the rix mix

Kate Phillips, who played mostly supporting roles on Broadway and in more than 50 films in the 1930s and ’40s and who later was a co-writer of the 1958 horror film “The Blob,” died on April 18 in Keene, N.H. She was 94.
***
In 1956, while working with Theodore Simonson on the script for a movie that was supposed to be called “The Molten Meteor,” Mrs. Phillips referred to the giant jellylike creature from another planet that had plopped into a field outside of a small town as “the blob.” Overhearing her, the producers changed the name of what became something of a cult classic.
***
In July 2003, Mrs. Phillips traveled to Phoenixville, Pa., to celebrate the town’s annual Blob Fest. As always, hundreds of B-movie fans raced out of the Colonial Theater, re-enacting the panic caused by a gelatinous creature in a scene filmed there almost five decades ago.

The Blob scared, thrilled, & traumatized me. The only place you were really safe from it was in a walk in freezer. The Blob didn't think. It just oozed you. If you were doomed to be oozed by The Blob, it was preferable to be oozed all at once. The simplicity of the concept - compare the amoebic Blob with complex creatures like energy beings from Cocoon, the voracious, stealthy Alien, or those apparently friendly critters from Close Encounters (I wasn't convinced they weren't planning to eat us) , which do you imagine would be more likely to evolve out there & reach here?

In the summer, you can see lumpy masses of bloblike algae floating in some lakes. Don't touch them, you never know for sure.

Labels: culture