THE BLOB (1958): Criterion Blu-ray of a Sci-Fi Classic

When I was five, I remember standing outside my local movie theater, the Crotona, and seeing a poster for the movie, THE BLOB (1958), with this massive jello-like substance covering buildings and people and it looked genuinely scary. I was intrigued, but it wasn’t the kind of films my parents were likely to take me to.

Thirteen years later, I was putting together a church film series and renting films on 16mm to show to kids after church on Sunday afternoons and when I saw THE BLOB in the rental catalog, I knew I had to get it. Its lead actor, Steve McQueen, was now a major Hollywood superstar and would be a big draw. The site of the screening was a church a block-and-a-half from the site of the Crotona Theater (which I believe had become a furniture store by this point). Another film I showed at the series was THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958), which I’d actually seen at the Crotona 12 years earlier.

It was the first time I’d seen THE BLOB and I loved it. It was a big hit with the audience, too, with the kids cheering when the high school boys go rushing off to break into the high school and retrieve the school’s CO2 fire extinguishers to fight the Blob.

A year or two later, I was watching The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on a weeknight, as I was in the habit of doing, and it was a night without Carson, so Ed McMahon and bandleader Doc Severinsen took over the hosting duties. (If there was a guest host, I don’t remember who.) They had a feature called “Stump the Band,” in which an audience member would come up with a song title and ask Doc and the band if they knew it. And if they didn’t, the audience member would sing the song. If they still didn’t know the song, the audience member got some kind of prize. Well, this night, two high school girls got up and offered to do “Beware of the Blob.” Neither Ed, Doc nor any of the band members admitted to having heard of it, so the girls sang the catchy theme song from THE BLOB, which had these lyrics:

“Beware of the Blob, it creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor, right through the door, and over on the wall, a splotch, a blotch, be careful of the Blob.”

That’s the entire song, although the lyrics are repeated multiple times as heard on the actual soundtrack during the opening credits.

The two girls won a prize. (I forget what it was.)

Ed McMahon, Doc Severinsen

A couple of years later, I’m sitting in the editing room at my college’s film school, talking movies with a classmate, a young woman who happened to hail from a neighborhood in Queens, and she mentioned the time she and her best friend from high school were in the audience at The Tonight Show and played “Stump the Band” and won by singing, “Beware of the Blob.” “So that was you!,” I blurted out, “I saw you!”

This may be a shot of the actual conversation!

Around this time, while taking film classes, I came up with the idea for a comedy sequel to THE BLOB, creating all kinds of comic situations for the Blob to get into. I don’t remember any of them. If I ever wrote them down, I don’t have those pages anymore. Imagine my surprise when an actual comedy sequel, BEWARE! THE BLOB, directed by Larry Hagman, came out in 1972, the same year I had my idea. I went to see it and found it moderately amusing, bolstered by comic cameos by the likes of Hagman, Burgess Meredith, Godfrey Cambridge, Carol Lynley, Shelley Berman, Richard Stahl, and Dick Van Patten. Still, it wasn’t as funny as mine would have been. The poster, of course, doesn’t let on that it’s a comedy.

Cut to five decades later and THE BLOB comes out on Criterion Blu-ray. I hadn’t seen the film in many years and I was intrigued by the fact that it came with audio commentaries by both Jack H. Harris, the film’s producer, and Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., the film’s director. This was a must-have. This past week, I watched the film for the first time since the 20th century and then listened to the audio commentaries. What a blast!

I love this film more than ever. Shot in color in Pennsylvania, far from Hollywood, it’s got a beauty and authentic simplicity that grounds the audience in small-town reality while introducing an alien element that gradually becomes a huge threat to the lives of the community. The thread running through it is the young hero’s awareness of the threat and his frustrated efforts to convince the skeptical police in the town, as well as his own friends, that it’s for real and not just a teenage gag to stir things up. It all takes place over a few hours in the middle of an otherwise typical night. In film historian Bruce Eder’s contribution to the audio commentary, he calls THE BLOB, “a collective home movie of who we were and who we thought we were.”

What makes the film work so well is the conviction that the two leads bring to their roles. Steve McQueen (billed as Steven McQueen) as Steve Andrews and Aneta Corsaut (spelled Corseaut in the credits) as his girlfriend Jane Martin play it dead serious throughout, with nary a tongue in cheek, and we never doubt who they are, despite both being older than their teenage characters. (McQueen was 27 during production and Corsaut was 23.) The dramatic weight of the film is on their shoulders. They bring urgency to the narrative and strong emotions for the other characters, more lightly drawn, to react to.

The Blob is introduced when a meteor crashes to Earth, witnessed by Steve and Jane in their deserted parking spot, prompting them to drive over to the probable landing site. An old hermit in the woods, played by veteran character actor Olin Howland (in his final feature), is the first victim of the Blob, a red gelatinous substance that has emerged from the meteorite that has fallen near his cabin. Dr. Hallen (Stephen Chase) is the first adult to become aware of the threat after Steve and Jane drive the old man to the doctor’s office in town. Hallen becomes the Blob’s second victim and his nurse, Kate (Lee Payton), the third.

From then on, it’s up to Steve and Jane to get the word out, a most difficult task once the Blob, having absorbed three humans by this point, has slipped away undetected. Steve had had a run-in earlier in the evening over a traffic violation with Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe), the ranking police lieutenant, but Dave turns out to be the most sympathetic adult in town. Sergeant Bert (John Benson), Dave’s dyspeptic partner, is immediately skeptical and insists until the last moment that the kids are pulling a prank. He’s the most antagonistic adult during the whole evening.

Earl Rowe as the sympathetic Lieutenant Dave

The other teens, friends of Steve and Jane, are initially meant to come off as menacing and antagonistic, like the teens who bully James Dean in REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, but they quickly become more benign and tag along with Steve and Jane and join them in the search for “the monster.” A couple of them are more goofy than anything else.  Eventually, they prove crucial in Steve’s campaign to warn the town and, later on, in coming up with the “weapons” used to subdue the Blob.

Steve and Jane are eventually cornered in the supermarket run by Steve’s dad and have to run into the meat locker to avoid the Blob, which seems to shy away from their hiding place. Only after they come out do they take desperate measures to warn the town and create such a commotion with their friends’ car horns that the police and fire department come out to investigate, as well as much of the town. When a search of the supermarket turns up nothing, it looks like Steve is once again in the hot seat. But then we hear screams from the crowd rushing out of the nearby movie theater after the Blob has interrupted the “Midnight Spook Show,” setting up a rousing and thrilling finale.

McQueen and Corsaut were both acting in New York when recruited for the film. The other cast members are a mix of Hollywood character actors (Stephen Chase and Olin Howlin), working New York actors (Robert Fields, Vincent Barbi), and actors drawn from local theatrical troupes working in the Pennsylvania region where they shot. The Hedgerow Theatre Company, based in Pennsylvania, provided several major supporting players and even its founder and director, Jasper Deeter, then 64, played an old townsman who is awakened by all the commotion and can’t decide whether to put on his Civil Defense helmet or his volunteer fireman’s hat. All of the actors are quite good and bring a level of professionalism to something that might have given off an amateur vibe in other hands.

The Blob effects are generally pretty effective, although there are a couple of crude moments that pass by quickly. Overall, I found the whole thing very exciting and suspenseful. I see the film as a mix of the teen angst of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE (1955) and the alien presence slowly infiltrating a small desert town in IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE (1953). It helps that the Blu-ray was made from such beautiful print.

There’s one plot hole I noticed this time, though. Dr. Hallen, who treats the Blob-afflicted old man has a nurse named Kate (Lee Payton). Hallen calls her to his office after Steve and Jane bring the old man there. She’s one of the Blob’s victims. When Lieutenant Dave and Sergeant Bert go with Steve and Jane to the house to investigate Dr. Hallen’s disappearance (explained away by his oblivious housekeeper’s insistence that he left town for a conference) and notice the disturbance in his office, no one thinks to call Nurse Kate. There’s no reason to believe she would have joined him on his trip and there may have been someone at her home who would have noted that she left to answer Dr. Hallen’s urgent call. That would have raised a red flag. I seem to be the only one who’s noticed that.

A lot of red flags are raised in this scene demanding further investigation, but the clueless housekeeper blithely assures them that Dr. Hallen left on a business trip and couldn’t possibly have been here.

The separate commentaries by producer Jack H. Harris (with gaps filled in by film historian Bruce Eder) and Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. (alternating with cast member Robert Fields) tell us a lot about how the film was made and how it was received. Apparently, the casting, production and successful distribution of the film came about via an extraordinary combination of luck, talent, show biz instinct and happy accidents. Harris, based in Pennsylvania, had a background in regional distribution for Warner Bros. and RKO, while Yeaworth worked at the Valley Forge Film Studio in Pennsylvania turning out short religious films on 16mm for the church market. Harris wanted to make a commercial feature for mass distribution and had decided to do a science fiction film after seeing a screening of Howard Hawks’ THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1951) at some point. He knew Yeaworth and got him to agree to join him on the project provided he kick in some of the financing. For Yeaworth, it was a chance for him and his production crew to make a feature film in 35mm and prove they could do something that reached beyond the niche market they’d been working in. They got some writers they knew to come up with a workable story and a first draft script and then hired Kay Linaker, a one-time Hollywood actress who was by then working as a TV writer in New York, to polish the script.

Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. (left) with Jack H. Harris in the center while shooting THE BLOB. (Photo courtesy The Criterion Collection)

As he was preparing to cast the film, Yeaworth saw McQueen in a TV appearance and was quite impressed. He’d actually met McQueen a year or so earlier when McQueen’s wife, Neile Adams, was acting in a short film for Yeaworth and he’d accompanied her to the shoot and proved a big pain in the ass to everyone. At the same time, Harris had gone to see the Broadway production of “A Hatful of Rain” and just happened to be there the night Ben Gazzara was replaced by his understudy, McQueen, and was duly impressed. Yeaworth ran into McQueen on the street in New York while he was looking for New York actors to fill important parts in THE BLOB and offered him the job on the spot. McQueen, out of work and needing a job, accepted. Yeaworth and Harris offered him a flat fee of either $2500 or $3000, depending who’s telling the story, or, in lieu of salary, 10% of the gross. McQueen, not sure if the film would ever see the light of day in theaters, took the up-front money. He’d live to regret it.

McQueen appears as Bill Longley in a 1958 episode of “Tales of Wells Fargo,” opposite star Dale Robertson.

Corsaut was cast at the last minute as they were still looking for a suitable actress and an agent in New York called them in Pennsylvania and said he’d found their girl. She was sent on a train to Philadelphia and Harris and Yeaworth met her at the station at 11PM at night, took her to their office, interviewed her and gave her the job. Production began two days later. (Corsaut, of course, became famous in a few short years for playing Helen Crump, the schooteacher girlfriend of Sheriff Andy on “The Andy Griffith Show.”)

Aneta Corsaut in “The Andy Griffith Show”

Yeaworth, an ordained Methodist minister, stresses how much of a team effort it was, with everyone believing in what they were doing and wanting to make it come out as best as possible, during the month-long shoot at Valley Forge studio and on location at some nearby towns in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Everyone lived and ate at the dorms on the Valley Forge campus, which had once been the earliest arts academy in the United States, founded by, among others, Benjamin Franklin. McQueen frequently gave Yeaworth and Harris a hard time, at one point insisting on seeing the dailies, something Yeaworth didn’t want to let him do. Harris stepped in and gently suggested to McQueen that the director was boss on the set and McQueen relented. Both men were so impressed with McQueen’s work in the film that they put up with any problems he caused (including his insistence on bringing his barking dog, Thor, to the soundstage when they were shooting).

The film showing at the “Midnight Spook Show” at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, where they shot the scene, is called DAUGHTER OF HORROR and was a low-budget horror film originally called DEMENTIA and re-edited and retitled by Jack Harris. Harris claims in his commentary that Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show, narrated the film and even appears in it as the “Spirit of Death.” McMahon’s narration is heard in the scenes in the movie theater and we even see a long shot of the Spirit of Death. Interesting connection, given my earlier story about The Tonight Show.

In his contribution to the Harris commentary, Bruce Eder points out that midnight spook shows were a regional phenomenon and would never have turned up in a Hollywood horror film because Hollywood filmmakers wouldn’t even have known about it.

Robert Fields, in blue shirt on the right, sits next to Molly Ann Bourne. In his contribution to the audio commentary, Fields admits he had a crush on Bourne (can you blame him?!), but that it sadly wasn’t mutual.

Harris was the one who came up with the idea of putting in a catchy counter-intuitive theme song over the opening credits and commissioned then-unknown songwriters Burt Bacharach and Mack David to write one. Both director Yeaworth and the composer of the score, Ralph Carmichael, protested, preferring the atmospheric theme music Carmichael had already composed to match the spreading, rippling red lines in the animated title sequence. Harris overruled them. When the theme song became a hit recording and helped drive up the boxoffice for the film, Yeaworth and Carmichael saw the wisdom of Harris’s choice.

Harris sent the film around to the Hollywood majors to get a distribution deal, but they all rejected it. Eventually, Paramount decided they needed a co-feature to go with their black-and-white production, I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE (1958), so they paid $300,000 to Harris to secure the distribution rights, which paid for all the production costs plus a considerable profit, and allowed Harris to contract with the Deluxe Color lab for 300 35mm prints, thus paying back Deluxe what the production owed them for printing their dailies on a delayed payment basis during the shoot. As it turned out, most theater owners opted to play THE BLOB solo and it became a huge hit, even playing solo at Paramount Pictures’ flagship theater in New York’s Times Square, the Paramount, where Frank Sinatra had entertained thousands of swooning bobby-soxers during the war years. Had McQueen accepted 10% of the gross, he would have been a millionaire before he was 30.

This is quite a good little science fiction drama in its own right.

An old barnstorming publicity man, Harris claims that he encouraged comedians of the time to make fun of THE BLOB in their routines and cites a few who did, including Steve Allen and Bob Hope, helping to make the film a subject of the national conversation and hyping up interest in it.

Neither Harris nor Yeaworth have anything positive to say about the 1988 remake of their film, which I don’t believe I’ve ever seen.

Both Harris and Yeaworth are justifiably proud of their film. They went on to make two more films in the sci-fi/monster genre, THE 4-D MAN (1959) and DINOSAURUS (1960), two films I haven’t seen in decades but am now eager to revisit, especially since Kino Lorber has just released them on Blu-ray. THE BLOB and DINOSAURUS were paired for a successful re-release in the early 1960s after McQueen had become a big star. The audio commentaries for THE BLOB were done around 2000 or 2001. Both men were still working at the time. Yeaworth died in 2004, Harris in 2017.

Robert Lansing as THE 4-D MAN (1959)

McQueen died of cancer in 1980 and reportedly, according to the commentaries, died in a room adorned by only one of his film posters, THE BLOB.

“Dave, look at me! Do I look like somebody’s playing a practical joke? Am I laughing, or am I scared stiff?”