Warning! The Stuff!

In the late 50's we had the Blob descend from the depths of space, and in the 70's a small part of it found its way back to wreak more havoc. In the 80's Larry Cohen's The Stuff seems to be a movie that wants to hit a number of the same notes as the The Blob, but with perhaps a bit more pointed humor and a little sharper satire. The Blob came from outer space but the Stuff seems to come from the depths of the Earth itself.

An old man finds a bit of the Stuff in a mine and finds the white goo tastes surprisingly good. We cut forward many months and discover that The Stuff is a popular food product which is taking the nation, if not the world by storm. We are treated to some well-designed ads for The Stuff and then we meet our hero, an industrial spy with a wild wit and perverse attitude. (To put this movie within a very narrow time frame of pop culture awareness, Clara Peller of "Where's the Beef?" fame has an exceedingly appropriate cameo. )He quickly finds that this Stuff is something which has a profound effect on people, even to the point of making them not people anymore. Those who have come under its spell fight mightily to keep it safe and to keep its secret.

The only problem with this movie is that its got some dissonance in tone, with some characters played too broadly to fit in with the overall scheme of biting satire. But that aside, the movie still lands many punches not the least of which is how modern culture is addictive to pleasure at its core and all too susceptible to the whims of modern marketing.

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Beware! The Son Of Blob!

The Blob was a successful monster movie from the late 50's and no one suspected it mild yield a sequel until Larry Hagman (yes THAT Larry Hagman) thought it might be a grand notion. He lived in the Malibu Colony, a high-rent collection of homes belonging to a gaggle of folks, many in the film industry. So Hagman looking for a gig after I Dream of Jeanie came to a close chatted up his chums and they made a movie. Beware! The Blob or as it was otherwise known Son of Blob is a monster movie with a decided difference, a light breezy tone. I saw it once on TV years ago, but only once.

Like the original movie, the sequel focuses its attention on two young people who are the first to encounter the threat, at least the to encounter it and survive. Godfrey Cambridge is the culprit who unwittingly brought back with him from the frozen north a specimen which required freezing. It of course thaws and the Blob is back to its old tricks of rolling around and absorbing animals and people. Like the original the youngsters are seen as the problem for a long time before the true threat is  fully understood and the town's forces are marshaled against it.

This is a fun movie and at many junctures quite funny. Burgess Meredith plays one of a trio of hobos who fall victim to the Blob and they are quite humorous (Hagman is a mute part of this trio). Shelley Berman apparently runs an all-night barbershop and that makes him vulnerable. There's quite a bit of humor in the movie, which it could be argued undercuts the tension, but really by 1972 monster movies needed more juice than the Blob could provide to really give folks a chill. (The later 80's remake of The Blob did find some ways to make the threat feel more palpable.) But this is still a fun movie and I'm glad to get to see it again after quite a long time.

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Dojo Classics - The Blob!

The Blob starring "Steven McQueen" is a movie I've seen many times over, and each time I'm somewhat at a loss to understand the appeal of this sometimes dreadfully slow, arguably lumbering, 1958 monster flick. But nonetheless a few later there I am watching it again. There's clearly something about this movie which draws you in, not perhaps unlike the pulsing red blob from space which gives the film its title.

One of the things which always jumps out at me when I view this movie is the rather crude production quality. It's an independent movie and it's in color, a downright novelty for a movie of this kind and vintage, but it nonetheless acts like a home movie in many places. The editing is suspect as we move awkwardly from interior set to countryside especially in the opening shots. And the sound mixing is downright wretched -- I noticed that especially on the dvd I used to view the film this time, the background noises are so prominent in most of the scenes it distracts from the dialogue. The characters sound like they are walking on glass in many scenes.

McQueen makes his Case

The story for the few who might not know is a simple one. A meteor falls to Earth and unleashes a small amorphous mass of pulsing tissue which upon contact with flesh absorbs that flesh and increases its mass. The "blob" (never called that in the movie) is found by an old man who quickly succumbs and he is in turn found by uber-whitebread "teenagers" Steve Andrews ( McQueen) and Jane Martin (Aneta Corsault) who take him to the local doctor who through a series of bumbling maneuvers eventually also falls victim. The blob is unleashed on the town and only the teenagers believe while the police dither away, concerned to distraction with the menace of  teenage delinquency. The blob rolls through the night absorbing first this bar full of patrons and then that garage mechanic until finally it lands in the local theater full of midnight-movie fans. It has a weakness but it takes the ingenuity of the teenagers to discover and exploit it.

The Blob takes in a Movie

The movie rarely achieves anything one could dub pace, as it will follow a scene of violence and tension with a limp scene chatting about innocuous teenage concerns such as dodging the cops or treating your girl with proper respect or overweening concern for some bewildered mutt. The teenagers in this movie all look a little suspect too, most seeming to be in their twenties at least. McQueen looks like he actually might be thirty in some scenes which it turns out he almost was at the time.

Teens and Cops United

Looking at The Blob as a basket of movie elements there's no way you'd call this movie successful, but somehow despite the abundant evident flaws it hangs together, sometimes just barely to deliver a most memorable monster and a very remarkable ending.

If you perchance have never seen The Blob by all means do so, but stay patient with it, because like its titular monster it sneaks up on you.

UPDATE: Took time to represent this review from a few years ago because tomorrow the Dojo will review the wacky sequel to The Blob and there's other Blob adjacent material this week. Stay tuned.

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Attack Of The Giant Leeches!

The Giant Leeches is cheapo delight of a monster movie. It's loaded with bristling memorable characters, not the least of which is the vivacious Yvette Vickers.  But that's saying a lot. The plot of this movie is dead simple. Giant man-sized leeches appear in the bayous and begin to abduct and kill the local population. While this is going on a woman cheats on her jealous husband and a local warden tries to date while fighting off monsters in his spare time. 

I would love to see a really good copy of this movie as despite owning it several times I have yet to run across a print which wasn't muddy and too dark. While the script is minimal this movie is filled with some good character acting and even the leads are above what you'd expect in a production this small and cheap. So on the human front this movie out performs. 

But famously it's in the area of monsters that it falls short. The monster leeches are difficult to decode as the movie tumbles along and at no point is any of them larger than the men who operate the cheap-jack costumes. I only wish there had been a leech as giant as the one on the poster -- that's scary stuff. 

This one is fun for what it is, a low to no budget offering filled with some fun lines delivered by folks who know their craft, at least a little bit. 

And did I mention Yvette Vickers?

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Donovan's Brain!

What if you were a scientist doing brain research on monkeys and all of a sudden a dead rich tycoon's brain falls into your hands? Well in this yarn first concocted by Curt Siodmak and adapted to film several times, you'd take that brain dump into a fish tank, attach a few electrodes and then let the overpowering personality of the dead tycoon begin to control your every move. Sounds like a plan don't it.

Donovan's Brain stars Lew Ayres as the addle-pated scientist who seems bereft of common decency despite his kind demeanor. He's married to Nancy Davis who indulges her man in his every whim and assisted by Gene Evans who cannot help himself but also pick up the slack. Evans plays a doctor who is also an alcoholic and Ayres covers for him repeatedly which is a sign of a solid friend of sorts, but shows quite early in this story that his ethics are squishy.

This is a low-budget item, but there's plenty of money on hand to tell this tale of power and greed. This a workmanlike story which does just what's needed to keep the narrative moving forward and does so with decent effectiveness until the very end where it all kind of falls apart a bit. The ending is not terrible, but it's unsatisfying in many ways and I'll say little here to undermine its effect.

I do recommend this movie, it's a remarkable bit of science fiction.

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The Man With The X-Ray Eyes!

X - The Man With the X-Ray Eyes is one of those movies that begins as a bit of B-Movie schlock and somewhere along the way makes a left turn into profound. I'm not sure to what extent the makers of the movie knew this, but that's the result nonetheless.

The idea of X-Ray vision is a tantalizing notion which is most reduced to teenage boys grabbing quick glance of girls under their clothes. But while this movie does pay homage to that idea with a goofy scene of a private party in which our hero can see folks in their birthday suits, it's only a passing moment.

Perhaps that has to do with the man, played by veteran actor Ray Milland. Milland brings a gravitas to his role which a lesser actor might well have lacked and so diminished the potential seriousness of the idea of seeing beneath surfaces. And that's the point, we have a doctor here who seems to have a blend of altruism and the usual Frankenstein instincts which inform doctors in low-budget sci-fi, a shouting out for good, but hidden beneath a desire for recognition and sheer confirmation that his work hasn't been in vain. This doctor hits the jackpot and by injecting himself with his miracle drug can see beneath skin and muscles to perform life-saving operations as well catch a glimpse of a pretty dame underneath her knickers. But his mind is changed too and he kills his best friend and has to go into hiding as a carnival act. This leads to an understanding that he can make a killing at the gambling tables and despite the intervention of a worthy woman, he still ends up destroying himself when he sees behind the secret of the universe and cannot bear the sight.

This movie is a Roger Corman effort, an above-average one and one of the very few which was actually adapted to comic book form. Check out this link to get a closer look at the comic. If you haven't seen this movie I highly recommend it, it's a better than you'd think.

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The Last Game Of Thrones!

No attempt at spoilers below so tread carefully.

They tell me that hardcore fans of the series Game of Thrones are not all that happy about how the epic television series wrapped up. But truth told, I was only surprised a few times to be honest and that was mostly in which character ended upon the the "Iron Throne", the throne itself melted to slag. (More on that later.) Many are carping about the "breakneck" pace of the season which for my money was still just about as mopey as it's always been. There were whole episodes dedicated to yammering before a decent bit of action intervened.

I sure as heck don't want more hours dedicated to "character". We know who these folks are now, we all have ideas about how they will stand or fall. The villains were dispatched and the heroes were rewarded (mostly) with only a few getting not what they deserved, but that's life sadly. I can see a few bits of plotting condensed to make way for the two hay maker endings but that was really only in the transition from one war to the last. One more episode at most to show that transition might be argued for, but that's all I can see at the absolute most.

GoT fans like The Walking Dead fans have become accustomed to dawdling and don't like it when dawdling isn't the order of the day. And that's why I've abandoned the latter and reluctantly only bought into the former in recent years.  For me the pacing was better, I wanted to see the end and in some episodes thought I might not make as boredom wore me down. All things must come to an end, even the game of thrones.

As for what it all meant, let me venture this proposition. The true heroes of the story were always the young ones, and we get to see how they grow and deal with the immense challenges they face. The Iron Throne was purported to be made of individual swords fused together to make the seat of power. The Iron Throne was only ever a symbol, but that stagnant symbol of a generation gone partly mad was demolished  and for the most part the madness itself was expunged. But when it was melted down, when the wheel of was broken, we see that the "swords" are actually the young characters themselves, grown finally to adulthood having been tempered by the suffering, loss, and joys they've encountered, and embracing their roles as queen, captain, explorer, and otherwise. Both the extremes of fire and of ice have been repelled, the dark age is swept away and a more moderate rational world beckons. Sounds pretty good to me.

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