YMMV / The Blob (1988)

• Alternative Character Interpretation: The way that the Blob attacks its prey, sometimes through prolonged sequences of stalking a victim, can make some viewers suspect that the Blob is intelligent or even malicious.
• Awesome Music:
  • Alien's "Brave New Love", a nice energetic song played over the ending credits.
  • The score by Michael Hoenig is also really good, sounding appropriately intense and creepy for a movie as horrifying as this one. At points it sounds like something out of Resident Evil.
• Broken Base: Briggs' death for some people. Some are fine with it since the movie already established that Anyone Can Die and he was kind of a big asshole towards Brian but others feel that in his case it was pretty pointless since it happens right out of nowhere after he starts to redeem himself. You could cut his death scene out of the climax and nothing would be really missing (save for him, of course, but not everyone who lives is shown at the end).
• Complete Monster: Dr. Christopher Meddows is a military scientist who specializes in bioweapons. He's inadvertently responsible for developing the Blob by sending the satellite and the proto-Blob sample into space, where it mutated before it fell back down on Earth. He didn't expect it to develop into a ravenous, all-consuming monster, but he is more than pleased at this development and its military potential. He cordons off the town where the Blob has started its spread so he can test its killing potential on all the inhabitants and to perform further experiments on the survivors. He's even willing to sacrifice his own men to further his goal, as he orders the sewers blocked off when two of the heroes and one of his men try to escape from the pursuing Blob.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: According to child actor Michael Kenworthy (who played Kevin, Meg's little brother), Douglas Emerson, the boy who played Kevin's friend Eddie, had a typical Stage Mom: she was always there badgering director Chuck Russell into using her son, demanding he would have more and more screentime. It's amazing that she permitted the events of the film to take place (seeing as his character gets eaten trying to escape the sewer), and what makes it funnier was the fact the movie was not initially very financially successful anyway. ^note In case you're wondering, Douglas Emerson went on to be in a handful of films before his career hit its peak with a co-starring role in Beverly Hills, 90210. After it, he quit acting altogether and joined the military. As of 2021, he's retired from the military.
• Moral Event Horizon: The Blob loses any sympathy it might have had as a predator just trying to survive when it plays Face Stealer with Scott's girlfriend's hollowed-out corpse when it could have simply broke through and caught them both, all of it most likely was to see the glimpse on his face when it kills him.
• Narm:
  • Pink is not the color one usually associates with terrifying monsters, and it could undercut the Blob's menace for some viewers. The intent was apparently to make the Blob disgustingly organic, like a living gastrointestinal system.
  • In the climax, as the Blob is rampaging through the main street, a man trips and the Blob flattens him. Now, given how gruesome the deaths were up to this point, you'd think that the poor guy was reduced to a gory mess after that (especially since the Blob slammed him HARD) but while it's brief you can see that he LITERALLY got flattened like a cartoon, not unlike when Sr. Barriga flattened Don Ramon after he didn't want to pay the rent.
  • During the Blob's attack at the theater, while it is overall terrifying, there's one moment where it looks like a man is DIVING into the Blob. The effect was probably meant to look like he was being pulled into it by its tentacles but the execution looks unintentionally hilarious.
• Nausea Fuel:
  • The deaths are so graphic and full of Body Horror that it’s not recommended watching the movie with a full stomach.
  • Speaking of which, the Blob itself has a really revolting look since the idea was that it was like an inside-out stomach, hence its disgustingly fleshy and veiny look it has despite it supposed to be a slime monster.
• Paranoia Fuel: The remake makes the already scary effects of The Blob even worse. This time, The Blob has tentacles to grab you if you try to run away from it. Oh, and it isn't slow moving like the original version. This one is fast. The final cherry on top? It is aware, so it can ambush, plan or outsmart you as well. Good luck sleeping tonight...
• Remade and Improved: The Blob (1958) is considered a Cult Classic, but The Blob (1988) is generally considered to be an improvement, thanks in part to its better special effects and performances. On a pure horror level, it certainly makes the Blob itself truly terrifying.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Final Fantasy VII and Cowboy Bebop fans will surely recognize Beau Billingslea as Moss.
  • Dale plays the Sheriff.
  • Jennings is Lord Zedd
  • Bill Moseley is the panicked soldier Brian and Meg rescue in the sewers.
  • Not to mention Amanda Young herself, Shawnee Smith, in her first leading theatrical role.
  • Let alone Johnny Chase as the other main lead.
• Signature Scene:
  • Paul's death at the hospital, due to how graphic his death is and that he was treated as the protagonist until this point.
  • George, the cook of the diner, being sucked into the small drain of a sink by The Blob.
  • Eddie getting pulled into the water by The Blob and then jumping out half-melted, again due to how graphic it is, plus the fact that a child is being killed.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • While the Blob itself is a remarkable effect, the optical effects used to composite it into several scenes are very hokey. Especially near the very end during its rampage in the city.
  • The blob is an obvious puppet during the sewer scene, and a noted point of contention between effects man Lyle Conway and Chuck Russell that led to Conway's departure, and Tony Gardner and Eric Allard taking over.
  • At the end when the reverend shows that he has a piece of the Blob inside a jar, it's painfully obvious that his hand is a completely static prop and you can even see the mechanism used to move the small blob inside.
• Tear Jerker: On top of being nightmarishly graphic, the deaths are also quite tragic since the victims are (mostly) decent people who did nothing wrong.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Although the visual effects are very impressive, some people found the Blob to be more scary when it was unexplained goo from space rather than a man-made government project gone wrong. Being an alien organism would also provide an easier Hand Wave as to how the Blob is capable of both problem-solving intelligence and outright sadism. A fan is also unable to name it as a favorite Alien Invasion movie since the Blob isn't alien anymore.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The presence of a rotary pay phone is certainly quite dated.
  • Meddows wants to use the Blob to get an edge over the Russians in the Cold War, which ended several years after the film premiered.
  • And, if we're being honest... Brian Flagg's hair. I mean seriously.
• Vindicated by History: Was a pretty major Box Office Bomb at the time, but now a sizable portion of people consider it as good, and maybe even better than the original, partially due to the Visual Effects of Awesome, and the impressive cast including Dilon, Smith, DeMunn, and Clark.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The Blob is brought to life with amazing animatronics and practical effects that still hold up well in the 2020s. Paul's death for example combines practical effects used with the actor, a waterboarding effect over his for the scene where Meg initially sees him which the actress wasn't told about beforehand. The compositing used to bring the Blob to film is shaky, but the Blob itself isn't.

---