If artists use lies to tell the truth, then movies often use the impossible to expose the realities of the world (or do they?). Such is the case with any number of monster / alien invasion / horror films from the 1950’s, when growing cold war anxieties and a lingering fear of communism were a part of daily life. Certainly, many of these were but limp genre exercises, now (rightly) existing primarily to be seen as features on Mystery Science Theater 3000. One stellar allegory was Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which replaced the mental invasion of communism with a physical one exercised by socialist aliens from afar. The filmmakers deny that this connection was intended, but how many artists even think of themselves as such in the first place? So goes my argument for The Blob as another sci-fi allegory for communism; specifically, from a crackpot McCarthyism perspective, the titular, globby invader equal to the slowly encroaching economic secularism that threatened to absorb everyone into a unified whole. Better dead than red, they say. Here, they’re one and the same.

The Blob’s genre conventions were as old as the hills even in 1958, the key difference being the film’s sly subtext, pitch-perfect approximations and boundless sense of fun. A theater packed full of teenagers for a “midnight spook fest” – showcasing obviously silly flicks of the genre – earns an eye roll from the embittered projectionist, only moments before he too is consumed by the silent, deadly goo. If nothing else, the movie – sensing the absurdity of its subject matter – certainly knows how to poke fun at itself. Two teens on their first date (Aneta Corsaut and Steve McQueen, both in their first roles) see a shooting star crash to earth and decide to look for the impact sight; shortly thereafter, they stumble upon an old man with a red, parasitic growth on his hand, agonizing in pain. The local doctor agrees sees the stricken man just as he’s heading out to a medical convention in a nearby city; when Steve (McQueen, sharing the same first name) sees the now larger red form attacking the doctor (who is nowhere to be found thereafter) later that night, no one believes him. Says a friendly local cop: “There’s nothing going on here that can’t wait until morning.” Yet the blob, growing larger and more powerful with each additional victim, will be an incredible force by sunrise, and if it takes some disturbance of the peace to bring it out in the open, so be it; the silently malevolent, godless forces of communism were already hard at work long before anyone chose to acknowledge them (i.e. we will walk in fear of one another).

The focus on youth as a source of salvation permeates the film’s flawless plotting: determined in the face of ridicule, Steve ultimately rallies together his punk friends to wake up the entire town in the middle of the night so as to get the warning out. Too late: the blob, now dozens of times its original size, has made its presence known beyond any doubt, and unswayed by the citizens’ efforts to stop it with gunfire, acid, electricity, and fire. Backed into a diner’s basement with no way out, Steve tries to extinguish the incinerating building with a handy fire extinguisher, only to discover that CO2 – cold – drives the monster away. “I don’t think it can be killed,” says police chief Dave, but it can be contained and removed from the population it once partially assimilated. To ensure that the mysterious life form never thaws out, the military drops the frozen creature into the artic, where it will remain safe “as long as the artic stays cold.” Thus, The Blob’s cheeky resolve becomes and unintentionally retroactive criticism against the Bush administrations insistence on turning a blind eye towards global warming. Cheeky indulgence into reckless political beliefs has rarely been as fun as it is here.




Feature: Horror Marathon 2006

Posted by rob humanick on Wednesday, October 25, 2006 at 3:42 PM | Permalink