This is not a great movie, but it is one of the classic “weird” sequels. NOBODY making this took it seriously. Every decision made about it seems to have come after a monster bong hit.
To direct it, they hired Larry Hagman. Yep, future JR Ewing from Dallas and formerly the co-star of I Dream of Jeannie. In between those big roles though, he was growing out his beard and getting his actor friends to go wild and improvise their way through this Blob movie. It’s the only feature film that Hagman ever directed and he treats the whole thing like a joke.
The result feels less like a horror film and more like a party that Hagman threw. It’s loose and informal. Hagman directs like an actor. He fills the cast with his friends in the profession (TV actors and comedians and character-actors galore here) and allows them to stretch out and carry on with zero care about what it adds to the plot. He holds shots a little longer than he maybe should. He lets scenes ramble on. He’s liberal with his close-ups. It’s a film as unkempt as its cast of bohemians.
What saves it is that it’s also funny. The best way to watch this is as a comedy. When the 1950s trope of weirdo monsters in a small town got revived in the 80s, it was often tongue-in-cheek in films such as The Deadly Spawn and Gremlins and Killer Klowns from Outer Space.
Beware! The Blob beat all of those movies to the gag by a decade.
The “plot”: it’s the 1958 Blob all over again. An unexplained glob of strawberry jam is eating up every living thing in its path. The police still don’t trust the young people who know the truth, but this time the young people are a bunch of shaggy pot-smokers who probably all own at least one Iron Butterfly album.
Turn on, tune in and drop out all you want. The Blob will still get ya!