1950s SF film
The Blob, 1958, USA DIRECTED BY IRVIN S. YEAWORTH JR.
The film that launched the careers of both Steve McQueen and Burt Bacharach, over the last fifty yearsThe Blob has become something of a pop culture artifact. It was written and produced outside of Hollywood with no distribution deal lined up, by people who wanted to do something different with their portrayal of teen culture by depicting them as good kids instead of out-of-control delinquents, which was more customary at the time. Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. was a man more used to making religious films, and after he completed it a deal was struck with Paramount, who liked it, and The Blob was meant to ship to theatres paired with I Married a Monster from Outer Space, a movie that Paramount justifiably believed would fail. By mistake the distributors ended up shipping The Blob on its own, and unshackled by any association with an inferior movie its cult status was born. McQueen received only $3,000 for the film; he'd turned down an offer for a smaller up-front fee with 10% of the profits because he didn't think the movie would make any money - it ended up grossing $4 million. According to Irvin Yeaworth and Billy Graham, when McQueen died in November 1980 in Juárez, Mexico, he died in a room in which he'd also hung a film poster for The Blob.
Being his first movie, McQueen was not the easiest actor to work with given that he still had a somewhat deserved bad reputation. Despite being 27 for The Blob he had to act 18, and while carrying the film with more conviction than a real teenage actor would (as well as holding up his persona as a rebel and outsider) he still rarely looks the age he's meant to. But when up against the rampant, amorphous, red protoplasm from outer space (the reason we should be watching the film in the first place) you find yourself engaged with McQueen's performance more than the plot itself, even though you do get to see more of the Blob in action than you do of the creatures in many monster movies. McQueen makes this a more-than-fair exchange and steals the show, and while this is a pretty lacklustre film in many other respects it's the combination of McQueen and the colourful cinematography that makes this a movie I will never tire of watching.