History Film / TheBlob1988

* ChekhovsGun: The snowmaking truck at the mechanic's being repaired for the town's upcoming skiing season. [[spoiler:It ends up proving crucial in stopping the Blob's rampage during the climax.]]

* FauxAffablyEvil: [[spoiler: Dr. Meddows comes across as friendly and helpful at first glance, but we see soon later who he truly is.]]

A meteorite crashes into the forest outside the small mountain town of Arborville, UsefulNotes/{{California}}, where it is discovered by a local hobo. A blob of slime from the crater attaches itself to the hobo and quickly begins consuming him. The afflicted bum soon crosses paths with three local teens: jock Paul (Donovan Leitch), cheerleader Meg (Creator/ShawneeSmith), and bad boy Brian (Creator/KevinDillon). They take the bum to a hospital, where the Blob consumes him as well as Paul and then breaks free to ooze amok via the town's sewer system. Meg tries to convince Sheriff Geller (Creator/JeffreyDeMunn) and other locals of the danger, but nobody believes her and they instead want to pin the recent trouble on Brian.

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, Dr. Meddows (Joe Seneca), admit that the Blob is an unexpected result of a government experiment. The officials place their top priority on recovering the Blob for use as a weapon; all lives in town are of secondary importance.

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 Meddows tries to kill them to prevent the truth from leaking. The Blob kills Meddows and emerges onto the city street, now colossal in size and seemingly unstoppable.

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 blob. 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 minister Rev. Meeker (Del Close) has kept a few crystals in a jar and [[TheEndOrIsIt begins preaching about a day of judgment soon at hand.]]

A meteorite crashes into the forest outside the small mountain town of Arborville, California, where it is discovered by a local hobo. A blob of slime from the crater attaches itself to the hobo and quickly begins consuming him. The afflicted bum soon crosses paths with three local teens: jock Paul (Donovan Leitch), cheerleader Meg (Creator/ShawneeSmith), and bad boy Brian (Creator/KevinDillon). They take the bum to a hospital, where the Blob consumes him as well as Paul and then breaks free to ooze amok via the town's sewer system. Meg tries to convince Sheriff Geller (Creator/JeffreyDeMunn) and other locals of the danger, but nobody believes her and they instead want to pin the recent trouble on Brian.

* AnyoneCanDie: The reason the film uses a DecoyProtagonist is to make the audience feel that anyone can die.

* DeathByAdaptation: The ReasonableAuthorityFigure in this film, one of the main protagonists in the original, is killed fairly early.

* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:Paul Taylor is the likeable jock dating the heroine Meg while Brian Flagg is a James Dean-like anti-authority dude with more than a few run-ins with the Man. Then Paul becomes the Blob's second victim, and Flagg takes over the Hero role.]]

* JerkJock: Scott Jeske, who progresses from lying to Reverend Meeker and a pharmacist that the condoms he's buying are actually for his buddy Paul (making Paul have a really, really awful first meeting with the pharmacist, who is his date's father, when he goes to pick her up) to getting his date drunk so he can date rape her. It's almost a KarmicDeath when the Blob devours him.

* JustThinkOfThePotential: Dr. Meddows wants to capture the Blob alive and prohibits his men from shooting it because of its potential as a weapon of mass destruction. His men quickly disregard his order in favour of self-preservation, but their weapons aren't of much use against the Blob either way.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: The doctor. He didn't hear Paul and Meg's screaming and come running? Ditto the nurse.

** SparedByTheAdaptation: Both the doctor and the nurse aren’t amongst the Blob’s victims, unlike the original where they were the next ones after the old man. The doctor seemingly vanishes after calling the nurse and the nurse herself never appears.

* DateRapeAverted: Scott gets his date Vicki so drunk that she passes out. Scott starts to unbutton her blouse and fondle her while she's unconscious, but it turns out that she's actually dead, hollowed by the Blob. It kills him next, preventing his date rape by default.

* DeathBySex: Scott gets Vicki so drunk she passes 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.

** The diner owner Fran, attempts to call the sheriff's office for help as the Blob oozes over the phone booth, only to be told the sheriff is already at the diner. Fran looks out of the glass to see the sheriff's half-melted body floating inside the Blob just before it seeps in and eats her too.

* AdaptationalBadass:

** Meg and Brian, especially the former, are far more active than Jane or Steve from the original film. Meg is an outright horror ActionGirl by the film's end, and Brian kicks the asses of some of the [[spoiler: government hazmat suit agents]], and to top it off, [[spoiler: they're the ones who singlehandedly stop the Blob's rampage.]]

* AdaptationalBackstoryChange: Ever so slightly, facilitating a minor plot twist not present in the original. Instead of being an alien life-form which arrived via a meteor, the Blob is a [[spoiler: biological weapon created by the American military during the Cold War which was ejected into space in a satellite, mutated in the depths of space, and crashed back down to Earth.]]

* CassandraTruth: Meg witnesses [[spoiler:Paul getting consumed by the Blob in the hospital]], but when she tries to tell the police, her parents, and Brian, but they think she's hysterical or strung out. Fortunately (or rather... ''unfortunately''), she's vindicated not too long afterwards.

''The Blob'' is a 1988 SciFiHorror film directed by Chuck Russell, who co-wrote the screenplay with Frank Darabont. It is a remake of the 1958 film [[Film/TheBlob1958 of the same name]].

* AdultFear: Meg must save her little brother from the Blob. Her brother's friend is not so lucky, and we see the boy's worried mother hoping that he would return safe.

* MexicanStandoff: [[spoiler: Before the final fight with the Blob, Brian gets into one with Meddows, his men and Deputy Briggs. During this time, he reveals Meddows's true nature, and the distracted Meddows gets killed.]]

** Fran however is definitely this. She manages to escape from her locked-up diner by smashing the window and climbing out while the Blob is distracted inside. She drops down into the empty street, with what looks like a solid headstart as the Blob is still nowhere to be seen. You'd expect her to do the smart thing and run as far away from the building as possible.[[spoiler: Instead she runs into the nearby phone booth to try and call the sheriff. Naturally, the Blob soon catches up and envelopes the phone booth, showing her the corpse of the sheriff before it easily smashes through the container and devours her.]]

** Fran however is definitely this. She manages to escape from her locked-up diner by smashing the window and climbing out while the Blob is distracted inside. She drops down outside into the empty street, with what looks like a solid headstart as the Blob is still nowhere to be seen. You'd expect her to do the smart thing and run as far away from the building as she can.[[spoiler: Instead she runs into the nearby phone booth to try and call the sheriff. Naturally, the Blob soon catches up and envelopes the phone booth, showing her the corpse of the sheriff before it easily smashes through the container and devours her.]]

* SatchelCharges: Satchel charges are used twice at the climax to try to destroy the Blob. The first time, the satchel charge causes a nice big fireball [[NighInvulnerable but does nothing to the monster]]. The second time, the satchel charge is used to blow up [[KillItWithIce a truck full of liquid nitrogen]], which freezes the Blob solid and stops it for good.

* SequelHook: [[spoiler: The Arborville priest has kept a chunk of the Blob in a bottle, opening the possibility that it could attack again]].

* AdaptationalBadass: The Blob itself. Not only is it much faster and more intelligent than before, it's also much tougher. While in the original film, [[spoiler:the Blob was completely immobilized by fire extinguishers alone, here they only succeed in temporarily warding it off, and it takes an explosion of liquid nitrogen to finally put it down.]]

* 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 wouldn't be a threat.

* NonMaliciousMonster: Just like the original, the Blob is simply a predator trying to consume.

* CensoredChildDeath: [[AvertedTrope Averted]] when [[spoiler: Eddie gets half-dissolved by the blob in the sewers.]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/TheBlob.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:300:Terror has no shape.]]

->''"Scream now, while there's still room to breathe..."''

''The Blob'' is a 1988 horror film directed by Creator/ChuckRussell, who co-write the film with Creator/FrankDarabont. It is a remake of the 1958 film [[Film/TheBlob1958 of the same name]].

A meteorite crashes into the forest outside of the small mountain town of Arborville, California, and is discovered by a local hobo. A blob of slime from the crater attaches itself to the hobo and begins consuming him. The afflicted bum crosses paths with three local teens: jock Paul, cheerleader Meg, and bad boy Brian. The teens take the bum to a hospital, where the Blob consumes him as well as Paul and breaks free to ooze amok throughout the town. Meg tries to get the locals to understand the danger, but no one believes her and instead want to pin the recent trouble on Brian.

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 result of a government experiment. The officials place their top priority on recovering the Blob for use as a weapon. All lives in town are secondary.

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 seemingly unstoppable.

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 blob. 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 [[TheEndOrIsIt begins preaching about a day of judgment soon at hand.]]

* AdaptationalBackstoryChange: Ever so slightly, facilitating a minor plot twist not present in the original. Instead of being an alien life-form which arrived via a meteor, the Blob is a [[spoiler: biological weapon created by the American military which was ejected into space in a satellite, mutated in the depths of space, and crashed back down to Earth.]]