KLAATU YOU (46)

By: Chelsey Johnson
November 11, 2020

One in a weekly series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite pre-Star Wars science fiction movies.

THE BLOB | d. IRVIN YEAWORTH | 1958

The first to die is an elderly man. Second are the healthcare workers: the nurse, then the doctor. Then the blue-collar mechanic and the grocery story janitor. The police are divided on whether to take the reported murderous blob seriously; some think it’s a hoax, teenagers trying to undermine their authority. Nor do the townspeople want to believe it. Not until the now-enormous blood-soaked blob bursts out of the movie theater (cheeky!) and envelops a diner do law enforcement and citizenry rouse to action. The destruction of business, not life, is where Americans truly freak out.

In this pandemic moment The Blob feels less like vintage camp and more like blunt allegory, a kinder, more bearable dramatizing of the overwhelming present. As a manifestation of plague, the blob is comforting in its sheer visibility: red and viscous, a carnivorous gelatin, roaming and oozing and seizing. At least you know when it’s coming for you. At least you know when it has you.

Because the movie is from 1958, much of it rolls out as slowly and quietly as those first weeks of lockdown. In dramatic moments the soundtrack leaps dutifully to life, but more often than not, The Blob takes its time, holds a steady gaze, listens closely. The soft crunch of tires on gravel as two teenagers roll a robin’s-egg-blue convertible out of a garage. Creaking desk drawers and background radio in the police office at night. Crickets in the dark. Long steady shots and slow, inconsequential panning across trees.

Also oddly recognizable is the leisurely pace at which the horror unfolds, a steady creep alongside the mundane rhythms of everyday life and interactions. While offscreen the nascent blob is working away on its first victim, we sit through a long, parked conversation between an irritated cop and the white teenage boy who knows he’s not in real trouble. The worst punishment the cop threatens is to call the kid’s dad — no, worse, his girlfriend’s dad. (In his screen debut, Steve McQueen is a decade too old for the role of teenage Steve but gamely sincere about it despite his well-lined forehead.) Kids go to the movies. The nosy neighbor prattles on. The cops talk things through. The parents talk things through. The teenagers talk things through, dreadfully aware before anyone else of the permanent rupture in life as they knew it. (“Yesterday. Good old yesterday,” Steve laments.) There’s a lot of quiet, earnest processing. Meanwhile, unseen, the blob infiltrates, devours, grows enormous.

We still don’t know how to kill the novel coronavirus. The blob can be halted but never vanquished. We mask up and spray bleach to keep the virus at bay. The military immobilize the blob with the cold blast of fire extinguishers and drop it in the Arctic.

Steve: It’s not dead, is it.
Cop: No, it’s not.
Steve: Just frozen.
Cop: I don’t think it can be killed. But at least we’ve got it stopped.
Steve: Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold.

Today scientists report that the Arctic climate is shifting from ice and snow to open water and rain.

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KLAATU YOU (46)

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