Beware! The Blob (1972)

Plot Outline: A technician brings back a frozen specimen of the original blob back from the North Pole on a drilling expedition. His wife accidentally defrosts the blob, letting it loose once again on a small unwitting town.

The Review: The Blob is classed as one of the best cult films of all time. It's so bad it's actually pretty good. Add 14 years onto it and you'd have thought people would have learned their lessons a bit when making such a film. But alas that isn't the case with Beware! The Blob. Whereas the original was so bad, it was good, this is just downright awful. Directed by Larry Hagman, of Dallas fame, you can see why he never directed another motion picture. He's pretty clueless and the opening couple of scenes are just horrible. There's no explanations, no story, just people talking to each other. There's no explanation of how this technician actually managed to get a frozen canister back to his house or what the blob was doing there in the first place. In fact it wasn't until I read the synopsis on IMDB that I actually realised he was supposed to be a technician from the North Pole - I thought he was just some black, lower class American guy living for booze and fishing and that he'd stumbled upon the canister by mistake in the sewer or something. So with this confusing beginning, the film already blows big time. There's no overall story linking anything together. The film seems to be focused around the blob and that's it. You're introduced to a few people in a situation before the blob comes along and kills them before moving on to the next couple of people. The hobos in the street, the couple making out in the tunnel and the people at the hairdressers are just a few examples of random scenes thrown together simply because the blob attacks people. The blob isn't long confined to the canister in the film which is a good thing and it's soon sucking up everything in sight, including a really cute kitten and the two people living in the house. No longer a spoonful of jam throw onto a miniature set, the special effects for the blob here look reasonably convincing at times and definitely a preview of what could be done with the 80s remake of the original. The film does manage to pick up a little by the time the blob reaches the bowling alley but by then it's too late and the film has already sunk without much of a trace.

Final Verdict: Beware! The Blob is a terrible sequel. It fails to capture any of the essence of the original (whether that was deliberately bad or not) and doesn't fit together well at all. It's a mess of randomly shot scenes thrown together with a big clump of goo killing everything in sight. Hagman clearly didn't know whether to do a homage to the original, a serious remake or simply a 70s version with hippies instead of rock 'n' roll rebels. What he gets is nothing but a pile of crap.

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