Overlooked Movies: The Blob

Another cheat, since I figure many of you have seen or at least heard of this one, thanks to the fact that it stars Steve McQueen.  It was one of those double-feature horror movies of the '50s that I remember seeing in the theater.  Even at the time, I thought that Steve McQueen and Aneta Corsaut (Miss Crump!) were the world's oldest teenagers.

When the movie opens, their necking in the local lover's lane is interrupted by the fall of a meteor.  Steve wants to go look for it.  Meanwhile a farmer has poked at the fallen object with a stick, breaking it open and allowint the little blob to emerge.  Before he knows it, the blob has attached itself to him.  Steve and Aneta arrive in time to take the man to the local doctor and then go back to see if there's anything else at the site.  When they get back to the doctor's house, the blog has pretty much inhaled everything and everybody, growing bigger all the time.  

Steve and Aneta try to warn the town, but nobody believes their crazy story.  Then we get a series of blob attacks.  Finally, after the blob has scarfed up a theater full of kids, people believe.  Too bad that Steve, Aneta, and a couple of others are trapped in a building that's being ingested by the blob.  Do they escape?  I ain't telling.

I thought this was great when I saw it, and it's still fun.  Seeing McQueen jump into his dandy convertible is worth the price of admission all by itself. And then there's the title tune, which I can still sing even after 55 years.  "Beware of the blob, it creeps and leaps . . . ."