A gelatinous trailblazer: How ‘The Blob’ pioneered independent horror cinema
If the first ‘Golden Age’ of the creature feature came when Universal started monetising its classic monsters for all they were worth, then the second came in the 1950s when drive-ins began to explode in popularity, with The Blob slithering out of the pack to become a genuine trailblazer in horror.
At the time, it was hardly out of the ordinary for an inexpensive horror flick to arrive on the big screen, but there are several reasons why director Irvin Yeaworth’s slow-moving and ravenous tale of terror set itself out from among a crowded pack and the fact it served as the first major leading role of soon-to-be A-list icon Steve McQueen’s career is just one of them.
The Thing from Another World and The Day the Earth Stood Still had helped kick off the boom period with straight-faced, serious, and spine-tingling solemnity, but that soon evolved into tongue-in-cheek silliness. The Blob sought to balance the best of both worlds, doing so with a dash of colour.
Of course, black-and-white films were already on the way out by the 1950s, but presumably, to cut corners on the budgets, horror was happy to remain largely monochromatic. To differentiate itself, The Blob decided the best way to set out its stall was to rely on colour to make its gooey titular beast a more vivid, stark, and eye-popping monstrosity.
Another stark difference that made The Blob an entity unto itself was that it placed the focus squarely on its youthful leads. Whereas the horror, sci-fi, and fantasy genres more often than not focused on adults, military figures, police officers, or scientists banding together to stave off a deadly threat, McQueen and Aneta Corseaut’s Jane are the ones who take centre stage and try to warn the townsfolk of what’s coming.
An independent production in every sense of the word, too, the studio system wasn’t even a concern for The Blob, which was cobbled together for a measly $110,000 and shot largely on location in Pennsylvania, almost 3000 miles away from Hollywood. Even the production company went against the grain, with producer Jack H. Harris convincing his partners to eschew their initial desire to focus on inspirational religious films in favour of making something brazenly commercial.
Crooner Burt Bacharach – who would go on to win a pair of Academy Awards for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid – even crafted a bespoke title son with Mack David. Having a film carry a tie-in tune hailing from the pen of an established artist was something that eventually became commonplace, but for a distinctly B-tier 1950s horror, it was completely unheard of.
Even the title went against the grain, with The Blob being short, to the point, and completely descriptive. 1950s monster flicks had a habit of being a touch too on-the-nose with their nomenclature – whether it was The Phantom from 10,000 Leagues, Attack of the Crab Monsters, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, or Horrors of the Black Museum – but two words were more than enough to let people know what was coming.
The Blob initially premiered as a double-feature with I Married a Monster from Outer Space but soon proved more popular than the top-billed film. Nobody could have guessed at the time, but by roping in a future star, a director who’d never considered horror before, an upstart producer determined to make a mark, a fondness for brevity, a lack of over-explanation, and the garish hues of colour, it ended up becoming one of the most important independent films of the decade, leaving behind a legacy that spanned decades.