A Personal History of Horror Films in 101 Quirky Objects #51: Colonial Theatre Movie Projector in The Blob (1958)

by Vince Stadon

“Would you believe me if I told you there was something inside of that rock we found tonight? Something that could wipe out this whole town?” – Steve Andrews 

In the ‘50s, the UK didn’t have hot rod racers, the atom bomb, or Steve McQueen. We had instead milk floats, post-war austerity, and Cliff Richard. America was all kinds of exciting as it mass-produced plastics and advertising and teenagers, and England was still hunkered in a grey bunker, fearfully calling for mummy, so it really wasn’t much of a contest, even if McQueen, at twenty-eight, was at least ten years too old to be playing a teenager. He’s credited as Steven McQueen for this, his first starring role, but everybody calls him Steve. That’s another thing we didn’t have in the UK: Steves. And there is no better Steve than McQueen. 

Steve has a busy night in The Blob. He starts his evening agreeably enough necking his girl (another thing we didn’t have in the UK: necking) in his car, parked up in a remote spot where he can see the stars. That’s the thing about Steve: he’s got a fast car and a hot girl, but he’s also into science. Next, Steve follows a shooting star and almost runs over an old farmer. The farmer has been infected by the Blob, so Steve drives him to the local doctor. The doc is baffled by the organism that’s consumed half the old man’s arm, so he tasks Steve and his girl to go back out there and see if anyone else has got infected. I say he tasks Steve and his girl, but I really mean just Steve. The girl tags along because she’s into Steve. And who wouldn’t be?  

The girl, Jane, is one of the most shamefully underwritten characters I’ve seen in a movie outside of a Steven Seagal film. What she thinks, dreams, or desires (other than Steve McQueen) is a mystery. She has a scene with her little brother Danny where she tries to get Danny to go back to bed so she can sneak out to do more necking/Blob investigating with Steve McQueen, but otherwise she just holds onto Steve’s arm throughout the entire movie and says the occasional, “Steve, be careful!”  

The Blob is of its time, and its time was problematic on both sides of the Atlantic: this is film in which everyone on screen is a white Christian. If you’d set The Blob in a coastal shipping village in Penzance, rather than a small town in Pennsylvania, the problematic elements would be the same. In fact, Brexit-voting Penzance is still as problematic as it was back in the ‘50s. It has yet to be terrorised by an intergalactic amorphous blob, but I remain hopeful that the day is coming. 

Back to Steve and his busy night, which involves 30% outsmarting teenage rivals on foot and in his car; 5% telling his girl to stay while he goes off Blob hunting; 5% staring moodily into the distance as if in deep thought; and 60% desperately trying to convince the police department and sundry authority figures that a gigantic slimy red amorphous blob from outer space is killing people. Eventually, he and his teenage rivals/chums go to the movie theatre and the Blob follows them. A typical small town in America in the ‘50s consisted of a hardware store, a diner, a church, a town hall, a doctor’s surgery, a diner, and a movie theatre. The Blob skips the church and the town hall but otherwise visits all these locations. Steve visits all these places, too, so maybe the Blob, like Jane, really is following him around.   

The movie theatre is showing a midnight horror movie called Daughter of Horror, which is in fact a strange experimental horror called Dementia (1955) with added narration. I’ve seen Dementia. It’s very odd and not much fun. The popcorn-munching teen audience in The Blob seem to be having a great time watching it, so perhaps Dementia is a film to be enjoyed at midnight with a teen audience. The fun is soon ended by the Blob, of course, who seeps in through a vent in the projection room, as the projectionist is about to change reels. The Blob absorbs him, and Daughter of Horror abruptly stops, and the horrified teens watch the screen fill with the Blob.  

Having real horror interrupt a horror movie is a neat idea that filmmakers have been riffing on ever since (see for instance Lamberton Bava’s/Dario Argento’s 1985 Italian horror Demons, about a group of German teens who get trapped in a movie theatre with a horde of ravenous, man-eating demons from Hell). The Colonial Movie Theatre is advertising a film called The Vampire and the Robot, starring Bela Lugosi. Though it sounds bags of fun, it sadly does not exist, though this was one of the proposed titles for Mother Riley Meets the Vampire (1955), also known as Vampire Over London, in which Bela Lugosi plans to build an army of robots with which he intends to take over the world. Nobody asks him why he wants to do this or how. This was one of Lugosi’s last films – he died in 1956, just as teens were beginning to really dig him.  

The Blob engulfs the entire movie theatre as the teens flee, and though the low-budget effects work is as unconvincing as Steve McQueen as a teenager, the image remains one of the most striking of the Atomic Age B-movies. It’s as potent and destructive and mysterious as a mushroom cloud. The Blob is the bomb, or rather it is the bomb from a foreign enemy nation, rampaging and swallowing up wholesome Americans. It might come from Outer Space, but it’s almost certainly Commie, and only Steve McQueen can stop it... because he’s Steve McQueen.  

The Blob won’t take up too much of your time, or too much of your brain, but it’s charming and worth a revisit every once in a while. The Colonial Movie Theatre is still there, still showing movies. There’s even an annual "Blobfest,” where, obviously, The Blob is screened over and over, and there is a flashmob re-enactment of the teenagers running screaming from the theatre, and everybody is named Steve. 

More obvious picks for an object to represent this film: the meteorite from which the Blob emerges; the fire extinguisher 

The Blob (1958); 86 mins; US 

Directed by Irvin Yeaworth; Written by Theodore Simonson & Kate Phillips; Produced by Jack H. Harris; Cinematography by Thomas E. Spalding; Music by Ralph Carmichael 

Steve McQueen (Steve Andrews); Aneta Corseaut (Jane Martin); Earl Rowe (Lt. Dave Barton); Olin Howland (Barney); Stephen Chase (Dr. T. Hallen); Robert Fields (Tony Gressette) 

© 2025 Vince Stadon