The Blob (1958) The Blob

Hub page for The Blob wiki.

The Blob is a 1958 American science-fiction horror film directed by Irvin Yeaworth from a screenplay by Theodore Simonson and Kay Linaker (credited as Kate Phillips), produced independently by Jack H. Harris in the Philadelphia suburbs and Pennsylvania for Paramount distribution. The film stars Steve McQueen (in his first leading role, credited as "Steven McQueen") as Steve Andrews, a Phoenixville teen who watches a meteor fall, finds an old man with a gelatinous mass attached to his hand, and spends the rest of the night trying to convince the adult town that the mass is real and growing.

Burt Bacharach and Mack David wrote the title song "Beware of the Blob," performed by The Five Blobs, which opens the film over its credit sequence and frames the threat as something the town isn't taking seriously before the story proper begins.

Analysis

• Plot Structure (The Blob) — Two Approaches structure
• 40 Beats (The Blob) — beat-by-beat breakdown (coming)

Setting

Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, late 1950s, on a Friday night. Drive-in movies and drag races on the highway, the Downingtown Diner downtown, the Colonial Theater on Main Street showing a midnight monster picture. The Cold War civil-defense apparatus (air-raid siren, Civil Defense helmets, fire alarms) sits in the background of every shot of the town and becomes operative when the kids decide to use it to wake everyone up.

IMDb