Watch Beware! The Blob For Free

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Admirable film.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Baffling and barely competent, "Beware! The Blob" (aka "Son of Blob") is the belated low-budget sequel to the 1958 Steve McQueen classic that nobody asked for. Directed in an off-the-cuff nature by first-time director Larry Hagman (aka J.R. of "Dallas" fame), the titular ooze makes its way across a small town after being unwittingly unleashed by a careless oil-worker. Corny, hokey and -- as it would turn out -- mostly improvised, it would prove to be Hagman's final film. Watching it today, it is all too obvious why. Within the first five minutes, a ridiculous and slightly meandering tone is set that unfortunately plagues the film until its end. Granted, the film does generate a bit of incidental fun and good humor ("Can I have my lighter back? Can I have my lighter back?") as it plods along, but even the most generous of viewers may have trouble making it to the finish line. The film is low, low (almost no) budget, and the cast is mostly made up of other familiar TV faces/friends of the director. No one appears to be taking the whole thing seriously, which gives the audience permission to do the same. Problem is, you won't have even a fraction of the fun watching this as the cast and crew had making it. On the upside, the blob's effects are (mostly) convincing. Nobody -- neither kitten not cool-cat hippies -- is safe from the amorphous antagonist, and you may be surprised to find that cinematographer Dean Cundey ("Halloween," "Jurassic Park") had a hand in the special effects. Sometimes it appears as if the slimy scoundrel really is covering cars and coming out of sinks, and sometimes it just looks like strawberry jelly smeared across somebody's face. Lower your expectations and maybe, just maybe, you can have some fun with "Beware! The Blob." Otherwise, just give the original or the 1988 remake a go instead.

I watched this film on Amazon Prime in a fine-looking high definition print, so it's a pity that the quality of the film itself wasn't any better. BEWARE! THE BLOB is a sequel to the 1950s monster movie classic that took 13 years to get made and after watching you'll wish they hadn't bothered. This movie was bizarrely directed by future DALLAS star Larry Hagman who also has a cameo as one of three tramps alongside stand-up comedian Del Close (who would go on to play the priest in the BLOB remake) and Burgess Meredith.The film itself is quite well mounted and the special effects are a step up from those in the original film, although certainly nowhere near as good as in the 1988 remake. What fails is the script, which goes for a jokey, comic approach through. To say that the humour is forced is an understatement, and the viewer has to wade through endless exaggerated performances in order to get to the fun monster attack scenes. They should have just played it straight and allowed the viewer to find their own laughs as in the original movie. The end result is more of a cult item than anything else.

There are so many things to like about Larry Hagman's "Beware! The Blob!" it will difficult to put it into a biblical context, but I will try. Overall, the movie seems to be retelling the story of the Old Testament with various allusions to the Qur'an and that Tao of Winnie the Pooh book – the film is so richly textured, that at least half a viewing is required to fully absorb all the story has to offer.The movie begins with an attractive black couple enjoying some time alone in their unassuming California home. The man appears to be some sort of beer-loving pipelayer while his wife is a nature-loving kitten freak. This house is the location of the genesis of the blob and the couple stupidly uncorks the canister containing the curious crimson goo. We watch as a creepy little cat crawls onto a counter courting the canister as if it were another feline. You want to scream at the kitten to leave that damn stuff alone, but alas, not only is the cat probably dead by now (the film was made in the 1970's) but he is on the other side of the TV screen AND he probably only understands "meow" – the preferred language of cats.While one's initial analysis of the opening scene fits the stereotype that black people are the first to die in horror films, a closer look reveals that this couple is in fact an embodiment of the biblical Babylonians! The man lives in a pup-tent in his living room stacking beer can after beer can as he gets slowly inebriated: he is building a modern version of the tower of Babel. And the man is rather rotund, not unlike a Goliath. But who will slay this Goliath and teach him that he has taken science too far? Admittedly, there really is no David in the film unless you view the Blob as David which is silly since he has no slingshot. Nevertheless, something said "let there be light" and the blob comes out devouring the cat, then the lovely wife, and then the pipelayer.At this point, it should be mentioned that Dick Van Patten represents the wandering Jew in this film. His New York accent seems out-of-place as he leads a group of rambunctious scouts to seemingly nowhere. You feel like he may of killed his brother as a youth (like Cain did unto Abel) and has been sentenced to wander for the rest of days…until he meets Christian justice in the form of a red blood. Yes, I think the blob may represent Christian justice although it doesn't seem to carry those fancy shields that the Crusaders had. It should also be added that the wandering Jew is a Christian myth born from their medieval anti-Semitism. Why they had to create a red blob to overtake L.A. is beyond me.The protagonists of the film are Lisa and Bobby, an attractive young couple who anger the local capitalist (read Pontius Pilate) and never have sex. This is an important detail as everyone knows that having sex in a horror movie spells certain death. I'm pretty sure they represent Noah and his wife and they are trying to gather townspeople to fight the Blob. So perhaps the Blob is neither David nor a crusader, but a flood: a flood of red pudding stuff that requires that Lisa and Bobby get in their jeep and go to a bowling alley/ice rink to save Los Angeles.The best scene in the movie is the homoerotic haircut that is cut short by the Blob. This obviously proves that the Bible hates gay people (if Leviticus wasn't enough).All in all, there is little need for Church or Sunday school if parents would just expose their kids to this movie. It really is a moving moral tale of two American kids doin' the best that they can. Hopefully, a sequel is forthcoming but it has been about forty years, so probably not. Larry Hagman's masterpiece may be his role on Dallas, but his directorial magic is evident is this thrilling old testimonial.

Beware! The Blob (1972) 1/2 (out of 4) THE BLOB is without question one of the best sci-fi flicks from the 50s; a decade that was overflowing with such films but most of them were mindless junk. It took fourteen years but a sequel finally came and what anyone was thinking is beyond me as this is without a doubt one of the worst sequels ever made. A man returns home from Alaska with a container saying "keep frozen" and of course our frozen blob friend is inside. The man leaves it out, the blob thaws and it then goes on a killing spree. That's pretty much all the "plot" this film has and it's a real head scratcher when it comes time to try and figure out what the hell is going on with this thing and what the point was. Judging by this one film there's no question that Hagman wasn't meant for the directors chair as this is also one of the ugliest movies I've ever seen. Just take a look at the scenes as they're sloppily edited and even worse is the zoom shots or badly framed shots. At times it appears like they're just pointing the camera and picking up whatever happens to cross the screen. Another big problem is that there's really no plot but instead just quick vignettes. It really seems like a handful of short films thrown together to make a feature. One plot has a hairdresser hating the hippie that comes in for a buzz. We have a boy scout leader who can't shut his mouth. We have homeless people drinking and fussing about life. We do get a "hip" couple as in the first film but both are deadly dull and add nothing to the movie. The most shocking thing about this film are the familiar faces who appear including Hagman, Burgess Meredith, Sid Haig, Dick Van Patten and Cindy Williams among others. There's certainly no scares to be found here and the attempt at humor misses the mark badly. After Hagman became popular on DALLAS and after the famous "who shot J.R." episode, the producer's of this thing wisely re-released the film as "The Film J.R. Shot" and one only wishes that the brains behind that had tried using some when this film was shooting.