Razors, right? If you just keep going and kind of turn right at the end, there's a big freezer there that's just full of all the other stuff, you know.
Johnny Shaw: Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Just don't yeah, don't go to the refrigerated section. Like that's just the that's the
Jay: Yeah,
Johnny Shaw: that's the worst part. I I
Jay: So speaking of, so they freeze it never to be seen again until like a decade later.
Johnny Shaw: Although I and I do I had I did not research this because obviously I don't do that much research. it that I believe this is one of the definitely within horror, one of the very early the end question marks. Like I can't think of a movie that the I don't know if there's a history of the end question mark, but
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: I it's the earliest use I can think of in a movie.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: And it's it and that has that playful tone.
Jay: Yeah, well, I was thinking that because to go back to something else we talked about in the warm up episode that I think an important part of B movies as we see them is knowing your audience. But then this movie is an interesting one because it kind of it's almost like it created an audience. You know what mean? So it's like I think people come out
Johnny Shaw: For sure.
Jay: of that movie like wanting a kind of a movie that didn't exist before that movie existed. And that playful ending is part of it. That ties into the more the comedy idea of the movie and the playful idea of the movie that the movie by and large isn't but you come out of it then thinking, that was fun I don't want to do that again.
Johnny Shaw: It's almost like a c it's it's almost like asking the audience, you know. Do you want do you want us to bring this back? It's not like the sequel didn't exist, Son of Kong and all the different Draculanism, but like they people were, you know, it's still a business. And so is like, hey, you guys like this? We can make all we s we still got a big jar of jelly, you know, like we can we'll this stuff does not go bad. I mean it doesn't smell good,
Jay: It's in the freezer, right?
Johnny Shaw: but we'll we'll you know we'll throw it on a couple actresses and nobody'll know the difference. Like we'll, you know.
Jay: Yeah, we won't be able to afford Steve McQueen next time, but we can do it again.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, well yeah.
Jay: You
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, we get horse buckles and everyone's happy.
Jay: So 1970... I should have looked... 1972.
Johnny Shaw: Two. Seventy two.
Jay: Beware the Blob. I like the main version of the title. It's Beware, Slammer the Blob. I do like that. So it's not
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay: like a Hammer Horror, Dracula-like Beware the Blob. It's more like Beware the Blob.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, why? the blob. Yeah, it's it's like a call and response.
Jay: I love that about the film. Directed by Larry Hagman, which
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: created a tagline that was used in some of marketing of the film that JR shot.
Johnny Shaw: That would have been later.
Jay: Yeah, sure that must have been... Yeah, yeah.
Johnny Shaw: J Jr was shot in like nineteen eighty something.
Jay: This is why you're here, right? To correct the historical record.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, you didn't have He was he was coming off of like I dream a genie at this point.
Jay: yeah, yeah, yeah. Still an interesting career move. Now, something that I haven't looked up at all. I remember taking the note down and thinking, I was going to look that up, but why not just admit that I haven't looked it up and roll with it instead? So written by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods III, produced by Anthony Harris and Jack Harris. We didn't talk about Jack Harris, actually, so let's do it now. I wonder if Anthony and Jack are related, is this like a family thing?
Johnny Shaw: It's got it's probably his son. I literally have no idea. I'd I never
Jay: Yeah. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: care about producers 'cause they're just the money guys. I know writers, I know who the camera operator was was on this movie. because it's Dean Cundy. He shot all of Carpenter's movies. He
Jay: Come on.
Johnny Shaw: shot Back to the Future. Like he's
Jay: did he work on Darkstar?
Johnny Shaw: I think he starts on Halloween. I'm sorry. He starts
Jay: Okay.
Johnny Shaw: on Halloween. He shot Big Trouble in Little China. He shot The Fog. He shot Back to the Future. He shot Hooframe Roger Rabbit. Like he's a he's not a small I might be confusing people, but he shot all the carpenter things. He's like a major dude.
Jay: Because Jack Harris, the producer on the sequel, we didn't mention for the first one, but he was an important part of the first one. He's the
Johnny Shaw: yeah.
Jay: one who kind of packaged it and then sold it on for bigger money to someone else. He comes back to produce the sequel. He goes on to produce, or to distribute, to buy and distribute Darkstar.
Johnny Shaw: Okay, so there's all li that th this is why I like this movie and why why we're talking about it. Because one of the things when I was a kid growing up and when I or y a as I was starting to decide that I wanted to be working in film, it was always important for me to sit through and watch the credits because the credits were always like all of these people were paid To work on this movie. It was it was this reminder that this is a job. But it was also when you start watching movies and when you start looking at those credits, the links you see become really evident of people working with the same people over and over again, or and this one, because Larry Hagman just had all his buddies show up, has got it's got a ridiculous cast. But it it also is not a bad time capsule of kind of hippie culture where r
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: rather than like somebody looking back and dressing people as hippies, they just put a bunch of hippies in it. There's a couple like kind of beatnics or whatever, like they there are some comedic hippies, but for the most part, it's just it God, if if the first half hour wasn't so terrible, it could have been a good movie.
Jay: The funny thing, it's funny that you mentioned the time capsule, beatnik hippie element, because one of the first thoughts I had rewatching this last week, this week, whenever it was, rewatching this, was that this is like a Ross Mayer movie without the Nazi paraphernalia and the boobs. It just feels like that's all that's missing to make it a Ross Mayer movie. You know, if at some point some woman dressed in a skin tight outfit, like, was running down the side of a road and then you cut to an old man wearing a Nazi hat whipping someone, I'd be like, we've got Russ Meyer people. It feels like exactly that time, but slower. It doesn't have the pace of some of those movies.
Johnny Shaw: I yeah, I think it I I think it's going, much like those movies, it's going for this like comedy horror thing. I think it does, and at times it actually gets close. I just think tonally it it's just too all over the place and it never settles in. It again and and the beginning is is all everything with I mean, I love Godfrey Cambridge and but like everything with him, he's obviously just ad-lipping lines. There's like an hour and a half of a woman opening a tunican. I it it you're just like that was your take. Like one one, why did you put it in? But also that was the take you were gonna use that she she's struggling to open this. I don't know, maybe it's funny. I I have no idea. But the beginning it just it drags and drags and drags. And that but then once it gets going, it's actually a decent blood. All the stuff in the bowling alley's good, the
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: kind of end is good. There's some there's some genuinely funny parts. there's things that do
Jay: I can't
Johnny Shaw: work in it. The f the effects are pretty nice.
Jay: Yeah, but the effects are interesting. This is, and we'll come more to like the blob itself as an entity, as a character in the remake, but this one feels like a middle step in the, I mean, in the first one, the blob's this kind of slow moving thing that just gets bigger and bigger. This one, like we see it moving more within the shot, right? We see it kind of grabbing onto things and doing things, and it feels more like it has more of a personality here. It's more of a, almost more of a character. in this movie, like you see them kind of figuring that out in the movie, I think in real time.
Johnny Shaw: Right. Yeah, yeah. I I I I also this is not it's not they watch a scene from the blob in this movie. which means it's you know, that's either it's meta, but it's but it is a part of when you make remakes that there's a there's it's the Easter egg thing. It's casting certain like you just watched whatever, the new masters of the universe and like Dolph Lundgrid shows up and there's this like kind of nod to the past. The and it's not like that was new. I mean I well, it's a movie we'll never watch, which is the remake of well maybe we will because the original's a B movie, but the remake the seventies remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers which has, you know, what's his name? Kevin McCarthy in it screaming you're next at the begin like it's almost like a direct from the end of the one into the other. That nod, or having Don Siegels in it too, that having those like acknowledgments of the past is kind of become a part of making remakes or making si you know, to acknowledge w the the original. but in this case it's just yeah, I mean it's there. It is an acknowledgement, but then you You know, you made this.
Jay: And this one exists, I think, in an interesting time because the 50s one kind of, it's got the youth rebellion thing, right, not being listened to. It's literally got a red menace, right? So you you can't think, okay, I can kind of place it. This one, there's a lot going on in the 70s that this movie, don't really think is, that it almost exists as almost counterculture to the fact that a lot of movies in the 70s were starting to deal with deep topics, you know, and.
Johnny Shaw: Right, but but it it actually does share that same like nobody's listening to the youth
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: theme does run through this one as well. It's the whatever, here here's here's the here's the connection
Jay: That's true. That's true. With a little twist of...
Johnny Shaw: to Masters of the Universe. The what's it the the actress the that's playing the woman that's plays the Courtney Cox's mother in the Dolph Lundgren Masters of the Universe. That's Chris Pine's
Jay: I didn't connect that. I didn't connect that.
Johnny Shaw: mom.
Jay: it.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, Gwen Guilford, is her name. I mean that that's the thing, is like here's the people that are in this movie, if you haven't seen it. Godfrey Cambridge, Burgess Meredith, Larry Hagman does showed up. Garrett Graham, if you're a fan of the movie Used Cars, he shows up. He's in the gorilla suit. Cindy Williams, television Shirley from Laverne and Shirley. A very wacky Shelley Berman, who's a comedian, he's the barber. A a c a scene that just has no function, him being weird. The great Richard Stahl, who is just a character actor, Dick Van Patten, who was in every movie at the time. this I only know who Randy Stonehill is, because he I wrote a book about Christian music and he's a major like Christian music guy. He plays the musician hippie, wrote some songs for it. But yeah.
Jay: There's actually another connection there. Erwin Yeworth Jr. who directed the first one
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: went on to be like, he was really big in Christian music and Christian music.
Johnny Shaw: really?
Jay: The whole second half of his life was taking people on tours to like Jordan and Israel and building theme parks there and theme park rides there. And he was directing, like he would do videos for... Graham, the older Graham, whose name, I always get the superstar Billy Graham mixed up with the pasta, but the pasta one. does. So that's
Johnny Shaw: Sure.
Jay: an interesting connection that I literally didn't make until you mentioned it there, but.
Johnny Shaw: No, no, th there's that. There's I really like Tiger Joe Marsh, who was a wrestler at the time, like the big Turk guy who like he he and the guy I don't know the actor's name, the guy who played Black Samson. If you if we ever do Black Exploitation, that's a good one. And then did you spot Sid Haig? Sid Haig shows up. But I think I think it's I say I say all those names because that's when we talk about Corman, that's what we talk about. All these people who got their start, you know, Demi or Couple or whatever that and and that that's a that's a big thing that is important about B movies. Is that this is where people can get we you know, you're we're working maybe for less, it's non-union, it's a bunch of there's a bunch of different reasons, but it creates opportunities for people to gain experience. So someone
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: like like Dean Coody like shooting this or being the camera op is like this could be his first movie, it's a definitely an early one, it's before he's a cinematographer. Without B movies, where does he get that opportunity? So when you're making movies, you rarely care whether they're good or bad. When you're doing your job, you care about you. Doing your job well, knowing that if everyone does their job well, you'll make a good movie.
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: I'm gonna I I'm thinking might have been the one of the Cohen brothers, so I'm just gonna paraphrase. But he basically said, like, and this is true if you've ever made films, just getting a movie made is is so incredibly difficult to get a a film finished. Making it good feels impossible.
Jay: And then the other thing is to kind of go with what you're saying there, when you're making movies on any level, you've got that, there's that inbuilt horror thing of like the things you can't escape, like, you you're losing daylight, you know, and on a big budget movie, so what, you'll just come back in the next day.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: On a small budget movie, if you don't get the shot, you don't get the shot. That's it.
Johnny Shaw: Right, and it it ultimately just fell because it kinda got stuck between comedy and satire and horror like it didn't it couldn't there's good stuff in it. People are capable, the the performances for the most part are fine. You know, it's it's gonna be called a bad movie, but it the i i th I don't believe in that good and bad. Like there's there is stuff worth looking at in it that I I think are are for sure worthwhile.
Jay: I know we both have similar feelings about the whole, you know, so bad it's good kind of vibe and, you know, like, it feels cruel to a large degree. I'm of a generation who grew up in the wake of, I'll name it, Mystery Science Theatre, you know, and I you would have seen like, like the start of it, you know.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah yeah.
Jay: Just the whole thing of like poking fun at movies, which just like people set out to make a movie, it doesn't always work, but people trying their best.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah and and And I love Mystery Science Theater. I don't because it's that's just a that's just comedy take. It's like it's like chatting with your friend about it, and they can be very funny. but there is there, yeah, there is it's it's also like, God, it's just fish in a barrel at times. It's like there's Mystery Science Science Theater, people that think they're mystery science theater are like a drag. Mystery science theater is fine, they're actually genuinely funny. That just making the obvious jokes or just looking at old they're thinking old. Technology is funny. You know, it's just
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: like all that kind of stuff. It's like there's come on, it's it's even and I'll I'll call beware of the blob. It's art. It's art. You have to do some of the work. You have to be like you have to look at it and appreciate it either in its historical context or you have to find things to like about it. I remember I had a professor I I when I was a film student, when I was an undergrad. I'm a Ed Branagan. Edward Brannigan. He's a major film theory guy. And you could put anything in front of Edward Branigan, and he'd have something to talk about. He'd be like, you know, he you would just show him it didn't matter what you showed. I show him Beware the Blob, and he'll say, There's a fascinating use between the non diagetic. and the dead diegetic sound within these scenes. Whatever. He he just and so one point, I think it was my buddy Lee. we we we were talking they were he was just really great guy. Very mad scientist, like crazy gray hair and walking. He'd go every day to a place called Smart Cookie and get his daily cookie. We saw him walking one time. We were like, hey Ed you going to get your cookie? He just looked at us with wide eyes and he's just like, I'm gonna get a cinnamon roll today. that's the kind of guy he was. He's fantastic.
Jay: you
Johnny Shaw: so but but Lee asked him he's like, is there a movie? you don't like? Is it just because you always seem to find like you'll you'll go to the music or the performance or way, just you'll find something in it to like. And he just looked at us kind of dead eyed and he just said the horror of party beach. And then that was it. He
Jay: Yeah
Johnny Shaw: did no no absolutely no explanation.
Jay: You
Johnny Shaw: just with absolute hate for that movie. Like just whatever his relationship or what happened while he was watching that movie. And I was like, my in my mind it was like, that movie ain't so bad. Like what anyway. that I feel like what we're doing is like I'm trying to be Ed Brandy. I'm trying to look at these films and do a little work because it's more fun to like something than to not like something. And so it's why not I'm not trying to, I don't I I'm past being able to be cool. So I'm I'm trying to actually just try and see what I can learn and see why I like movies or see why I like why I like what I like and why I don't some things don't read for me. The reason the beginning of this is doesn't work is just because it's boring. Boring and slow. Now I'll watch a slow movie if it's on purpose, but it's just boring. It's just you know.
Jay: Yeah, and they kill a cat. So I just, you
Johnny Shaw: I don't w I I I was gonna get to that. Well, they kill a dog, they kill a cat. They kill a l quite a few things it like animal wise.
Jay: Yeah, was, the minute the blob attacked the cat, was like, this movie's gonna have to work really hard with me now to get me back,
Johnny Shaw: To get you back.
Jay: you I mean, it is, well, was gonna say, fun's the wrong word, because I don't think this is a fun, certainly not on the level of the first one, but you can still see the ingredients.
Johnny Shaw: no, but it's the lightest of all of them.
Jay: Yeah, you can see all the ingredients, right? It's like,
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: this is the cooking, this is the meal that doesn't quite come together, but you can still find the flavors and the tastes that you like.
Johnny Shaw: And ultimately it's a film by a first time director, as far as I know. You know?
Jay: Yeah, I think so. think so.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah. I think it's the only thing he's directed. Well, I mean, obviously that wasn't a great calling card for the next project. Yeah.
Jay: Didn't get, yeah, taking that into meetings didn't help. But okay, so from here, there's a branch, it's almost like there's a branch in history that we'll come back to at some point later, I'm sure. But as I said, so this is after this, Jack Harris, who produced the first one, produced the second one, through connections that I don't know if it's made on this movie or otherwise, then kind of is the person that John Carpenter and Dan O'Bannon take Dark Star II.
Johnny Shaw: Mm-hmm.
Jay: He puts money in, makes them cut certain things, he makes them re-edit it, makes them change it, but anyway, so there's a whole branch in our lineage, in our history that will come back to a future date. But where this goes next, so I think we should probably, the next two movies are a companion piece to each other, but one of them does come first. So we should probably mention the stuff first.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, I I mean I I requested that the stuff be included, partly because I think it's the tonal bridge between Beware the Blob and the blob the eighty eight blob remake. It also precedes
Jay: Absolutely.
Johnny Shaw: the blob it's it's around eighty five, I think it comes out. And it's it it embraces satire in a in a way that I think i is interesting. It's pr story wise it's more invasion of the body snatchers. I think, but plot kind of wise. But it ha it's it's a movie about a goo. It's obviously the the the you know, the title, everything about it. It has it has a theme song, much like the original blob.
Jay: Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.
Johnny Shaw: so it there are companions. It's still stuck in between and comedy a little. I don't think the tone or sat bec partly because it's trying to be a satire. I think there's a lot of good stuff in it. Michael Moriarty is j I mean, come on. Whatever like you see I'm just gonna
Jay: And that dude had range. When you look at his resume, you're like, that dude had range. was... Yeah. do you not? How do you not do
Johnny Shaw: We're for sure gonna do Q. It's we're gonna do Q. We're gonna I mean, th without question that's gonna happen.
Jay: So I guess, almost like, so this is written and directed by Larry Cohen. And I guess almost the pitch for it could kind of be, imagine if when the blob turned up, people picked it up and started eating it.
Johnny Shaw: it's
Jay: I love the opening. I just love because it says so much about us deeply, almost more than the rest of the movie. This old guy finds a white thing in the ground. Within seconds he's shoving it in his mouth to see what it tastes like.
Johnny Shaw: It's structurally fascinating in the same way. Like it hits the ground running and then and then it becomes like a story of s like corporate espionage. It has a fun cast too, again. that, you know, with Michael Moriarty and then Paul Ser Paul Servino and Danny Aello, who honestly looks like he's reading off cue cards, Garrett Morris shows up.
Jay: Anytime I Danny Aiello though, just think of Hudson Hawk. Like doesn't matter what else he's done, when
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: he's on screen, I'm picturing him singing with Bruce Willis.
Johnny Shaw: it it handles the kind of paranoia that even the original Blob doesn't quite have. Like it it is about this conspiracy. And that's the other thing. It's and the other movie that comes later, the eighty eight version, this is the first one where the blob isn't the only villain. Like where
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: there's the blob and then there's the the the Organizate like this, whatever, the the bad guys, right? So this one pre because this one precedes, that's why I wanted to talk about because this one precedes the remake, it does the same thing in a different way. Not in this in a slightly satirical way, but it it it does it in the same way. And so at that move Because like he destroys the blob and then there's still movie because he has to face the or get revenge on the two guys. Or the I'm sorry, I said the blob. The stuff completely different. Com
Jay: stuff. Stuff. Whole different thing, different colour. It's a different colour Johnny, it's a whole different thing.
Johnny Shaw: still tons of practical effects, still some
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: a just only a few miniatures at di but it's pretty clever in terms of how it handles it. And the fact that it's food and it kinda turns people in these like I don't know what they are. They're like zombie kind of things. Yeah.
Jay: It never really explains it, it doesn't need to, but you you get it, you get it. I think, mean, just to call out the things that don't quite work before I talk about the things I really like about the movie,
Johnny Shaw: Sure.
Jay: I think it's, you mentioned it kind of being similar to Beware the Blum, and I think it's, some, for kind of a whole chunk of the movie, it's very, it feels, it's got the same pacing issues, you know, it's got that same kind of tone when it can't quite settle on what it's gonna be. some of the but but along with that as much as sometimes the movie slows right down to focus on what it's kind of trying to do there's also times when they just speed up that i think the wrong plot bits like he he turns up and talks to this the the the the female character's name i'm forgetting pretending to be an oil billionaire, you know, and
Johnny Shaw: All right.
Jay: within seconds, you're like, they're on side with each other. And then the next time she pops up, she's one of the good guys. You know, I just think there's this kind of shortcuts taken there that I don't think quite work. But then the things to love about the movie, sort of like, I love the kid. precocious kids in movies can be a trap, but he's a smart kid.
Johnny Shaw: That kid's great.
Jay: He's a smart kid. And you see him figuring out in real time how to escape from his parents. You
Johnny Shaw: Yeah yeah.
Jay: just see smart choices that I think are really, good.
Johnny Shaw: Him g him getting in the tanker isn't the smartest choice. He does make that
Jay: No. No.
Johnny Shaw: J just saying, like he's not he's not flawless. yeah.
Jay: still a kid. And when you place this in its time, it feels very they live. It also feels a bit Robocopy with the
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: adverts and stuff. It's like an interesting companion piece to either of those movies as well. I think... If you can look past the pacing, if you can look past some of the limitations, I mean the scene in the recording booth at the end, you can tell that they're kind of editing together something that they just don't have. They just clearly didn't have the shots to make the scene.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jay: If you can forgive all that, it's a really good, fun movie.
Johnny Shaw: It is. It's it's super fun.
Jay: I just love any time a movie is willing to let characters be smart and make smart decisions. know, I
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: mean, we see Michael Moriarty's character constantly being smart and figuring things out, you know. And even after the tanker crash at the end, when they've got the guy coming over and like that again, female character's name, I could have even looked this up since the last time I said, can't remember her name, kind of turns to the kid and just is like, pretend to eat and you just see them figuring out on screen a way to get
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: out of the situation that they're in. I just love scenes like that, know, just shows people being smart.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. I I I think it's I think it's a movie that's limited just by its budget. I don't think I think that and that's what I th those are the movies I admire. I always I mean, I don't know how you feel about this, but like I I it's it's kind of the punk rock is that I like I admire ambition. Like I
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: and the execution you get as far. Something that doesn't aspire to anything or doesn't really have high aspirations, and succeeds, that's fine, but it's just kind of like that's a well made you know, kind of mundane thing, but something that tries and doesn't quite get to a hundred percent of
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: the execution, but is trying, you can see that there's a lot of and Larry Cohen, like, you can go back and put like again, Q, we will of course watch, but like, I th I think he d I this it's it's a movie that's worth seeing, for sure. That because there's
Jay: There's a
Johnny Shaw: just so much interesting, cool stuff in it and it's kind of it's a mess, but that's what makes it great.
Jay: Yeah, and to go back to things that I ages ago now about like the big thing that you can't escape, even the ending, right? They get through it and then they get their revenge, but then it's gonna start being sold on the black market because human nature, know? So even then the threat isn't as much as the stuff is the threat. The threat is human nature there. The threat is just the fact that you can, you can't stop this from happening. The genie's out in the bottle. It's AI, it's whatever it is. know, it's...
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: It's out there now, you can't stop
Johnny Shaw: And and it throws it it throws a the end question mark at us. That's its nod.
Jay: Yeah, I mean, Larry Cohen knew what he was influenced by there, obviously. He
Johnny Shaw: But but
Jay: knows what he's making, which is interesting that then clearly he's influenced by the blob and then they, like a couple of years later, just make the blob again.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. It wasn't like the it wasn't the exploitation movie like you would expect where the blob just the remake of the blob came and he made the stuff a year later. It's not piranha or something like that or Death Race two thousand where you're responding to a successful movie with
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: your low budget version of the or not version but in the
Jay: Yeah, it was the other way around. It's basically, both of these, both this and the remake are obviously inspired by the blob.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: And the remake, which is the point historically, like this is where I come in, right? This is my first awareness as a kid of this whole thing. Context again, 1988 for movies. Die Hard, Scrooged, Action Jackson, Midnight Run, they live. Police Academy 5, which is at that point we can all agree that the Police Academy franchise has jumped the shark with Police Academy 5. know, it's nothing but quality until then.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, police academy jumped the shark about twenty minutes into the first movie.
Jay: For extra context, my cinema trips that year would have been Who Framed Roger Rabbit and The Land Before Time. That's the level I was operating on when this movie came out. I would have seen it... maybe a year or so, but whenever it came to like home video rental, because I watched it, I remember watching it with one of my uncles, he rented it. So I saw this like in his bedroom, basically, when he rented the movie. And I'm still at this point, I'm still at the point when I just engage with movies like this as horror movies. I don't get that they're all so funny, right? This is the point when I still thought the 60s Batman was straight, This is still a level when I think Ghostbusters is just a straight movie about scientists who fight ghosts. It takes an extra
Johnny Shaw: Sure.
Jay: couple of years before you start to go, like, hold on. So that's where I first encountered this movie.
Johnny Shaw: Right. I I well I'll just start with my my my big bombshell take. I don't think it's a B movie.
Jay: you know, it's so funny. Cause when I said there's something I was going to ask, it's, I was going to ask if it was because I was looking it up and I don't know.
Johnny Shaw: No, it's it's the fly and the thing. It's the same it's in the same era. The fly and the thing aren't B movies. The remakes. They're remakes
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: of B movies. They honor those B movies. But this is a ten million dollar budget. And the only reason it's not more is because Kevin Dillon and his Diego Maradonawig is n is he's the star and they didn't pay for they didn't pay for a big star. yeah, they I appr I appre
Jay: dealings. They got the budget Matt Dillon, which is his brother.
Johnny Shaw: Right. They I appreciate that the money that is on the screen. I do appreciate that. But I mean it's got a bigger budget than Bull Durham, than Fish Called
Jay: Mm-hmm.
Johnny Shaw: Wanda. I mean there's plenty of movies that were made that aren't B movies that are like just but like for ten million and eighty eight to me is a is not a B movie.
Jay: Yeah, Batman, first Burton Batman, which comes out the following year, I think the budget on that was like 40 million. So
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: at this point, for people listening now, if we took like one of the Avengers movies and then said, well, okay, we're gonna talk about a movie that's like a quarter of that budget, we're still talking about a huge budget.
Johnny Shaw: Well, it's it this is a horror movie. Like I said, like Fish Called Wander is seven and a half million. Like that you know, that this is a horror movie. It's playing to a certain crowd. I th I think I think the money's on the screen. I th I'm impressed by that. But I don't think there's any way Like I just can't it's it's not just the b it's not the budget. Like I said, it's it's got this Hollywood shape. Like the f like I like the fly and the thing. They're amazing and I like this movie, but they are not B movies. by my standards, we can we could of course argue that they're a movie remakes of B movies. that capture the spirit of those movies.
Jay: well, just very briefly to kind of put a cap on that bit. Yeah, because this was going to be my question because I was sitting trying to think about this earlier on as to do I think it's a B-movie or not? I think it does so many B-movie things, right? It's your point about influenced by or what point does something stop being
Johnny Shaw: For sure.
Jay: a B-movie? I think I could argue this both ways. mean, the budget probably just, the budget alone says no. But so much about it,
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, I
Jay: there's still the spirit of it, you know?
Johnny Shaw: yeah, I and I and it's not just the spirit of it, it's the it it I think it respects the original, but at the same time it subverts tons of tropes. Like it it kind of s gently psychos the main like we think this guy's gonna be the hero and then he he gets killed. It kills
Jay: and then he dead.
Johnny Shaw: it it kills a kid. I mean, that that that
Jay: Yeah, love that.
Johnny Shaw: kills Candy Clark, you know. She's it she's
Jay: yeah, yeah.
Johnny Shaw: in Q. Q comes back again. just saying, like, you can't you can't escape the movie Q.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, let's just talk about them. Because I mean, first things first, as much as this is one of those movies, I can crack jokes about this movie all day, you know, especially I can crack jokes like they couldn't afford Matt Dillon. So they went for the budget Matt Dillon, which was just
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: another Dillon, right? I can be cruel, but I also just unashamedly love this film. You know, I can't remove
Johnny Shaw: Good movie.
Jay: myself from when I first saw it. But I think also, it just goes for it, you know, from the beginning. And we've got the kind of save the cat-ish structure that you've talked about, you know, yes. It doesn't have the kind of free and experimental style of the earlier versions, you know, it's figuring things out as it goes. But I also just love how bold, it takes big swings that the character you think is the male lead and then he dies brutally and we watch him die.
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: so many of the deaths, again, it's just fun that the one in the car with Erica, that's
Johnny Shaw: Eric Alaniac, yeah.
Jay: just brutal, brutal stuff. It keeps taking big, big swings, I think, right up to
Johnny Shaw: No it
Jay: the way that it subverts the original, you know, we've talked about it. This now is, it's a government created thing. it plays with that a little bit, it doesn't feel that straight away, it's not an alien, it's created by the
Johnny Shaw: Right.
Jay: government.
Johnny Shaw: is it is it body horror?
Jay: I don't think, I think it skirts it. Again, it's a movie that skirts a whole bunch of things. I'm also like, body horror is one of the things I don't really go for.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah yeah, but I'm saying there's there's I mean one, the blob is pretty scrotal. Like it's
Jay: Hahaha
Johnny Shaw: like it's not it's not a it's not a jelly. It it is. The blob is a character,
Jay: it's a character in this movie the blob is a character in this movie. It's it's you know
Johnny Shaw: but I'm saying like if you have a model for what it was, it's not like jelly or whipped cream or cool whip or whatever. It's got little like art like it's it's much more it's more fleshy. Like it's more even though the the obviously the the phone booth thing is fantastic. 'cause she kinda like drowns in it. I mean it's like Candy Clark.
Jay: Loved the phone booth scene. Again, that's one of those moments where it just goes all in. You're like, where's the sheriff? Is the sheriff gonna help or is the sheriff gonna, no, no, the sheriff's dead.
Johnny Shaw: yeah. that the smash in the face of the the sheriff, that's fantastic. That's a it's a great moment. but it's yeah, it's it's gooey. It has that almost like video drumy kinda like yeah. It's kinda icky, you know.
Jay: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: but it's also like it has it's the big monster in the water and and particularly in the water in the
Jay: and then again, kid dies, loved it, loved it. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: Right. It's a force of nature at some point. It's that they're trying to escape a tornado. But it's it's yeah, you get the sen you get the real sense that it's like a thinking being.
Jay: And the other thing is getting that certainly by the time we get to that point in the film when we're in the sewer, in the water, and it's just kind of the girl and the boy left for a moment. That was when it kind of thing. This is also like a post-aliens movie. Like this is riffing on Ripley in a way that obviously the previous movies didn't have that framework, you know?
Johnny Shaw: Right, for sure. Like in and again it it takes like a very familiar shape to me. Like the I could break it down structurally and it would it would hit its marks. That's happening a lot in the eighties and especially into the nineties. 'cause this is Frank Derabont, right? What
Jay: Yeah, Frank Darabont and Chuck Russell.
Johnny Shaw: It and Chuck Russell. Like is Chuck Russell UCLA? Like you do see a lot. I don't I don't know if they're UCLA or not, but UCLA has like where I went to grad school has a really structured program in that you see the people coming out of there and you see the shape of the movies in the eighties, nineties. And you can
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: you can kinda get a sense of who went to UCLA. I don't know if either of did.
Jay: Therabon's an interesting writer because he can, he's got a weird mix. He can be very, very sentimental or he can be very, very brutal. And he can kind of flip between the two. Even his, the mist has some very callous, brutal moments in it. He can just go for it that way sometimes.
Johnny Shaw: Right Jesus, yes. and he's y he's gotta be young writing this. And you could even see bits of the mist in this, like, you know, that for sure.
Jay: Yes, yeah, 100%. 100%. So big government conspiracy. They kind of blow the blob up in this one, but then it's gonna break up into those little fragments.
Johnny Shaw: They still freeze it.
Jay: The fun thing here is this one of sets up a sequel in a way that's then just never happened. know, like...
Johnny Shaw: yeah, and and it's Del Close who is in Beware the Blob. He's one of the hobos, yeah, with Burgess Meredith
Jay: Yeah, he's the hobo, Yeah, yeah.
Johnny Shaw: and Larry Hagman. Yeah, so he shows that he's the only connection I I think between any of and Del Close is the the the crazy reverend.
Jay: But it is fun, because I guess just to kind of start wrapping this bit up then, I think the remake of the blob feels like it's remaking what people remember the blob as and not what
Johnny Shaw: Well
Jay: the blob was, if that makes sense.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, it's it it knows the original but it's it's for sure modern and it's it's what I was saying, it's I think that it's one of those films where the effects are the star. There's it's all practical effects as far as I know. and they're fantastic. They're fantastic
Jay: Yeah, it has to be.
Johnny Shaw: throughout.
Jay: No, no, no cartoon lightning or anything in this one though. So that knocks it down. Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: I know, I know. I think they dropped the ball because it's we're still in the window.
Jay: Yeah. Could still do it. Knocks it down. Knocks it down. I think the only other, the only other limiting thing to kind of tie back to the thing about the, the big threat that you can't escape is looking at it now in the continuum, looking across all of them. I think it loses something. At the point when we start to make it all about government conspiracies and self-created monsters, it loses a little bit of the elemental fear, I think, of the big unexplainable, inescapable thing,
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yep, I think you're right. I think you're right. I think the I think it takes
Jay: But.
Johnny Shaw: a while to get back to like the big monster movies. Which I've never
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: found scary. Like I don't find them scary like I find more intimate stuff scary. This one's
Jay: Yeah, I agree.
Johnny Shaw: this one I think is pretty effective from being a scary monster movie, which usually for me isn't that doesn't really work.
Jay: It's still, I think it's still small. A lot of the deaths are like small up close, you know, it manages to do both. manages to do both.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's it's right. It feels like a force in nature movie, like in terms of like something the thing you can't escape. It's it's whatever, it's it's a virus. That's scary.
Jay: And it's also cruel, a lot of the deaths are people who were just trying to do the right things sometimes, you know, like even...
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, it has well it has no judgment. That's why I say force of nature. It it's just
Jay: Yeah.
Johnny Shaw: there. It's just if you're in its way, youink.
Jay: Yeah, absolutely. And as you said, we're not gonna rate them. But I guess, I
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: mean, the takeaway, think, from thinking about all of them is, I mean, I don't think anyone would waste any time by watching any of these movies. beware of the blob, you can't really watch in isolation, would be what I think. Like, you have to watch compared to the blob.
Johnny Shaw: Just start it at the twenty five minute point. You'll be fine.
Jay: Yeah, I think the stuff you can watch on its own, you don't have to know
Johnny Shaw: Yeah.
Jay: the history. think, and then either the first blob or the remake, you can watch on their own. And all of them have stuff going for them to one degree or another.
Johnny Shaw: Yeah, yeah. I don't like I mean I don't I don't care what other people watch. we're not I'm not recommending anything or not recommending anything. Watch movies. If you if you want to watch a movie,
Jay: It's taking no responsibility for this.
Johnny Shaw: no, I don't care. Like watch what you want.
Jay: That feels like an ending of an episode right
