The Blob

Plot synopsis:
During one long night in a small rural Pennsylvania town in July 1957, teenager Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and his girlfriend, Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut), are kissing on a lovers' lane when they see a meteor crash beyond the next hill. Steve decides to look for it. An old man (Olin Howland) living nearby finds it first. When he pokes the meteorite with a stick, it breaks open, and the small jelly-like blob inside attaches itself to his hand. In pain and unable to scrape or shake it loose, the old man runs onto the road, where he is nearly struck by Steve's car. Steve and Jane take him to Doctor Hallen (Stephen Chase).
Doctor Hallen is about to leave for a medical conference, but anesthetizes the man and sends Steve and Jane back to the impact site to gather information. Hallen decides he must amputate the man's arm since it is being consumed by the growing Blob. Before he can, however, the Blob completely consumes the old man, then Hallen's nurse, and finally the doctor himself, all the while increasing in size.
Steve and Jane return to the office in time for Steve to witness the doctor's death. They go to the police station and return to the house with Lieutenant Dave (Earl Rowe) and Sergeant Bert (John Benson). However, there is no sign of the creature or its victims, and Bert dismisses Steve's story as a teenage prank. Steve and Jane are taken home by their parents, but they later sneak out.
In the meantime, the Blob consumes a mechanic at a repair shop. The Blob grows in size every time it consumes something. At the Colonial Theater, which is showing a midnight screening of Daughter of Horror, Steve recruits Tony (Robert Fields) and some of his friends to warn people about the menace. When Steve notices that his father's grocery store is unlocked, he and Jane go inside. The janitor is nowhere to be seen. Then the couple are cornered by the Blob; they seek refuge in the walk-in freezer. The Blob oozes in under the door, but retreats. Steve and Jane gather their friends and set off the town's fire and air-raid alarms. The townspeople and police still refuse to believe Steve. Meanwhile, the Blob enters the Colonial Theater and engulfs the projectionist before oozing into the auditorium consuming a number of the audience. Steve is finally vindicated when screaming people flee from the theater.
Jane's young brother, Danny (Keith Almoney), fires at the Blob with his cap gun before running into the nearby diner. Jane, Danny, and Steve become trapped in that diner, along with the manager and a waitress. The Blob — now an enormous red mass from the people it has consumed — engulfs the diner. Dave has a connection made from his police radio to the diner's phone, telling those in the diner to get into the cellar before they try to bring a live power line down onto the Blob.
When it sounds quiet over the phone line, Bert shoots the wire, which falls onto the Blob and discharges a substantial electrical current. The Blob is unaffected, however, and the diner is set ablaze by the electrical current. When the diner manager uses a CO2 fire extinguisher on the fire, Steve notices that this causes the Blob to recoil. Steve then remembers that the creature also retreated from the freezer, saying "That's why it didn't come in the ice box after us. It can't stand cold!" Shouting in hopes of being picked up on the open phone line, Steve manages to tell Dave about the Blob's vulnerability to coldness. Jane's father, Mr. Martin (Elbert Smith), knows there are 20 such extinguishers at the school, and leads Steve's friends to the high school to retrieve them. Returning, the brigade of fire extinguisher-armed students and police first drive the Blob away from the diner, then freeze it, saving Steve, Jane, and the others.
Dave requests authorities send an Air Force heavy-lift cargo aircraft to transport the Blob to the Arctic, where it is later parachuted to the ice and snow pack. Dave says that while the Blob is not dead, at least it has been stopped. To this, Steve Andrews replies, "Yeah, as long as the Arctic stays cold" ("The End" title card appears and morphs into a question mark, suggesting that the Blob may return).

Tags: absurd, dark

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