Unintended shocking twist in an old movie


theblob

I was just watching that old 1958 classic, The Blob (I’m killing time before the Hamilton documentary), when the scariest moment in the whole thing was the ending line.

Spoiler!

In case you’d forgotten, the monster was defeated by freezing it, its only weakness, and then a plane hauled it off to the one place where they’d never have to worry about it.

The stolid cop says, “I think we’ve got it stopped.”

“Yeah,” the hero Steve McQueen says, “as long as the Arctic stays cold.”

“Yikes,” I squeaked.

Comments

  1. robro says

    Quick! Alert the authorities! Alert the military! Alert the police! Alert the media! Alert Hollywood…it’s remake time!!!!

  2. Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls says

    “Yikes,” I squeaked.

    Did the neighboring dogs/wolves start howling?

  3. taraskan says

    It’s missing that iconic line, but the 1988 remake to The Blob is actually great fun. That’s how you do a remake. If you’re looking for something to add to your Halloween line-up.

  4. taraskan says

    *How could I have forgotten to mention, it’s teaser last line is equally chilling and politically appropriate…I won’t spoil it.

  5. chigau (違う) says

    PZ
    Get that notion copywrit.
    Hell. Write a Treatment and send it to Spielberg.
    There’s a TV series in there.

  6. drken says

    @robro #1:

    Actually, it was already remade in 1988 with Kevin Dillon in the Steve McQueen role.

  7. robro says

    drken — 1988 was ages ago, like last millennium. In fact, 1988 was 30 years after the original, and if they started today, they could release the next one in 2018, 60 years after the original. In Hollywood terms, it’s due for a refresh. Anyway, as PZ suggests, there’s a direct tie-in to the original: melting polar ice cap frees the original blob.

  8. applehead says

    @1, robro,

    even better, a soft reboot that’s actually part of the original’s continuity to please the purists!

    Summer 2018, 60 years in the making: The Blob: Global Warning

  9. marcoli says

    *Chortle* I also watched the Hamilton documentary. It was excellent. It cracked me up to learn that in the play Jefferson would sing in Jazz, signifying that since he was away for the duration of the revolutionary war he was out of style back home, not up to date with singing in rap.

  10. numerobis says

    The more movies that have global warming as a plot element the better.

    Ideally it will have a climate denier senator throw a snowball in congress, then turn around and face the blob.

  11. unclefrogy says

    few thousand scallop shells and marine life covering a small structure that was probably originally metal.

    see that is clear evidense that they are descendants from extraterrestrial beings and some still congregate around the crash site even though the ship has long ago lost all its coherence and lies unrecognizable beneath the pile of shells and rubble at the bottom of the sea.
    do not disturb the Ship!!!
    uncle frogy

  12. drowner says

    Both The Blob (’88) and The Thing (’80) have fantastic practical effects. I miss that movie era.

  13. Dark Jaguar says

    So, we’ve got the Thing in the south and the Blob in the north, both just waiting to be thawed out.

    All we have to do is get them to meet each other and let them take each other out, right? Or… would they combine?