The fact that The Blob begins with its own cheery theme song tells you right off the bat what type of movie it is -- silly, lighthearted, and innocent. So how can a film like this present any sort of real, believable threat? That is a problem The Blob is never able to reconcile. It is enjoyable for its special effects and fifties nostalgia, but its overly wholesome tone renders it unable to be taken seriously, and its lack of action makes it slightly boring.

In a small town even more idealistically American than those of American Graffiti and Rebel Without a Cause, a meteorite crashes. A nearby old man approaches it and does what we all would do in that situation -- he pokes it with a stick. This is unfortunate because the little rock contains a man-eating blob which quickly attaches itself to the old man and eventually absorbs him whole. Steve Andrews (played by Steve McQueen), who picked up the man on the side of the road, tries to warn the town, but no one will listen to the darn kid. That, too, is unfortunate because it will soon be large enough to take on the town, crawling around engulfing one victim at a time.

Though the premise is great, the execution is not as fun as it could have been. By far the best thing about The Blob is the title goo itself. The red, gummy, gelatinous mischief-maker moves as believably as any of cinema's creatures, and its killing method (simply enveloping its prey) is as entertaining as it is silly, even though we see only snippets of it at any given feeding. This non-skeletal being was new, and its special effects did not (and still do not) disappoint. The problem is that it does not get half -- make that a tenth -- of the screen time it deserves. Only slightly over three total minutes of film are given to it. The time in-between does nothing to help. The non-blob moments consist of repetitive attempts by Steve to convince the police that there is indeed some sort of monster attacking the town, along with several brief subplots that are neither relevant nor entertaining, like the short bit about a cop's chess-via-radio pastime. The fact that it has been sequel-ed and remade is easy to understand -- this original has so much untapped potential.

The script does not make up for this lack of blob. There are plenty of lines that are just plain bad. Near the beginning of the movie, Steve is pulled over for racing backwards. When he admits his doing, the officer says, "You mean you were dri--?" with surprise, even though that's exactly what he pulled him over for. When one doctor and his nurse are threatened by the Blobster, the nurse really pulls one out of stock: "Doctor, I'm afraid." A moment later, when she unsuccessfully attacks it with acid, she yells, "Doctor, nothing will stop it," even though the acid was the first thing they tried. Here's another cardboard exchange, which occurs after Steve witnesses a blob attack:

Kate. "Steve, tell me, what happened?"

Steve. [gasping] "I can't."

Kate. "Well, what happened?"

Bland dialogue is one thing, but when it's placed over already boring downtime between blob sightings, it cripples the movie.

Another problem area is the acting. The "bad" kids are perhaps the worst. Everything they do is cliché, such as hanging their arms around each other to show camaraderie during dialogue, making pointless jokes like "That doesn't sound like a house; that sounds like a dog," and encouraging Steve to do things like "hang loose." Then there's Steve's girlfriend, Jane, who is as plain as her name. I don't think she manages a facial expression in the course of the film. There is a laughably awkward performance, too, by the child who plays Jane's little brother. Not only does he seem to be totally unconcerned with anything he talks about, he also inexplicably acquires an English accent halfway through his first conversation. The poor acting coupled with already bad dialogue is yet another contribution to The Blob's mediocrity. In fact the only actor in the entire film that gives a solid performance is -- you guessed it -- Steve McQueen.

There is yet one more crucial problem: the film is overall too lighthearted to allow for any real horror or suspense. The blob is more fun than scary, and even the characters presented as the town troublemakers are actually good kids just getting into a little harmless trouble. There is no secondary threat, either. The police, even when angered at what they believe are Steve's practical jokes, prove to be benign. When the characters do eventually get themselves into a real bind, we never believe that anything bad is going to happen to them; the film has demonstrated that it is incapable of anything more jarring than an off-screen kill of a character we don't care about.

A message, however, does seem to be a present in the film. The ever-growing, amorphous mass, gradually eating its way around town can represent any sort of danger, and this movie is about what happens when warnings are unheeded. The message comes in the town's response: ignoring any and every unusual claim the teenagers make and comfortably confining themselves in their own safe little worlds. Ultimately, this is a movie about faith in others. At the beginning of the film, Steve's date-night intentions are doubted by Jane; soon after, the group of soft-hearted bad boys accuse him of trying to show them up on the road; and, of course, the police never until the end of the film believe Steve's claim that an alien (if you can call it that) is gobbling residents of the town. Their ignoring of Steve's warnings allows the problem to literally grow so large that it is nearly unstoppable. This whole time, the amorphousness of the blob lets it stand for any sort of threat, even if the film does not actually make it frightening.

A film can survive with a heavy dose of insight or entertainment, or a healthy mix of the two, but this one does not have enough of either. The Blob is good, clean, all-American fun with no risks. It is worth checking out for nostalgia (there is at least one instance of the word "shucks") and to witness the gooey glory of the blob, but there are not enough of the goods to make it anything more than mediocre. If The Blob is a classic, it is not because of the movie itself but because of a select few of its elements that have unsurprisingly remained more memorable than the majority of the film. It's too bad we have to rely upon the sequel and remake for the one thing that The Blob could have easily given us in the first place -- more blob!