History Film / TheBlob1988

* AssholeVictim: A few, especially [[spoiler:Dr. Meddows]]. Special mention goes to the guy who won't stop talking in the theatre and is rude towards Kevin when he asks him to be quiet and quit ruining the movie. When Kevin tells him for the last time to be quiet, it looks as though the guy might hit him, but he gets snatched up by the Blob.

* BrickJoke: Scott purchases ribbed condoms from the pharmacist, claiming they're for his buddy Paul. When Paul shows up for his date with Meg, it turns out that her father is the pharmacist. He snarls, "Ribbed!" when he recognizes Paul.

* CrisisMakesPerfect: Near the beginning of the movie, Brian attempts to jump a broken bridge with his motorcycle, but fails. Much later, he's trying to escape from the military personnel after [[HeKnowsTooMuch he learns too much]], and is chased towards the same bridge by armed soldiers on trucks (under the impression he's a possible infectee to a non-existent disease). This time he makes it, but the trucks aren't so lucky.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: After a funny case of AccidentalPervert thanks to his friend Scott, Paul jokingly vows, "Scott Jeske is gonna die." A few scenes later....

* ArtisticLicenseBiology: How does the Blob know how to find prey, actively hunt, and grab people if it seemingly doesn't have distinct tissues, organs or sensory receptors? It's never explained, but otherwise the Blob won't be a threat.

* AdaptationalIntelligence: The advanced creature effects in this version allow the Blob to use more complex tactics in the way it hunts. It's now apparently aware that it must take its victims by surprise. We frequently see it hide from and ambush its prey rather than mindlessly ooze toward its next victim. It even seems to understand firearms, purposely sabotaging a flamethrower at one point.

* HollywoodAcid: The Blob's body secretes digestive enzymes able to completely digestive any organic matter in seconds, leaving no bodies behind. A drop of its slime falls on a wooden table and almost instantly eats a smoking hole through it (in reality, they did in fact use real acid for the scene, but the table was a piece of styrofoam painted to look like wood). For perspective, the nastiest acids in existence such as hydrofluoric acid or piranha solution would take at least hours to dissolve through human flesh, and even longer to get through the bone.

* WeaksauceWeakness: The Blob becomes an unstoppable juggernaut at the end, laughing at bullets, fire, and physical attacks. But the protagonists manage to (temporarily) hold it off with ''fire extinguishers'' [[spoiler:and ultimately defeats it by crashing a truck full of liquid nitrogen into its mass, freezing it into quartzlike crystals.]]

* HollywoodAcid: The Blob's body secretes digestive enzymes able to completely digestive any organic matter in seconds, leaving no bodies behind. A drop of its slime falls on a wooden table and almost instantly eats a smoking hole through it (in reality, they did in fact use real acid for the scene, but the table was a piece of styrofoam painted to look like wood).

* {{Novelization}}: A rather decent one by David Bischoff (who also wrote the {{Novelization}} for ''Film/Gremlins2TheNewBatch''). The book not only contains elements from the original script, including different character names (such as Meddows being called Bruno Trimble), it even has some scenes told from the Blob's point of view. Somehow.

* AdaptationalIntelligence: The advanced creature effects in this version allow the Blob to use more complex tactics in the way it hunts. It's now apparently aware that it must take its victims by surprise. We frequently see it hide from and ambush its prey rather than mindlessly ooze toward its next victim.

** Deputy Briggs is equivilent to Sgt. Bert in the original. He's a hardass who insists that Brian is behind the recent disturbances, but when the government agents pull weapons on Brian, he defends him and listens to reason. He then helps the townsfolk barricade themselves in the town hall.

* MatchCut: When the (initially small) blob from the meteor first envelops and begins slurping up the Can Man's arm, we cut to Kevin slurping up some Jell-O for dessert at home.

* TooDumbToLive: Surprisingly rare in this creature feature; however, one of the chief mooks, upon encountering the Blob with his squad, reminds them "We have orders not to shoot!" - just before the Blob consumes him. The others promptly throw the orders out the window and start fighting for their lives.

The Blob rampages through the street, killing dozens of fleeing townsfolk. Meg realizes that cold is the Blob's weakness, and she helps a group of townsfolk barricade themselves in the town hall using fire extinguishers. Brian arrives with a snow maker truck and crashes it into the blog. Meg sets an explosive charge on the truck and detonates it, freezing the Blob into a pile of crystals. The town is saved, and they plan to gather the Blob crystals to keep frozen before day breaks. But meanwhile, the town's local priest has kept a few crystals in a jar and begins preaching about a day of judgment soon at hand. TheEndOrIsIt

* EatenAlive: The worst part about being caught by the Blob is that it isn't like a conventional predator which will usually kill you before it eats you. Most of its victims are still alive and screaming as they're gruesomely melted into slime.

* BloodierAndGorier: Thanks to the improved special effect by the time. The deaths were considerably more gruesome, because we see some of the victims dissolve on-screen.

* KillItWithIce: The Blob can be defeated by exposure to subzero temperatures, which can eventually freeze it completely solid.

* NoisyNature: A sewer rat squeaks ''very'' loudly as it floats past the characters on a broken piece of board.

* HockeyMaskAndChainsaw: ''Garden Tool Massacre'', the [[ShowWithinAShow movie showing at the cinema]], is a classic slasher example of these. When an expandable teen spots the killer brandishing a hedge trimmer at him while wearing a hockey mask, he comments, "It's not hockey season..."

* BigBad: [[spoiler:Dr. Christopher Meddows, who created the Blob and is responsible for its rampage, using it to test its power.]]

* AdaptationalIntelligence: This version of the Blob is hinted to be much more intelligent than its predecessor. Instead of mindlessly oozing everywhere, it deliberately sets traps for its victims and enjoys toying with them, making it more of a malevolent predator than mere GreyGoo.

* DateRapeAverted: Vicki, the girl in question, doesn't have a choice, because her date, Scott got her drunk first. But there's beautiful poetic justice because when the slimy boy goes to get his hands in her bra, he finds only the Blob, which had gotten into and consumed most of Vicki's insides already, leaving it gelatinously filling her empty flesh sack. Eww. However, even though the would-be-rapist gets a nice comeuppance, the girl is still just as dead.

* DramaticGunCock: Subverted. Flagg picks up an M16 that's already cocked to threaten Meddows but the charging handle was not shut. If he had fired, the charging handle would have slammed into his face!

* ItCanThink: The titular creature, instead of mindlessly oozing everywhere, uses [[spoiler:ambush tactics like a predator instead. Scott was killed when the Blob consumes his passed-out date from the inside out and waits until he moves in before it reveals itself and kills him.]] Another example is when it attacks a flamethrower-wielding soldier and blocks the end of his flamethrower, causing the fuel tank to explode and kill him.

* SuperPersistentPredator: The Blob mostly doesn't ''need'' to be this, as it kills at will. At the end, though, it gets pretty blatant, as it consistently menaces the main cast holed up in a building, instead of going after the much more accessible tasty mooks still trapped outside.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: The Blob's specialty. It doesn't do clean, painless deaths, apparently as much [[ForTheEvulz out of preference]] as out of its abilities.

* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Sheriff Geller gives Flagg fair warning that, as a legal adult, if he screws up now, "(he's) in the majors". Later, he quickly figures out that Flagg couldn't have murdered [[spoiler: Paul]] since Flagg didn't have a single drop of blood on him from what was, after all, an extremely gruesome murder (besides which, he already knew that Flagg wasn't a killer), lets him go, and resumes searching for the real killer. [[spoiler: To his misfortune, he finds it.]]

The Blob continues to attack more and more townsfolk as the government agents begin quarantining the population. Meg is forced to rescue her little brother from a cinema that is attacked by the Blob. They flee into the sewers, where Brian arrives just in time to save them, but the lead government scientist tries to kill them to prevent the truth from leaking. The Blob kills the lead scientist and emerges onto the city street, now colossal in size and seeingly unstoppable.

** Also clearly an attempt at TakingYouWithMe. Unfortunately, even two grenades exploding inside causes the Blob little lasting harm.

* DyingMomentOfAwesome: Subverted by [[spoiler:the military commander]]. When the Blob is about to fall on him, he grins and pulls the pins on two grenades. A few moments later, almost as an afterthought, we see two brief flashes of light inside the Blob, which had no effect whatsoever.

* MythologyGag:
** Just like in the original film, the Blob makes an attack on a crowded theatre after devouring the projectionist.
** There's a scene which hearkens back to the '70s sequel, in which The Blob slinks up through the sewer lines into a sink and pulls a hapless victim literally down the drain.

* NonMaliciousMonster: Averted. The Blob is [[spoiler:the accidental result of a secret government germ warfare project]], and shows several signs of intelligence. It seems to enjoy hunting its food, lays traps and even kills just for the fun of killing [[spoiler:such as the unfortunate theater patron, head half-dissolved into the floor.]]

Circumstances seem to improve when government officials begin swarming the area, fully aware of the danger and ready to combat the threat. Brian overhears their leader admit that the Blob is an unexpected mutation of a virus in an experimental government satellite that fell back to Earth. The officials place their number one priority on recovering the Blob for use as a weapon. All lives in town are secondary.

The 1988 remake of the 1958's ''Film/{{The Blob|1958}}''. Directed by Creator/ChuckRussell, improved special effects allowed for far gorier deaths than the original.

* AdaptationalVillainy: The remake version of the blob is clearly [[ItCanThink more intelligent]] than the GreyGoo version from the original, making it come across as far more sadistic in the way it chooses to toy with its prey, along with those deaths themselves generally being BloodierAndGorier.
* AdultFear: The cheerleader Meg Penny learns from her parents that her brother Kevin and his friend, Eddie are missing while the town is under quarantine, thinking they snuck out to see a slasher movie. What makes this terrifying was the fact that Meg's little brother is now in danger of being eaten by the titular monster now getting bigger by eating anyone that gets too close. She arrives to find the theatre is in a state of panic with Kevin and Eddie desperately trying to use the emergency exit and while she does save them, they wind up having to evade the Blob in the sewer. The Blob follows them down there and [[spoiler:Eddie then gets pulled underwater. Meg tries to save him only to later see Eddie rise up from the water half-eaten; imagine dying by drowning and being eaten/dissolved alive ''at the same time'']]. What makes this all the more horrifying was the fact [[spoiler:Eddie has an older brother that let them both into the movie, who was deeply worried about his brother and reported the Blob having chased him, Kevin, and Meg into the sewers; and we saw his mother ''hoping he was going to come home safe''. At least Meg and Kevin survived....]]

* AnyoneCanDie: For this version, this couldn't be more true. According to an interview on the Australian Blu Ray, Chuck Russell deliberately stole a page from the Hitchcock playbook by killing the character (Paul Taylor) that everyone would identify as "The Hero" halfway into the film so everyone would go "Geeze, if he could die, ANYONE could!"

* AssholeVictim: A few, especially [[spoiler:Dr. Meddows]]. Special mention goes to the guy who won't stop talking in the theatre and is rude towards Kevin when he asks him to be quiet and quit ruining the movie. When Kevin tells him for the last time to be quiet, it looks as though the guy might hit him, until he got snatched up by the Blob.

%%* BrickJoke: "Ribbed...!"

* DeathBySex: As mentioned above, Scott gets Vicki drunk on alcohol so she'll pass out. The Blob gets to her, sucking her innards out, while he's mixing another batch. When Scott sees she's passed out, he goes in for the DateRape, only to discover there's nothing there but the Blob.

* DroolHello: [[spoiler: [[DecoyProtagonist Paul]] sees a few drops of HollywoodAcid drip onto a desk just before the Blob pounces him from the ceiling.]]

* ForTheEvulz: This version of the blob has enough mental capacity to be sadistic, as it chooses to toy with or prolong the death of its prey when it would be more pragmatic to JustEatHim.
** Special mention to late in it's development, where it starts forming a "mouth" in its mass just to torment its prey further, and make itself look even ''more'' like a predator instead of just a big amoeba.

* GreyGoo: Averted, unlike the original movie. The Blob is [[spoiler:the spawn of a secret government germ warfare project.]] It acts less like mindless spreading GreyGoo and more like a malicious, semi-intelligent monster.
* HeelFaceTurn: [[spoiler:After Dr. Meddows' death, the other soldiers, several of whom were already on the fence about sacrificing the entire town to capture the Blob, quickly change their plan to try and destroy it and save the town instead.]]
* HockeyMaskAndChainsaw: In a movie shown in a theater.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler: See SealedEvilInACan above.]]