The Blob (1988) - re:View

so jay anything interesting happened in the good old u.s survey this week not at all i'm so glad 2020 is over 2021 is just off to such a better start as we speak right now january 4th 2021 everything's going along smoothly i mean it i couldn't ask for a better year i don't know what's gonna happen tomorrow or the next day you know but as of january 4th 2021 how much can change in two or three days but not much from today january 4th and speaking of 2021 this is the year we promised we'd review the blob and also not to be confused with the blob uh the blob the remake was written by frank dearborn holy [ __ ] and there's several members of the cast of the blob that are in the mist that's coming up stay tuned 2021 will do that it'll be competing with avatar six right i arbitrarily back when we reviewed the mists i just threw out a date a year to review the blob and uh here we are i also said that we would be reviewing avatar six in 2021 and we haven't even gotten avatar two so we're more reliable than james cameron right it's true yeah it's true [Music] anyway it's 1988's the blob yeah which is not a film about louis anderson we're not going to review the original the blob we're not going to do a compare and contrast uh because we don't care about the original the blob uh yeah i have not seen the original the blob i've seen the original the thing and the original uh invasion of the body snatchers all of course have famous remakes yes but don't forget the fly and the fly yes there's a lot of old 50s b movies that were remade in the 80s we complain about remakes now but the 80s really was the time for it the difference was they were remaking b movies that could use an improvement and making them better yeah yes the only thing i remember about the blob was the bowling alley scene when uh was it or was it a movie theater it's a movie theater okay that's one of the holdovers in this is the yeah where i thought there was a bowling alley where the strawberry jam comes out of the wall [Applause] [Music] they reference it in this they make it they make two jokes great i killed the strawberry jam i think kevin dillon's like he's he he picks up something on the ground he's like ah oh yeah strawberry jam he looks yeah and then they cut they do a hard cut from the real blob to someone eating jello a little nod at the original shot the hokiness of the original yeah yeah it's not just that the original was because it's i don't know i don't think either of us are into 50s sci-fi b movies everything's about communism everything's about communism but it's uh they're all very talky there'll be a couple scenes with the monster or the threat the giant ant or whatever it is and then it's lots of scenes of people talking in rooms richie you old buzzard i didn't know you were a chess player it's like i've been telling you he seems to think the doctor got into some kind of trouble here tonight yeah my daughter mr dennis thank you for coming out here all we know is that they told us the scenes where the blob attacks people the the four percent of the movie or or the monster in 50s bee movies right those were meant for everyone to throw their popcorn and scream the other 96 percent is teens making out in the drive-in that's why they have the long talking scenes yes they knew their audience oh sure it's come on doll let's go to the drive-in i'm gonna show you a spooky movie i don't like spooky movies don't worry most of it's boring talking the most shocking thing in the original the blob is that steve mcqueen is playing a teenager he looks like he's 40 years old the best thing about the original the blob is the theme song beware [Music] anyways i love this movie i've forgotten how much i love it i you know it's one that i i watched here and there growing up and i always really liked and uh in this recent re-watch i realized kind of like when we talked about tremors our very first review it's pretty much a perfect movie from a structure standpoint from a script standpoint solid [ __ ] script by frank darabont yes yes the writer of the mist the green mile shawshank redemption of course shawshank redemption um uh got his start in horror he uh this is directed by chuck russell who directed nightmare gnome street 3 written by chuck russell and frank darabont [Music] the cinematographer was the cinematographer of all of david cronenberg's early movies we got a couple david lynch cast members it's the perfect stew i felt it felt lynchian i think it was the diner yeah the it felt uh f krugerian freddy kruegerian the the scene where um the girl is taken home by her parents and the mom's like here's a sleeping pill just go to sleep and you're safe now you know and she's like i'm not taking your sleeping pills mom it's a heather laying clamp that was a scene that was cut out of a nightmare on street three so they just reused it in this yeah yeah like oh it's a sleeping pill yeah whatever and she sneaks out her window and then you got the the is it's kevin dillon the brother of matt dillon i assume yeah um as as the the the biker punk outcast he was the most amazing mullet you've ever seen he was a little like the the other character from the first uh neighborhood street like rod yes rod and who ends up in prison so does kevin dillon and then um wasn't johnny depp sort of like the quarterback kind of guy like yeah he was sort of a sportsy guy right so the main girls yeah of boyfriend right and then you have the other guy in this um although the guy in this gets dispatched a lot earlier than johnny right which is worth pointing out when we talk about the script this movie does a great job of every 10 minutes or so kind of resetting and and keeping the story interesting yeah well it's a 95 minute run time perfect flawless execution uh in every regard so i wrote my notes nope on an ancient form of communication is that a piece of paper a paper pepper i've heard of those uh it is it is printed out on a computer i originally wrote with my hand oh i have a little notebook a spiral notebook with with lines on it and i use something called the pen oh not a pencil but a penine okay ah it has vague memories of these things yeah and i you write with you could you could create words with your hand like by the motion that you use a panel and i did that while watching the film but i translated it into a computer form because i can't read my own handwriting after the fact um uh but i wrote i wrote all the setups and payoffs there's numerous yeah the the most basic thing that even wonder woman 1984 forgot to include is the basic concept of setups and payoffs and these are these are all rudimentary things that we talk about in all of our reviews we talk about acts there's acts there's setups and payoffs and then there's character arcs those are your three real big things that you're supposed to include in a script if you want it to work well we should point out you can you can't avoid these things you can break the rules but you have to replace it with something interesting and not just jumbled mess of nonsense like a wonder woman 1984. a famous author once said in order to break the rules you must first learn them uh and so frank darabon is proving he he knows the rules here and he can break them later in life when he writes such films as shawshank redemption etc but uh this he's like i'm playing it safe well it's a blob movie this is the perfect movie to do that with you know you don't go over the top with it but set setups and pass first one motorcycle jump yes our hero uh what's his name his character's name is brian flagg and knowing that frank derebot's a big stephen king fan i'm wondering if flag is a reference to the stand because that's the main villain in that movie in that story's name i love all the character names in this by the way they're all great um but anyway you got set up some payoffs first one motorcycle jump brian flagg aka kevin dillon i think they call him flag he is attempting to jump his motorcycle over a broken old bridge because he has nothing else to do yeah he is the product of a broken household an alcoholic mother uh his father left he's turned punk he's an outcast in their little small town which is a great setting they show it yes and a lovely little matte painting uh a tiny isolated town challenge makes it feel twin peaksy this is a little small town with all these likable characters surrounded by the woods yeah so he's trying to do the motorcycle jump he fails of course and then later in the film he has his chance to do it again when the stakes are high and he does it by golly he does it because he's our protagonist and then he works in a bike shop fixing cars a mechanics shop right and they tease the snow maker machine uh that his co-worker is chilling sodas or beers in the snowmaker machine jay do you remember any other quality setups and payoffs let me just ask you this there's the little kid with a zipper the jacket the jacket yeah the mother says you got to take your jacket i don't want to take my jacket you got to take your jacket uh my [ __ ] zipper mom you stupid [ __ ] that's what he exactly says normally you would think the jacket would save his ass yeah that's the thing that that he slips out of when he's falling off the building and but he's able to hold on to it but no it causes problems [Music] i also like this isn't really a setup it's more foreshadowing which is also important the snow globe yes um and of course the whole town is built around the ski industry but um uh and it's not even mentioned that it's christmas time i don't i don't know i think it's fall i think yeah they're they're they're worried about in the coming winter if they'll be enough to be a good season but but uh she's laying in the bed and and next to her bed is a snow globe it doesn't show her shaking it up but the snow is dripping you know what's going on yeah you know what they're doing which is a nice setup for the ending yes best use of a snow globe since citizen kane can i talk about one of my favorite scenes in the film that's what we're here to do and how it could be altered to make it worse to make it i was watching the movie and i started laughing out loud because i rewrote the movie in my head i punched up the script in my head you punched up academy award-winning frank dervan's script i did i'm sorry frank so our our hero paul our temporary hero paul the high school quarterback who's in love with meg and his friend scott jeske go to the pharmacy scott jeske wants condoms uh look pal give me a pack of trojans in a banaca spray because scott jeske is a potential rapist he's not a rape i won't call him a rapist he was almost he was on his way he was [ __ ] blocked by the blob he was [ __ ] blocked by the blob um he has a he has a bar cart in his trunk it's kind of amazing and he has all these like things in there he and he's like baby you're wearing my ring and he has a pile of them in his trunk he's a dirt bag yes and um is it implied there that he put something in her drink because she gets very sleepy she's not just like drunk she like passes out and i was wondering if the implication is that he was supposed to have drugged her i don't think so because he's surprised when she passes out okay he's more like like oh an opportunity the scene is scott jeske and paul paul is our hero he's our he's our all-american high school quarterback it's the steve mcqueen of this movie he's going to make it to the end right they go into the pharmacy together and scott jeske the dirt bag goes up to the counter he's like yeah mr pharmacist buddy give me um a pack of trojans and some banaca uh he goes and he goes to the back to get them to get them the condoms and then the priest shows up i haven't seen you at the sunday services lately oh you want yeah well or the regular it's it's uh it's from a friend over there and he points to paul who's completely unaware yes he's he's he's being duped and the priest is you know not you know he's obviously judging him you know and then so scott the pre-rapist awful sleazy dirt bag pays for his stuff and leaves then the pharmacist just said now father how can i help you and the father turns to him and says i'll have one pack of trojans that's your rewrite that's my rewrite okay that's funny so your rewrite is not restructuring the film in any way it's just adding jokes okay fair enough i had a nice joke i laughed out loud when i thought of that while watching the film well congratulations in hindsight i'm glad they didn't put it in but yeah this uh the the small town aspect of it the priest the religion angle because the priest gets once he sees the blob uh he of course changes his whole perspective yes he's just a regular old priest and then he sees the blob and he thinks it's like i don't know end times and then he starts his own cult yeah in the middle of nowhere for an end times cult and uh that that's that whole like the religion the small town like all the different characters it's very like the mist yeah nobody turns on each other but um and then of course the the government uh i know the myst is from a stephen king book but you have the the secret government experiment which added uh an extra layer on it yeah because you could go full don dollar and just have ah just lands from outer space and that's it yeah well that's like i was saying earlier how every every 10 minutes or so the movie just completely refreshes itself because you think like the original the blob it's a blob it's a creature from outer space and this movie sets it up as that so then you know the the revelation that oh this is man-made it's chemical warfare they're doing tests and then they close off the town so it doesn't spread and so and then it's like oh okay that's the twist which has been done especially in that era you have like aliens but then the twist on top of that is at the head of the that whole organization he falls into the the sewer and immediately all the rest of his crew just turn on him let's scrag that son of a [ __ ] it would have been really easy to just make that entire government organization all bad guys right and so the yeah the twists were we see multiple ones that feel terrible about what's happened right one of them by the way did you recognize one of the the side scientist guys at this rate by next week there may be no u.s you've been watching tim and eric recently so i thought maybe you would recognize him who is he on tim and eric he he just shows up once in a while because i always cast these like weird-looking people yeah he's one of those guys okay shows up okay um and he's in this movie he's also the voice of lord zedd on power rangers the big muscle red guy he died somewhat recently but but he there's a lot of that guys in this movie and he's one of them okay another one is the guy they run into the other uh guy in the white suit that they run into in the sewer where he's got like the crack in his suit yeah that's bill moseley who's been in like every oh yeah bob zombie movie mostly lots of lots of those guys they got the projectionist at the movie theater yeah it's that guy you know hot dogs get a bad rap they got a cool shape they got protein you like hot dogs right yeah yeah it was just chock full of that guys well and isn't the pee wee bum in this jelly cracker no the bum at the beginning isn't the pee wee bum it's another bum it's not the crazed drunk driver bum from from back to the future no i'm surprised buck flower isn't in this movie so there there's there's there's actors that make their career as bums i i swear to god i thought that was the jimmy crack corn and i don't care about them i could see that similar look you know your bums is it because you're dressed like one anyways but going back to the the small town aspect of it set up perfectly at the beginning we get all these great atmospheric shots over the opening credits it looks like like the opening of day of the dead or something where it's like this town is abandoned and they're like oh are we seeing the aftermath of the blob like the movie's really good at playing with your expectations like that and then we see a graveyard and so like oh but then we just dolly over we pan over everyone in the town is at the football game because it's a small town and that's what you do right right that perfect like setup of of i'm gonna say it's averting your expectations and it's funny you should mention that jay the the graveyard i thought that was a beautiful visual graveyard and then you pan over to the football game right next door which is true because out of curiosity when i see movies like this it brought back that um the pit which was filmed in somewhere in northern wisconsin we actually drove to all the locations of the pit took screen grabs and found where they shot stuff and i love that i don't know why i'm fascinated with movie locations well especially when it's like a an unusual location where it's like there's some small town they don't usually film at yes i'm not gonna drive to the joker steps right um but uh when it's like just just an oddball [ __ ] place where you don't go to film a movie they're i mean toronto i mean yeah you find some background shot in toronto of course but this is filmed in in abevil louisiana i don't know if i'm saying that name right a b b e v i l l e abboville abevil very small town yeah um and so i'm like oh i hit my google maps and let me grab frames and and i found all sorts of wonderful stuff the football field is right next to the graveyard that's funny because they i watched the commentary track and they make a point of mentioning that that was in the script so it's like they must have looked for it yeah like did they find a town specifically because they wanted one that had a football field right next to a graveyard it's very specific yeah it wasn't like the location scouted and they said oh we could do this shot like they had the idea then it was in the script interesting yeah yeah they must have scoured small town america to try to find that exact thing and then they saw like okay well we got there's like two kind of main streets right and there's like there's the courthouse which is doubled as the town hall they call it the town hall there is an actual police station but they never show the uh exterior of the real police station what they show is like this red brick building that kind of looks like a i think it's a bank or something when um kevin dillon gets let go by the police that's where it comes out of and it's a cigarette which is right down the street from the diner which is another main location yes it's the exterior where uh the famous manhole cover sequence happens okay and there is an actual manhole cover there yeah the whole climax of the movie takes place on that street yeah yeah the the diner the exterior of the diner is a real diner but the inside most likely a set the inside is a set and this kind of we'll talk more about effects in a bit but what's interesting about that is it wasn't just because you see there's a big window and the door is all glassy you see across the street and it's not just like a big uh like they'll use like a big you know painting or a backdrop or whatever it's actually like a half scale miniature of across the street so they're doing like forced perspective so there's actually some depth to it yeah which i i've never heard of a movie doing that before as far as the the outside of a location like that the the closest thing i could think of that's very similar is uh the exterior of dana barrett's apartment building which is in new york city it's a real place and then when they had to do the um the street coming apart they did that in los angeles where they recreated the facade the front entrance of the building well sure but that's full scale well yeah they're doing like a half scale forced perspective for just a mundane diner scene is interesting and well that and that might be the case too with um when the waitress of the diner breaks out of the window and ends up in the alley they show her uh looking down the alley and she sees a phone booth there and um that's the famous phone booth scene one of the most terrifying scenes in motion picture history [Music] and you see across the street yeah and it looks like they're real across the street because i've i've done this i've taken the two images of the google street view and um uh her perspective down the alley in the movie and it matches up pretty perfectly so it might have been what you said where they did a miniature and that ally is on on a set yeah that could be um or it was the real ally and then once she got into the phone booth it just recreated and it turned into a soundstage situation obviously because they have to do all the stuff coming in and yeah the dummy and the overhead shot is a miniature dummy uh which looks pretty good but then uh one building i couldn't find was the movie theater exterior some of that could have been shot in la i know all the wood stuff was shot in griffith park where any any wood scene in any movie shot in la they shoot in griffith park yeah although when you watch the movie you would never really think of it doesn't look like griffith park like the way they light it and stuff it which is worth pointing out we recently recorded a commentary track for dungeons and dragons yes and on that we talk about the lighting of the woods in that movie how they just took giant lights and blasted the trees and it looks terrible and this movie has that unnatural lighting for the woods lots of movies do but it's it's a lot of it's like backlighting with fog it's it's not realistic looking but it creates such a great moody atmosphere oh yeah that it completely works let's talk about the blob the titular blob the titular blob um and it's its subsequent path of destruction which is which is what you what you pay for at the box office and what you don't get from the original the blob right hey look there's a blob let's go to room and talk about it for an hour so uh the tin can man or the whatever they call them in the credits uh aka not the pewee bum uh lives alone in the forest and he's the only witness to the meteorite that crashes yeah um which i was disappointed in the pyrotechnics the uh composite shot of the effect of the fireball going over him was great yeah but then it it hits the forest and then it just does one of those sparks like you know he likes kind of like pyrotechnics that you use like where people are around they're so weak okay i wanted a like a big one uh it was a little disappointing maybe they bought some fireworks for that scene and just a lot of them were duds yeah it was all right but that scene is one of the few things that's right out of the original too with the bum when it attaches to his hand that's directly from the original okay one of the few that in the the movie theater scene they're pretty much it but the blob is is just a disgusting pile of meat of grossness that that latches on and consumes and it's pink purplish which is interesting that makes it stand out right it's not like brown or green or something more organic looking right yeah human beings find certain colors gross brown and green for example pink not so much it could have been blue too sure yeah you ever see those commercials on tvj you know like when they have maxi pads commercials or diaper commercials oh yeah or they always use some sort of blue liquid it's usually blue it's just like a light blue color like watch how absorbent this this maxi pad is diapers and they just pour blue because if they poured yellow or brown they'd turn off all their audiences yeah yeah so they pour like a yeah a color that that isn't doesn't normally come out of the human body right hot pink blue right so the blob is weird grabs onto the guy's hand they uh they uh they hit him with their car they're on the date and um take them to the hospital eventually the blob just consumes the guy [Music] well this is this is the twist they kind of set up paul as if he's going to be the hero of the movie and then 20 minutes in he's gone and it's great too because the blob is translucent so it's not just horrifying that this thing is eating and growing but we're actually seeing people be digested by it yeah and it's incredibly disgusting right that is and it's an element of like body horror to the movie too yeah in addition to everything else that's that's uh like clockwork that's the 30-minute mark yeah like you know that's when you know you take that that right turn and um everything changes before it's just like well there's a weird thing on the guy and but then once that shot when paul is consumed by it and screaming and his hand is out i mean it's it's great yeah like the effects in it are great and at that point in the movie i'm like this holds up yeah that is oh yeah and they kill a kid by the way that's yeah going back to talking about them kind of taking unexpected turns didn't expect a [ __ ] kid to die right now not only die but die horrifically he jumps out of the water and it's so disgusting it's until the blob gets a little bigger when things there's there's some wonky opticals and that's just kind of a result of the time the movie was made in of course but all the practical stuff looks great the blob itself it doesn't just like we joked about it looking like jelly or whatever from the original movie but it's it's so like sinewy and it looks in some shots it looks like almost like muscle yeah like it's hard to pin down what it is which is great right but it really feels like it has a weight to it yeah there's always one thing at the end that sticks out to me it's like when the blob is kind of pinkish and then it like it's when the the the snow trucks overturned then it like splits open and like a different chunk comes out yeah like almost like chicken colored yeah like it hasn't quite it's like multiplying and it hasn't quite changed into the pink color yet so you don't know like all those little details where it's it's doing something that's alien and foreign and you don't know what it is it's just gross the the full scale props even when paul is on the phone i think he's trying to call the sheriff maybe he's like green screened in on his at at the desk oh yeah when you see the blob behind there's a miniature of the the room it looked it was pretty solid looking where i it was really hard to tell that he was keyed in there but then it's a darker scene too later on goes so when the blob gets bigger it starts to look worse and worse unfortunately there's one shot near the end when the whole town is in chaos and someone's running down the street you just see that tentacle it looks like a like a 50s movie which of course the original is a 50s movie but but by that point in the movie you're completely on board with the story anyway oh yeah that stuff is a little more forgivable by that point i mean the big one of the big centerpiece set pieces is the movie theater sequence yeah i love the setup of that that the two little boys they want to sneak in to see the movies version of a jason movie which is hilarious it's like garden tool massacre i think it's called i don't know but it's like it cuts to like a guy with like a hockey mask on it's not hockey season everyone's in the movie theater and then there's a there's an annoying [ __ ] behind the two kids talking during the whole thing it's like yes that's the guy who first gets sucked up by the tentacles as the blob has made its way under the ceiling of the movie theater which is [ __ ] frightening yeah it starts off in the projection booth well we see after the fact because then the the manager comes into the projection booth and you see that yo-yo come into frame and then we run off yes that's right now we have a in addition to everything else we've had you know miniatures we've had animatronics and uh green screen or blue screen effects and now we have just the full-on puppet of this guy in the ceiling but that little character trait of establishing the projectionist with a yo-yo and then having that pay off where it's like all these these little details you put in to make all the characters distinct everyone in this movie even the most minor of characters is distinct yeah from from things that are written for the characters to do to just the casting everybody's really like memorable looking there's no it's not a movie full of generic pretty people right which so many movies are now right yeah yeah it's a small town the little romance between the sheriff and the the waitress owner of the diner right all these little things who that guy by the way the sheriff was uh going back to frank darbon he's the guy that runs into the grocery store in the mist that says there's something in the mist and he's on the walking dead he's like a frank darbon regular there you go jeffrey damon i think his name is yeah all those uh all those small town characters the uh i like the father pharmacists daddy i'd like you to meet my friend paul ripped i like that reveal that he he was the one who sold him the cop yeah the newspaper comes down and he's another one of that guy's hey it's that guy you've seen him in a million things yep but the the blob the ceiling of the movie theater i mean so that's great it was very gremlins-esque it was like the center point because they they burst out into the alley and then they have to go in the sewer system it's one of my only complaints government scientists that deal with microscopic biological weapons have weapons of war like bazookas and grenades maybe they knew that the blob multiplied in size but they seemed shocked by it yeah it's a thousand times bigger than when we first started and it's growing exponentially by this time next week there won't be a country maybe that's why they brought bazookas i don't know there was a great moment near the end when the blob is is wreaking havoc on the main town square and the the one guy's got the the vest of grenades yes and he and he sets them off the blob crushes him and then like three or four shots later it's almost just in the background you see the blob there you just see like a yeah under the blob it's barely even acknowledged yeah the blobs coming for him and flag has the smarts because they figured out that um the blob reacts to cold first teased or set up when they go into the freezer and then they start shooting it with fire extinguishers but then kevin dillon aka flag shows up with the snow maker and starts shooting the the thing which isn't quite enough so they gotta blow it up which is the girl who does it well then we yeah this seems like it's a little ahead of its time as far as uh she goes full like linda hamilton by the end of the movie right this is pre-t2 it's great too because you start out the movie she's just like normal generic cheerleader girl and then by the end of the movie she's just shooting this gun [Music] and i like the fact too there's two nice touches at the end with her character when she picks up the the m16 and she's just like she tries to shoot it yeah she doesn't know what she's doing and she doesn't immediately know how to use it right and then something happens where it goes off and she goes ahead and then um she physically sees one of the government guys he's got that it's like a uh like an army green sack it's not a grenade like most people know pull the pin and grenade throat it's like an army sack and he turns two things on it and throws it into the sewer yeah um and it's like a bomb or something so they watch the guy do that so she knows how to do that at the end when she throws it into the truck isn't it nice in movies where characters learn things based on information they've seen earlier in the film i i have never shot i've never shot a gun or a machine gun but i'd imagine if i picked up a machine gun it would take me a couple seconds to kind of figure out how to work it yeah unless it was just like fully ready to go but then when you shot it you'd be like ah [ __ ] not really used to how it shoots yeah yeah and it's like okay little touches like that give a movie uh realistic weight rather than just nonsense yeah well it's also great because then she has her badass moment shooting the gun and then almost immediately she like trips and falls off the back of the truck and it gets tangled up on the the cord it's her first time fighting an alien blob in a war okay she's used to cheerleading yes so she's not good at this stuff and that's great [Music] can we talk about the the miniature oh god the snow maker truck oh there's one shot where it looks like a toy oh it's so bad it looks like something we'd watch out best of the worst it was actually kind of shocking yeah considering how good all the rest of the effects are it's like they ran out of money at the end or something because some of the opticals look really bad that you can just chalk up to that was when it was made but that miniature does not does not work no yeah you could go through and like talk about gosh all those all the little the that's why movies of this era are just wonderful because you know like all the little tricks well it's yeah i mean this is we've talked about this before but like something like tremors or this or the thing where it's like it just uses every possible trick yeah every trick in the book and every shot is a different completely different it's not all just cg right every shot is like you have to think about the physics of this one there's one shot in when the the the date rapey guy is in the car and her face gets sucked in which kind of looks silly um but it's fine but then there's a reverse shot where the blob attaches onto his face it's like a one second shot but for that one shot they actually just used gravity they turn the whole car on its side he's sitting sideways and they just drop the blob from up top so it falls on him but then everything sideways so it looks normal and it's just for one you know one second shot now it would be lock the camera down and just add it later yeah have him go oh and we'll figure it all out right and we're not against cg people seem to think when you talk about how great practical effects are it means you hate cg cg is a great tool it should be used as a tool like everything else should not be completely relied upon but those those shots the the the waitress in the phone booth where it starts like seeping down the sides and then when it just like crushes her like you would not get that sort of weight from from cg or when the sheriff's deputy gets broken in half sucked into the like there's something to say about even if you know it's a dummy there's something to say about the horrific nature of of things like that happening to human beings oh yeah well that's like i said earlier body horror there's elements of that in this movie like when when uh what's-her-face's mother got sucked through the door in neighboring elm street wow yeah yeah that's the case well no i was gonna say that's the case where cg might have worked better but they did something like that at the end of the remake of nightmare on elm street and it wasn't better no well maybe it was better but it still sucks just in a different way yeah i think i just like the the the cleverness of how do we do this often works great but then then the the flip side of that coin is that they have limitations sure and sometimes the limitations just look really bad like the the keyed in miniature of a blob coming down the street and people running in front of it some of some of that stuff doesn't hold up but in my opinion i really don't care i i think it's i think it's a fun movie that uh with with a great cast yes a great variety of characters and like you said every 10 minutes it's refreshing itself they go there you know there's a football game there's there's there's the diner there's the the dynamic between the the sheriff and the waitress then you have the the high school football player and they go on the date and they end up in the hospital with the bum and then they're at down in the sewers and all these different set pieces wonderful things you could do they did everything they could with a giant blob creature infesting a small town and there was there was no down time let's like you mentioned don dola earlier where it's like a don dolar movie it's like oh there's an alien in the woods we're going to be in this woods for the rest of the movie and characters are just going to be running around the woods it's not that i mean this is this is a real movie made by made by real people it's unfair to compare it to don dolar but but there i mean there are lots of other movies even higher budget movies from that era where that's kind of all it ends up being where it like it could have easily done this where it is just an alien from outer space and then that's it the fact that they keep finding new clever ways to to keep the story interesting yeah and and the uh the frank darabantish uh who who is the real monster here um uh subtext that that seems to be in a lot of his stuff where it's the us government versus the town really at the end yeah which leads us jay to our delicious sequel tease that never happened the lord will give me a sign it works as its own thing even without a sequel there was talk i want to say it was like 10 years ago there was talk of a like a reboot remake just whatever a new version of the blob uh talk of having it be directed by rob zombie who's about the worst possible choice you could pick for a blob movie unless you want every character in your blob film to be a redneck that's all screaming at each other this is where i would be a proponent of of cg at least in in large scale stuff because um i would it's like when we talk about gremlins three yeah and i think and was it joe dante who said recently like if they did a gremlins three buttery puppets someone said recently that if and when it happens it's going to be a combination of puppets and using digital trickery to erase the puppeteers which is what i've always said you should do keep them as puppets the puppets are the charm yeah and i think they they said like it's a similar situation where the charm with the blob the charm with the gremlins are the physical props or puppets up close like the scene where uh the quarterback kid gets consumed by the blob like a full-scale prop that's like he's stuck under and dying it's [ __ ] horrifying yeah and then like like just the little tentacles or chunks that are grabbing onto people like they look real they're gross they're made of lake latex or something um but then when you have like you need the blob to like burst out of a second story window and spill out onto the street um that's where the effects in this movie get iffy yeah but but nowadays if you have a good fx company like you could probably pull that off completely realistically without it looking terrible oh yeah and then like the case of gremlins like a shot where there's hundreds of gremlins like crawling up a skyscraper or something from afar yeah cg fine with that um but when you start it off small i want to see that little disgusting thing in a jar a little booger pulsing yeah and you do you could do a beautiful remake or a sequel with blending both of those two um applications or those two ways of doing movie making practical with the cgi although i think if they remade it today it wouldn't be called the blob because that title sounds too silly and this movie is is the perfect balance of kind of fun light-hearted adventure stuff and horrific violent blob stuff but the title itself sounds funny so i think if they were to do this today they wouldn't call it the blob they'd come up with some new name i just think more generic i disagree with you yeah yeah i would call it the blob [ __ ] yeah because that's what it is and it's a disgusting blob it looks like no motive no no mind no decision making just to consume and grow and that's it and that's one that's one thing that they better not put in the [ __ ] remake it's thinking it's getting smarter it's getting smarter as it gets bigger starting to formulate plans let's hit it with the [ __ ] snow makers again they bring kevin dillon back the same haircut 68 years old he's a biker he's got a maga hat on and then they start shooting it out and it backs up it's learning that's when you cut to black and you have the voice going it's learning oh god is that the trailer your vision it's a trailer i'm visualizing yep helicopters take it

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,016,649

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, mike stoklasa, jay bauman, rich evans

Id: hBOrprigQu8

Length: 45min 20sec (2720 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/SheCocksAlot]

Jay never breaks a promise.

[u/Guysmiley777]

God damn Jay's right, that 1958 theme song slaps.

[u/AlexDKZ]

"At this rate, there may not be an US in a week"

I always liked how this and The Thing took kinda silly B-movie monsters, and upped the stakes into turning them into literal apocalyptic scenarios that HAD to be stopped right then and there or it was game over for humanity.

[u/BrassButtonFox]

Annoyed they couldn't remember Jiminy Cricket Prick Bastard guy.

[u/BionicTriforce]

I think Mike coming up with fake trailers is my favorite part of RLM.

[u/NorrisOBE]

The Blob is one of the greatest body horror films ever made and it's a great argument for bringing back the genre today especially when recent attempts like The Bay used the discourse surrounding climate change to create decent body horror.

Come on, Blumhouse! Put some money into that gorey shit!

[u/Ecksel]

The aside to 1950's sci-fi reminded me that I want to see them do a re:View of Forbidden Planet. A Shakespeare-esque story, special effects that hold up shockingly well, a classic score and pre-comedic Leslie Nielson. The boomer jokes could be unironic.

[u/WrongSubreddit]

Jay, you know your bums

• Mike Stoklasa

[u/Arctic_Spacey]

Incredibly fun film! In the same vein as The Thing and The Fly, a great love letter to 50s horror with phenomenal practical FX