Movie Review: Beware! The Blob (by Larry Hagman)

Posted on October 13, 2022 by Leonard Wilson

Everyone has one movie or two that hit them so hard it caused them to develop habits. It could be shaking your shoes to confirm no spiders are in them, counting the seconds after a lightning strike for the thunder, or checking the back seat of your car before you get into it, just in case. Some movies kind of imprint themselves on you in different ways.

Beware! The Blob (or Son of The Blob in some circles) was the most terrifying film I saw as a kid. I watched it in front of my grandmother’s living room tv that had a little alarm clock on the floor beneath it. Unlike Friday the 13th and Halloween, where I could rationalize my fears, Beware! The Blob had me fearing the summer and any open crevice we had. On any visits to our local video store (in the Pre-Blockbuster days), I’d pick out video games to rent and could see the box for the film in the horror section. I’d never walk over there, even in my early teenage years.

Most consider the 1958 original a Classic, and Chuck Russell’s 1988 update often goes toe to toe with John Carpenter’s The Thing on the Best Remakes list. Beware! The Blob will probably never make that list, but it’s not a total loss, given a recent rewatch. The film’s greatest strengths are in the casting and the special effects. From a cinema history/trivia standpoint, the film marks one of the earliest credits for Cinematographer Dean Cundey. Cundey worked as a 2nd Unit Cinematographer for the film, particularly with the animal shots in the opening and later on. That might not sound like much, but Cundey would go on to be picked by Debra Hill to help out on Halloween in 1978. From there, he had The Fog, Halloween II, The Thing, Romancing the Stone, Back to the Future, Big Trouble in Little China, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Jurassic Park, to name a few.

With 14 years since the first film, there were some tech upgrades to how the blob was made. A large plastic balloon was used for some scenes (particularly the bowling alley sequences). Additionally, silicone was added to a drum to allow for the “blob pov” during the bowling alley sequences. In most sequences, a red dyed powder mixed with water was used. To make sure the audience was aware the Blob was close, a high whistle would sound, giving anyone with even the slightest bit of tinnitus some cause to look over their shoulder. Academy Award Winner Tim Baar (The Time Machine) and Conrad Rothmann worked on the effects, along with Cundey.

In his film directing debut, Larry Hagman (TV’s I Dream of Jeannie, Dallas) weaves a tale of horror lurking through a town peppered with parties, hobos, a boy scout team, an angry bowling alley owner, some dune buggy aficionados and a sheriff (Richard Webb, The Phantom Stagecoach) who’s a little confused about some of the events happening in town. To his credit, it’s amazing to see who Hagman assembled here, as he called in some friends to join in on the fun. Comedian Godfrey Cambridge. Cindy Williams, just a few years shy of American Graffiti. Gerrit Graham, about two years before Phantom of the Paradise. Sid Haig (The Devil’s Rejects) is here as well. You can even spot Hagman in the film as one of three hobos squaring off with the Blob. It should be noted that the other two hobos with him are Burgess Meredith (Clash of the Titans) and Del Close (Chuck Russell’s The Blob).

The film flows like it’s namesake, with some chapters having little do to with anything – Dick Van Patten’s boy scouts, while funny, could have had one of their scenes cut for speed. It’s not incredibly terrible, but it’s exactly great, either. Most of the script, written by Anthony Harris, was tossed with ad-libbing done on set. Despite all this, it does looks like the cast enjoyed themselves making the film. It has that going for it, at least.

**Sid Haig was caught unaware in Larry Hagman’s Beware! The Blob**

Chester, A construction worker from the Arctic (Cambridge) is getting his camping gear stowed away when his wife, Marlene (Marlene Clark, The Beast Must Die) discovers a thermos in their freezer. He explains he performed some work and brought home a piece of what the found in the Arctic. Setting it on a countertop, the couple forget about the thermos, which pops open. The newly released blob absorbs a fly and a kitten before moving on to larger prey. Before we know it, Chester is having problems with his TV – which happens to be playing the original 1958 movie – as it slithers into his favorite recliner. It’s a sequence that’s burned into my mind. I always check a chair before sitting in it. Some check for thumbtacks, I check for alien goo.

When Lisa (Gwynne Gilford, Masters of the Universe & actor Chris Pine’s Mom) discovers Chester with his new friend, she dashes out and heads to her boyfriend, Bobby (Robert Walker, Easy Rider). By the time the couple return to Chester’s place, they find the house empty. Can the couple convince the cops and the town of the danger ahead before it’s too late? Most of Beware! The Blob‘s scenes are set up in a way where people are completely oblivious of it until it’s touched them, causing said individual to slip and fall into the camera. The climax of the film takes place in a bowling alley, which is actually impressive for the techniques used, but even with the casting, you might spend more time laughing than anything else. Perhaps that’s my way of rationalizing the film years later.

At the time of this writing, Beware! The Blob is currently available to watch on the Plex streaming service. We’re also labeling this an Incident – out of respect to the kitten – and returning the timer to Zero.

Night Gallery 1.4 “Make Me Laugh/Clean Kills And Other Trophies”

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The fourth episode of Night Gallery originally aired on January 6th, 1971. It was the first episode of the new year and it continued to open with Rod Serling walking through a most curious museum, inviting us to take a look at the macabre paintings on display and consider the stories behind them.

This episode featured two stories.

Make Me Laugh (dir. by Steven Spielberg, written by Rod Serling)

Jackie Slater (Godfrey Cambridge) is a comedian who can’t make anyone laugh. He’s just been fired from his latest job and even his loyal agent (Tom Bosley) is suggesting that it might be time to throw in the proverbial towel. While Jackie drowns his sorrows at a bar, he’s approached by a man named Catterje (Jackie Vernon). Chatterje explains that he can cast miracles but, because he’s not very good at his job, the miracles often have unintended consequences. “I don’t care!” Jackie says, “I’ll take the risk!” Jackie wants people to laugh at him. Jackie gets his wish but it turns out that he should have listened to Chatterje’s warning.

This segment was directed by Steven Spielberg, back when he was just starting his career and he was largely working in television. Spielberg also directed Eyes, which was a highlight of the Night Gallery pilot. Unfortunately, his direction of Make Me Laugh is a bit less successful than his work on Eyes. Spielberg’s direction features none of the inspired touches that made Eyes so successful. Part of the problem may be that this story takes place in the word of comedy and comedy has never been a topic for which Spielberg has shown much affinity.

Make Me Laugh does feature a good lead performance from Godfrey Cambridge. Otherwise, this segment is largely forgettable.

Cleans Kills And Other Trophies (dir by Walter Doniger, written by Rod Serling)

Raymond Massey plays Col. Archie Dittman, a wealthy racist who is obsessed with hunting and killing. He even has a study full of the mounted heads of all of the animals that he’s killed. Archie’s son, Archie, Jr. (Barry Brown), has just graduated from college and has no interest in hunting. Col. Dittman demands that his son go on a hunt or risk being disinherited. What the colonel fails to take into consideration is that both his bloodlust and his racism has offended his butler (Herbert Jefferson, Jr.) and that his butler has a magic-related revenge in mind.

Clean Kills and Other Trophies is hardly subtle but it does create and maintain a properly ominous atmopshere. Raymond Massey gives a wonderfully villainous performance and it’s hard not to be amused by the fact that his son is wearing a peace signal prominently on his lapel, as if the segment’s director took one look at it and said, “What’s one thing that we can do to make the themes of this segment even more heavy-handed?” The segment ends on a note that is so entertainingly over-the-top that it’s hard not to love it.

This episode was uneven. Make Me Laugh does’t quite work but Cleans Kills and other Trophies is good enough to make up for the disappointing segment that precedes it.

Previous Night Gallery Reviews:

The Biggest Bundle Of Them All (1968, directed by Ken Annakin)

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Jedadiah Leland

Harry Price (Robert Wagner) is a small-time tough guy with big plans. He and his gang of accomplices fly over to Italy and plot to kidnap Cesare Celli (Vittorio De Sica), a retired mafia don who is reputed to be worth millions. However, after snatching Celli from a wedding, Harry discovers that Celli is actually flat broke. Trying to be helpful, Celli suggests that Harry call up the local gangsters and demand that they pay a ransom for Celli’s release. When everyone refuses to pay, Celli comes up with another plan. Celli takes over Harry’s gang and, with the help of Celli’s old friend, Prof. Samuels (Edward G. Robinson), plots to steal $5,000,000 worth of platinum ingots from a train.

Complicating matters is that Harry and his gang are not exactly master criminals. Benny (Godfrey Cambridge) is a violinist who has moral objections to carrying a gun and who also refuses to cross a picket line, even in the course of a robbery. (“I’m a union man!”) Tozzi (Francesco Mule) is more interested in having a good dinner than pulling off the perfect heist. Davey (Davy Kaye) is short, which is apparently a problem for some reason. Finally, Harry’s girlfriend, Juliana (Raquel Welch), is more interested in dancing than in committing crimes. Still, Celli is determined to use them to pull off the heist of the century and, even more importantly, to help prove that this old criminal has still got what it takes.

The Biggest Bundle of Them All was an attempt at a wacky heist film. Unfortunately, at the time that the film was made, Robert Wagner and “wacky” didn’t belong anywhere near each other. Wagner stiffly delivers lines like, “I’ve had it, baby. Can you dig it?” and looks thoroughly out-of-place. Godfrey Cambridge and Edward G. Robinson have a few funny scenes but both Kaye and Mule are wasted in one-note role while De Sica looks like he’s trying to figure out how he went from Bicycle Thieves to this. Everyone in the movie just goes through the motions. Even while they’re robbing the train, the cast seems to be indifferent.

It almost doesn’t matter, though, because this is a Raquel Welch film. Welch doesn’t have much of a character to play but she looks amazing while doing it and that really is the appeal of any film that Welch made in the late 60s and early 70s. Welch spends a good deal of the film in a bikini and is undeniably sexy, particularly in the scene where Wagner sends her to seduce De Sica. She also gets to share a dance with Edward G. Robinson, which is such a goofy and fun scene that it’s almost worth the price of admission. (Regardless of what fun they may have been having on-screen, Robert Wagner later wrote in his autobiography that, off-screen, Robinson grew so annoyed with Welch’s chronic lateness on the set that he yelled at her until she was in tears.)

Even Raquel Welch in a bikini can only carry a film so far and The Biggest Bundle of Them All is ultimately too disjointed to work. Director Ken Annakin tries to recreate the same sort of frantic comedy that was at the heart of his previous film, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, but the end result falls flatter than 5 million dollars worth of platinum ingots sliding out of an airplane.

That’s Blaxploitation! 12: COTTON COMES TO HARLEM (United Artists 1970)

Posted on July 10, 2018 by gary loggins

cracked rear viewer

I’m not really sure if COTTON COMES TO HARLEM qualifies as a Blaxploitation film. Most genre experts point to Melvin Van Peebles’ SWEET SWEETBACK’S BADASSSSS SONG and/or Gordon Parks’s SHAFT , both released in 1971, as the films that kicked off the Blaxploitation Era. Yet this movie contains many of the Blaxploitation tropes to follow, and is based on the works of African-American writer Chester Himes.

Hardboiled author Chester Himes

Himes (1909-1984) began his writing career while doing a prison stretch for armed robbery. After his short stories started being published in Esquire, he was paroled in 1936, and soon met poet Langston Hughes, who helped him get established in the literary world. Reportedly, Himes worked for a time as a screenwriter for Warner Brothers in the 40’s, but was let go when a racist Jack Warner declared he “don’t want no n*ggers on this lot” (1). His first …

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Shattered Politics #25: The President’s Analyst (dir by Theodore J. Flicker)

Posted on January 22, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“If I was a psychiatrist, which I am, I would say that I was turning into some sort of paranoid personality, which I am!” — Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn) in The President’s Analyst (1967)

Let’s just be absolutely honest about something. Judging from what they regularly get caught saying and from some of the policies that they support, a good deal of politicians could probably use some sort of professional help. That’s probably especially true of the men who sit in the Oval Office. It can’t be easy to have to hide so many secrets, tell so many lies, and be constantly aware of how close the government is to actually collapsing. We’ve had 44 Presidents and I imagine all of them probably could have used someone to talk to.

But here’s the thing. We spend so much time worrying about the well-being of the President that we often don’t stop to think about the people who have to listen to them speak on a daily basis. I imagine that being the President’s therapist must be a thankless job. Not only do you have to spend hours listening to someone who you may not have voted for but, at the same time, you can’t share any of the information that you’ve learned.

That would certainly seem to be what’s happening with Dr. Sidney Schaefer (James Coburn), the title character of the wonderfully psychedelic 1967 satire, The President’s Analyst. At the start of the film, Sidney is a supremely confident psychiatrist. He can calmly and rationally deal with all of his patients problems and, in order to keep from getting overwhelmed, he has his own analyst (Will Geer).

One of his patients is Don Masters (Godfrey Cambridge), an agent for the Central Enquiries Agency (CEA) who is first seen casually murdering a man on the streets of New York. (When Sidney discovers that Don is an assassin, he’s thrilled and impressed to discover that Don has managed to channel all of his hostility into his job.) What Sidney doesn’t realize is that Don is testing him to see if he’s up to the job of serving as the President’s analyst.

At first, Sidney is thrilled with his new position but he soon discovers that being the closest confidante of the leader of the free world has its downside. For one thing, Sidney is viewed by suspicion by Henry Lux (Walter Burke), the head of the Federal Bureau of Regulation (which, in this film, is exclusively staffed by people who are less than 5 feet tall). Even beyond being targeted by the FBR, Sidney struggles with not being able to see his own therapist and discuss what he’s been told by the President. Soon, Sidney is becoming paranoid and is even convinced that his girlfriend is a spy.

(And, of course, she is.)

So, Walter does what any sensible and paranoid person would do. He makes a run for it. Pursued by the FBR, the CEA, and a Russian assassin (a funny performance from Severn Darden, who also played Kolp, the sadistic torturer in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes), Sidney hides out with everyone from a group of hippies to a family of heavily armed, karate-trained, middle class “militant liberals.”

(The father of the militant liberal family is played by William Daniels, who decades later would play Mr. Feeney in Boy Meets World.)

Of course, there’s an even bigger conspiracy at work than even Sidney realizes. The real threat is the TPC and I’m not going to tell you what that stands for. You need to see the movie.

And really, The President’s Analyst is a film that you really should see. What makes this film truly special — beyond the clever dialogue and the excellent performances and the great direction — is that it’s both a product of when it was made and a timeless portrait of power and paranoia. It’s a time capsule that still feels incredibly relevant.