Rating: 
Summary: SILLY PUTTY
Review: Let's not compare Chuck Russell's "revisiting" of the classic 1958 movie which was one of Steve McQueen's first starring roles. Thirty years of cinematic improvements make a comparison wholly unnecessary and unfair. THE BLOB, as envisioned by Chuck Russell (Eraser), is a scifi gorefest, with some imaginative effects and its own brand of intense mayhem.
A meteor crashes to earth near a small ski-resort town. The kindly old "can man" finds the crash site, and plays around with some messy looking stuff oozing from the meteor. This stuff is actually some kind of viral mess that absorbs and spreads like wildfire. One of the main differences in the two movies is that in this version, is the monster from outer space, or...ha, no spoilers. Suffice to say, things are not what they seem.
The cast is a mixture of good performers and adequate ones. Good: Jeffrey DeMunn as the sheriff who has the hots for the town's kindly restaurant owner, played with youthful elegance by Candy Clark (American Graffiti). Also good: Art LaFleur as the pharmacist and papa to heroine Shawnee Smith (merely adequate). Kevin Dillon swaggers like a James Dean wannabe but matures as the picture moves on and he becomes a likely and likeable hero. Joe Seneca as the mysterious doctor is surprisingly effective in a villainous role for a change, and Donovan Leitch in his little screen time evokes a rare mature teenager. The scene in the pharmacy where a friend of Leitch's purchases condoms is pretty funny. As for the horror scenes, they're good: the blob in the restaurant wherein the cook goes down the drain; the stampede in the movie theater when the blob takes center stage; and the finale with the snow machine. All well done and effective. Compared to a lot of really bad horror movies currently going straight to DVD, THE BLOB is a cut above the rest, and remember, there's always rooms for jello!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Too gruesome to be fun
Review: The 80's remake of The Blob has much wilder special effects but every time The Blob shows up your stomach turns its not as fun as the 5o's version when you couldn't wait to see more Blob. Characters in this movie are the biggest problem THEY ALL DIE. You can't follow anyone cause they die in the next two minutes. And the two chosen characters are less than interesting. Not great. Music by Michael Hoenig. Check out The Stuff its pretty bad too but in a fun funny way.
Rating: 
Summary: Jelly good fun
Review: The Blob is a fun movie. It is nothing more. It is nothing less. It won't win any awards for acting or plot, but then it was never really meant to. You see, this '80s remake of the 1950-something [ahem] "classic" is really just a ridiculous b-movie with fancy special effects. The plot is almost as absurd as the title, following what appears to be a colossal alien jelly as it rampages through an American town, munching on its inhabitants and generally being a bit of a nuisance. Cue face melting, blood spurting and lots and lots of gore. The acting is as cheesy as everything else in the movie, and the very idea of a psychotic blob murdering people is somewhat laughable, but as i already mentioned, this is an entertaining Saturday night horror film.
Rating: 
Summary: Terror Has No Shape...But It Looks Kinda like Jell-O
Review: Chuck Russell's 1988 version of the classic horror film THE BLOB is really less a remake and more what is nowadays called a "re-imagining." Both films have the same fundamental plot: Gelatinous hunk of sentient goop piggybacks to Earth on a meteor, then proceeds to eat--or, more accurately, dissolve and absorb--every living creature it encounters, while in the mean time, two in-the-know teenagers try to warn the incredulous populace of a nearby rural town. The original 1958 production, starring a young Steve McQueen, is a satire of 1950s white-bread conservatism, as well as a tongue-in-cheek parody of that decade's popular sci-fi and horror films. The more recent film, on the other hand, is basically straight-on horror, and fans of the older film should therefore not delve into the newer one with the hopes of finding that familiar gee-whiz tone--it just ain't there. As a basic '80s horror flick, however, the 1988 incarnation of THE BLOB is actually quite good. The story is fairly tight and gripping, and there aren't too many noticeable plot holes. The two principal characters are, in contrast to the original, earnest and fairly accurate depictions of teens from the film's era, and the two actors portraying them--Kevin Dillon and Shawnee Smith--are decidedly adequate for the task. There is, of course, more blood and guts in this film than in the original, with several shots peering into the insides of the translucent monster as its human meals dissolve in potently acidic digestive juices. And though the amorphous lump of goo here bears a stronger resemblance to Jell-O than to its hip 1950s predecessor--yes, Steve McQueen's globular extraterrestrial nemesis actually looks pretty cool, despite the stop-motion technique used to animate it--the special FX in this film are very well done and quite realistic, and the aforementioned "digestion" scenes will definitely delight gore hounds. Although there is no doubt that Chuck Russell's 1988 "re-imagining" of THE BLOB is built on the dusty foundation of the first, making a qualitative comparison of the two is really unjustified, as each filmmaker created their work with different ends in mind. As mentioned before, the 1958 film presents a satirical and parodic look at the decade in which it was made, whereas the 1988 film offers up straightforward scares, thrills, and chills. Consequently, each film will evoke a different response from the audience--one a smirk, the other gooseflesh. So although the 1988 version does not have the multi-layered subtext of the film that came before it, it certainly is a generator of goose bumps aplenty, and as such, it is just as successful--if not just as "good"--as the original. The Columbia/Tristar DVD edition of 1988's THE BLOB offers a crisp widescreen digital transfer at a very reasonable price, so even those who find they like this version but still prefer the original can afford to have BOTH versions in their collections.
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