The Blob is a 1988 American science fiction horror film co-written and directed by Chuck Russell. A remake of the 1958 film of the same name, it stars Shawnee Smith, Kevin Dillon, Donovan Leitch, Jeffrey DeMunn, Paul McCrane, Art LaFleur, Robert Axelrod, Joe Seneca, Del Close and Candy Clark. The plot follows an acidic, amoeba-like organism that crashes down to Earth in a military satellite, which devours and dissolves anything in its path as it grows.
Filmed in Abbeville, Louisiana, The Blob was theatrically released in August 1988 by Tri-Star Pictures and was a box office bomb, grossing $8.2 million against its budget of approximately $10 million. Though it received a mixed response from critics, the film has accrued a cult following in the years since its release.
Plot
A meteorite crashes near Arborville, California. An elderly transient discovers, within the sphere, a massive slime mold-like substance that adheres to his hand. Three high school students, Brian Flagg, Meg Penny and Paul Taylor, take him to a hospital. After Brian leaves, Paul witnesses the lower half of the transient melting from exposure to the Blob. As he calls for help, the Blob drops on top of him. Meg arrives to see Paul being devoured by the growing Blob. While she tries freeing him, his arm dissolves off, Meg is thrown against a wall and knocked unconscious, the Blob fully dissolves Paul and it oozes out of the hospital and into the surrounding woods. As the Blob moves through the woods, it encounters Scott Jeskey and Vicki De Soto making out in Scott's car, and consumes both of them.
After Brian and Meg have unsatisfactory encounters with the police, they meet at a diner where Meg tells Brian about the Blob. Brian's disbelief is shattered when the diner's handyman is pulled through a sink drain by the Blob. It pursues them to the diner's walk-in freezer, but the Blob retreats after feeling the extreme cold of the freezer. After consuming the diner's owner Fran Hewitt, and Sheriff Herb Geller, the Blob reenters the sewers, seen by an intoxicated Reverend Meeker. The Reverend goes into the now abandoned diner and finds a few small crystalized shards of the Blob that were left behind when it tried to enter the freezer, and he places them in a sealable glass jar.
Meg and Brian return to the police station, where the dispatcher tells them Deputy Bill Briggs is near the meteor-landing site. They discover a military operation led by a scientist, Dr. Meddows, who orders the town and the two teens quarantined. While Brian escapes, Meg is taken to town where she learns her younger brother, Kevin, is missing. Meg learns he and his friend, Eddie Beckner, sneaked into the movie theater. The Blob enters the theater, attacking the staff and audience. Meg arrives as the audience flees the theater, rescuing Eddie and Kevin.
Brian eavesdrops on Meddows and Jennings talking and learns that the Blob is a biological warfare experiment created during the Cold War, launched into space because it was so dangerous. Learning that the Blob has entered the sewers, Meddows decides to trap it there, even if that means allowing Meg, Kevin, and Eddie to die. Brian is discovered listening in and evades military personnel by driving his motorcycle into the sewers. In the sewers, Meg and Kevin flee from the Blob when it emerges and consumes Eddie. Kevin escapes by scaling a pipe to the surface, and Meg is saved by Brian, who confronts Meddows in front of the townsfolk and Deputy Briggs. After failing to convince everyone Brian is contaminated and must die, Meddows attempts to shoot him, but is killed by the Blob as it oozes into his chemical suit and drags him into the sewer. The Blob breaches the sewers to the surface and begins feasting upon the population. It proves impervious to the military's attempts to stop it, killing Colonel Hargis and multiple others. Reverend Meeker proclaims the scene to be the prophesied end of the world, after which a failed flamethrower attack on the Blob sets him ablaze. Meg saves him with a fire extinguisher, and in the process blasts the Blob with it. When the monster backs off, she realizes that the Blob cannot tolerate cold.
The survivors retreat to the town hall and hold the Blob off with furniture-barricades and fire extinguishers, but it is a losing battle; the Blob engulfs half the building and devours Briggs. Brian goes to the town's garage and gets a snow maker truck that has canisters of liquid nitrogen attached. As the Blob is about to consume Meg and her family, Brian shoots snow at the creature, which is angered and knocks the truck over. As the Blob surges toward Brian, Meg lures it away from him and toward the canisters, which she has rigged with an explosive charge taken from a dying soldier. She tries getting clear, but snags her foot between two pieces of metal, trapping her. Brian regains consciousness and runs over to free her. The Blob is about to overrun them when the charge goes off, blowing up the canisters and covering the Blob in liquid nitrogen. The creature is flash-frozen into a mass of crystallized pieces. Moss Woodley has its remains stored in the town ice house until the military can arrive with proper equipment and take it away.
A few years later, at a tent-meeting church service in a field, Reverend Meeker, disfigured by his burns and secretly driven insane, preaches a doomsday sermon resembling the Blob's attack. A parishioner enters his private area and asks him when the end will come, and he says "Soon Madame. Soon. The Lord will send me a sign." It is then revealed that he has kept the piece of the Blob still trapped inside the glass jar, and it has thawed out.
