There is no issue so big I cannot straddle it.
Like a previous commentator I too saw THE BLOB as a double with MARRIED A MONSTER just before Christmas 1958. A sensitive child even at thirteen, it scared the hell out of me, and more so my younger tag-along brother. Ten years later I saw it on television -- understanding the marked difference in setting -- and wondered, bemused, why my early adolescent self found it so terrifying.
Part of the effect, as one Hitchcockian commentator said, was not knowing when it would "jump" out at one, what it was up to. Yes, suspense is more potent than always having the horror rubbed in one's face. See ALIEN (1979). Some of the "action," as it is politely called to-day, was shown indirectly, indistinctly. All of the banalities, the drag race, the fussing with parents, somehow heightened my fear. (Yes, a timid boy.)
I make no judgement about the "effects," not being an "effects" zombie. The acting was serviceable for a 'teen movie of the 1950s, at least to my recollection from 1967 or '8, but at that latter day Steve(n) McQueen definitely did carry it off as a teen-ager.
THE BLOB is a good period piece, a horror film with a s.f. gloss to give it legs. In recent decades the very last scene would have been a naked pitch for a sequel.
Like a previous commentator I too saw THE BLOB as a double with MARRIED A MONSTER just before Christmas 1958. A sensitive child even at thirteen, it scared the hell out of me, and more so my younger tag-along brother. Ten years later I saw it on television -- understanding the marked difference in setting -- and wondered, bemused, why my early adolescent self found it so terrifying.
Part of the effect, as one Hitchcockian commentator said, was not knowing when it would "jump" out at one, what it was up to. Yes, suspense is more potent than always having the horror rubbed in one's face. See ALIEN (1979). Some of the "action," as it is politely called to-day, was shown indirectly, indistinctly. All of the banalities, the drag race, the fussing with parents, somehow heightened my fear. (Yes, a timid boy.)
I make no judgement about the "effects," not being an "effects" zombie. The acting was serviceable for a 'teen movie of the 1950s, at least to my recollection from 1967 or '8, but at that latter day Steve(n) McQueen definitely did carry it off as a teen-ager.
THE BLOB is a good period piece, a horror film with a s.f. gloss to give it legs. In recent decades the very last scene would have been a naked pitch for a sequel.