The Blob (1988)

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General		Extras
Category	Horror	Main Menu Audio & Animation Theatrical Trailer-1.85:1, 16x9, Dolby Digital 2.0 (1:21)
Rating
Year Of Production	1988
Running Time	91:05
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Chuck Russell
Studio Distributor	Sony Pictures Home Entertain	Starring	Kevin Dillon Shawnee Smith Donovan Leitch Jeffrey DeMunn Candy Clark Joe Seneca
Case	Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI	$36.95	Music	Michael Hoenig

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) German Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) Spanish Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French German Italian Spanish Dutch Arabic Bulgarian Czech Danish Finnish Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Norwegian Polish Portuguese Swedish Turkish	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Continuing in remake mode, we this time head off into decidedly B-grade territory with the insipid remake of The Blob. Those who remember the 1958 classic starring Steve McQueen with affection will probably be best advised to avoid this remake. I guess you know you are in trouble when a film stars one of the Dillon boys....

    A mysterious meteorite crashes down to earth near the little town of Aborville, unleashing upon the hapless citizens the Blob, a biological organism that feeds off other biological organisms. At first, a hapless hobo feels the wrath of the Blob, and after being transported to hospital, is completely eaten by the Blob. It is then the turn of local high school football star Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch) who is absorbed by the Blob right in front of his date Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith). Things start to go down from there as local misguided youth Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon) is initially blamed for the mysteries befalling the town. Of course, no one believes Meg when she says what happened to Paul and when she turns to Brian for help, she must have been desperate. But when they see a local cafe worker devoured by the Blob, and only manage to escape by hiding in the freezer, it is apparent that this is no ordinary Blob. As the local body count increases, a mysterious government quarantine team headed by Dr Meddows (Joe Seneca) arrives to cut off the town - but is it for genuine quarantine purposes or is something more sinister going on here? Irrespective of its origins, is there any way to stop the ever increasing in size Blob?

    The 1958 film was a cheesy classic of the highest order, and it is perhaps a great shame that someone thought it a good idea to remake the film thirty years later. Sure the effects are slightly improved but everything else is woeful. The acting is shocking with only the eye-candy value of Shawnee Smith of any note. Kevin Dillon's efforts at James Dean cool fall so flat that it is painful to watch at times. As for the rest - B-grade says it all in every way. Banal dialogue interspersed with all the emotional depth of a sewer (where incidentally some of the film is appropriately filmed) guarantee to make this heavy weather watching.

   Okay, it does not quite fall into the nadir of the ilk of Universal Soldier: The Return or Going Overboard, but it is hardly to be confused with a classic. You would need a really good reason to want to indulge in this effort, and right now I could not possibly think of that reason. Quite why this managed to get a DVD release is beyond my comprehension.

Video

    In keeping with the theorem that the crappier the film, the better the transfer afforded it, Columbia TriStar have given us an almost exemplary transfer for The Blob. At least they maintain their standards irrespective of the merit of the film itself.

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and it is 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is quite sharp and quite well detailed. Shadow detail is adequate enough although there could have perhaps been a little more detail in some scenes in the forest and the sewers. There is a slight graininess to the transfer at times but overall clarity is pretty good.

    The colours are nicely handled and quite well saturated. Whilst a bit more vibrancy would not have gone astray, nor would a bit more depth to the blacks, there is really not that much to complain about here. There are no issues with the saturation of the colours at all.

    Once again my notebook is completely absent of any notes relating to MPEG artefacts, film-to-video artefacts or even film artefacts in the transfer. Whilst there were some obvious instances of the latter, as befits a film of this age, they were not really disruptive to the film at all.

    There are more subtitle options on the DVD than you can poke a stick at, but I stuck to the English option only. Quite well presented, they are not the most accurate that you will ever see but at least nothing really material was missed.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are five soundtracks on the DVD, all being Dolby Digital 2.0 surround encoded soundtracks: English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. There is something quite perversely enjoyable about watching the film with the Spanish dub, but I mainly stuck with the English soundtrack.

    The rather banal dialogue comes up well in the transfer and is quite easy to understand. There did not appear to be any audio sync problems in the transfer.

    The original score comes from Michael Hoenig and like the rest of the film is rather trite and without much merit.

    The surround encoded soundtrack is nothing special at all, seemingly a little congested and really lacking an awful lot of surround channel use. I cannot help but feel that a full 5.1 soundtrack would have lifted the film no end, especially with directional sound effects in the sewers and the forests. As it is, the sound effects sort of sound very one-dimensional and really don't exert the sort of menace that the film really needs in order to at least make a fist of succeeding.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    Not exactly a thrilling package but then again I suppose the film hardly warrants it.

Menu

    Features some decent audio and animation enhancement, even if it is used rather unimaginatively.

Theatrical Trailer (1:21)

    Hardly the finest example of the art you are ever likely to see, and probably amply demonstrating how difficult it is to promote B-grade movies like this. Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1, it is 16x9 enhanced and comes with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound. Nothing truly memorable in any respect.

    There is no substantial difference between the Region 1 and Region 4 releases.

    If you have to have a copy of The Blob in your collection then I would strongly suggest that it be a copy of the 1958 original, not this insipid and uninspired remake. Whilst blessed with a decent enough audio and video transfer, the serious lack of extras does not generate any sort of enthusiasm at all.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall