Customer Reviews

Son of the Blob [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Cindy Williams, Shelley Berman, Dick van Patten, Burgess Meredith and other familiar faces get together in this direct sequel to the original Steve McQueen movie. The original blob was taken to the frozen north. An oil worker finds something strange in the permafrost and brings it home where his wife doesn't want it in the freezer. Well, it thaws, and after a fly and a kitten, the creature moves on to human prey.

This is a strange film with camp pushed to its limits. Nothing is safe from the creature in this small town and nothing is same from the film makers. Hippies, hairdos, hobos, and the strangest barber since Monty Python's Michael Palin are just the tip of the iceberg is this strange film. There is even a clip from a certain Steve McQueen film. It fits into the blob scenarios the same way that Godzilla vs The Smog Monster fits with the rest of the Godzilla films.

The effects are pretty good (foreshadowing those of the remake) but the acting and pacing make it more like a sketch comedy version. This is like a case of the moth and the flame, you know it is bad for you but you are still drawn to it. Check it out.

When I was a kid, I loved horror movies. I even collected those monster trading cards. There was only one movie that scared me and that was Beware! The Blob! I don't know exactly why it scared me. So I waited and waited expecting it to come on tv again after all these years. So I figured, buy it and get a kick out of it. So if you want to get a movie just to get a good enjoyable laugh check it out. Larry Hagman did a good job as director in the flick.

I first saw this movie when I was ten years old in 1977. It scared me because of the warning signal that told the audience that the blob was near. There was one scene that was very impressive,which was the scene with the shadow of the blob on the barn. The shadow indicated how big the blob got since the beginning of the film. The blob ate all the animals and then the three hippies. Burgess Meredith and Larry Hagman were two of the hippies in that scene. The cast of the film is likeable and there are plenty of veteran actors like Richard Webb and Shelley Berman. For its time,Beware! The Blob was scary! Something like this blob can make its way to earth someday. No one knows for sure what is out there in outer space. This creature keeps moving or rolling along with no eyes or hands or legs. It is a shapeless mass of life-form. What the creature looks like makes it a scary creature. This movie is far better than the ridiculous movie made in 1988. That movie has too many special effects with stupid scenes. Beware! The Blob is a decent low-budget horror/comedy that is worth seeing! These old movies can`t be beat! Thank you!!

When Larry Hagman came back from acting purgatory to become a superstar as J.R. Ewing on "Dallas," most folks saw this as being a big step up from being on "I Dream of Jeanine." But Hagman's most pathetic moment really game with this 1972 film that he directed. "Beware! The Blob" (a.k.a. "Son of the Blob") is both a sequel to and a spoof of the 1958 Science Fiction Drive-In class "The Blob," starring Steve McQueen. He is long gone, and this time it is Robert Walker, Jr. (Charlie X on "Star Trek") who gets the responsibility of fight the big bad blob. The plot is essentially the same as the original. An unsuspecting guy brings back a sample of frozen goo from Alaska, where he was working on the pipeline. The goo thaws, starts with a fly, works through a cat, and then an entire family. The devouring is witnessed which means the heroine, Lisa (Gwynne Gilford) and her boyfriend, Bobby (Walker) spend time trying to convince the local sheriff that a giant red blob thing is eating people. Meanwhile the giant red blob thing is eating everybody, which pretty much means a complete cross-section of Seventies stereotypes.

Hagman must have called in a lot of I.O.U.'s because Burgess Meredith, Dick Van Patten, Godfrey Cambridge, and Shelly Berman all show up to be consumed by the red goo (watch for Hagman's cameo as a bum). If there was ever an attempt to actually make a serious horror film here, then it must have been abandoned early on in the production. Very few of the actors seem to be taking this thing seriously and Walker just does not have the heft to be the manly hero. As a horror film "Beware! The Blob" is not scary and as a spoof it is not funny beyond the sophomoric level of the decidedly lame. The death scenes are not particularly creative, although the special effects are really not that inept, but you get the feeling some of these victims are happily throwing themselves into the giant red blob thing.

Beware! The Blob (Larry Hagman, 1972)

I was jaded very, very early. I used to boast to my grade-school pals that I could eat ham sandwiches while watching The Exorcist. (Remember, kiddies, when I was in grade school, The Exorcist was still in theaters.) Movies just don't scare me. With, that is, a few notable, and mostly entirely unjustifiable, exceptions. Beware! The Blob is one of those. I didn't sleep voluntarily for months after I first saw this movie on the Friday late-night creature feature. To this day, I have no idea what it was that scared the tar out of me so badly thirty years ago. Now it's a whole other story; Dick van Patten's acting is a large part of it, to be sure.

The story: a geologist (Godfrey Cambridge, best remembered these days as Gravedigger Jones) brings back a sample from above the arctic circle (funny, I thought they took the beast the other way in the Steve McQueen movie...). Through various bits of forgetfulness, the sample is left to thaw on the counter, and the blob gets out to wreak havoc on another small town. Lisa Clark (Satan's School for Girls' Gwynne Gilford) stops in to see Chester just as the blob is devouring him, having already finished off his family, and goes screaming to her boyfriend Bobby (Easy Rider's Robert Walker) and the cops, neither of whom believe there's a big one-celled eating machine on the loose until, of course, it's entirely too late.

Now, I will start off by saying that, yes, this is an entirely awful movie. Technically, there is not a single redeeming quality about it. The acting sucks. The directing sucks. The lighting sucks. The special effects suck. The sets suck, which is pretty impressive given the number of location shots. The entire movie sucks, well and truly. But that is part of its considerable charm, for it pushes through the envelope of suck and achieves that cheesy greatness that so few films manage. Dick van Patten's obsessive Scoutmaster is pure comic gold. A couple of hobos who end up being lunchmeat for the blob are played by (director) Larry Hagman and an uncredited Burgess Meredith. Carol Lynley, Shelley Berman, Bud Cort, Byron Keith, Randy Stonehill (yes, that Randy Stonehill, playing a pot-crazed free-love-type guitarist), Gerrit Graham... it's as much fun playing spot-the-cameo as it is trying to figure out how badly the next scene is going to mangle the fifties monster-movie tropes it never even attempts to break out of.

I grant you, you have to have a certain special sense of humor to really grasp the greatness of Beware! The Blob. If, however, you recognize Night of the Lepus as the timeless piece of filmmaking it truly is, then I cannot recommend Beware! The Blob highly enough for your refined palate. An absolute keeper. **

Randy Stonehill gets eaten by THE BLOB while singing to cindy williams.for those of you who dont know who Randy Stonehill is he is a pioneer in christian music and the greatest singer i've ever heard.the movie in general is just plain fun to watch

This is one of those Saturday matinee horror flicks I fondly remember from childhood days. It's been out of print forever, and it's great to see it finally "immortalized" on DVD.

What's to like about _any_ sequel to THE BLOB? Simply put, it's much better than the (overrated?) original. More blob for your buck! Lots of familiar faces from '70s TV (including an unbilled Bud Cort of HAROLD & MAUDE fame), an amusing musical score, and plenty of action during the bowling alley finale.

Is it Oscar material? Certainly not -- but it's good clean cheesy fun! Goes together well with an advocado sandwich and some brownies (see the movie and you'll understand). :)

An intentionaly funny stab at horror from Larry Hagman, it works as a comedy, and you can't really treat the Blob as anything else. This did terrify me as a child on Sat afternoon TV, and the humor was lost. But put this on today with some friends and a little alcohol, and you'll laugh until your sides hurt. The basic Scooby Doo "its the kids against the MAN" plot takes off from the original, but the fashions are much more groovy. I kept expecting Shaggy to show up with a "Zoinks!"

And keep your eyes peeled for the numerous cameos. A great example of a GOOD cheesy movie.

This completely unnecessary sequel has all of the trappings of a lame made-for-TV B-movie with none of the same campy fun of the original. The last remaining specimen of the gooey monstrosity is released by a clumsy researcher in her suburban home, where The Blob begins to consume everything around it as it reconstitutes into its former size! In order to achieve this effect, the filmmakers apparently had to buy out all of the remaining Jell-O molds in town, since the creature is no more convincing than the giggly dessert gone mad. As the plot meanders around aimlessly in the wake of the creature's destructive path, the audience is left guessing who it is exactly that they are supposed to be following, since the film cycles through no less than three sets of lead characters before settling on two incompetent teens. Using stock characters, empty dialog, and a regurgitated plot in order to resuscitate the creature fails to breath new life in to the series, and BEWARE proves to be an utter failure within the opening moments of the film.

-Carl Manes

I Like Horror Movies

Beware! The Blob! is a silly, and somewhat legendary, cinematic misfire from actor turned one time (and I mean ONE time) director Larry Hagman (who also acts, ironically, as a mentally challenged dofus that gets devoured by the titular jelloesque beastie). This movie may frighten younger children (The Blob is a rather terrifying concept when given a moments consideration) but adults will only watch in disbelief at the lame comedy touches and even lamer "special" effects that range from the passable to the out and out embarassing. But no bad movie collection would be complete without it. Gauranteed to liven up any party.