It's enormous. It's mean. It has no intelligence, so it can't be reasoned with. It devours everything in sight including the local diner. No, this isn't another story about Rosie O'Donnell, but something far more important to civilized society: a report on the annual "Blobfest", a celebration of the community in which the 1957 Steve McQueen shlock classic was filmed. Our intrepid writer Hank Reineke braved the wilds of rural Pennsylvania to report for Cinema Retro on this year's festival, which marked a half century since production began on the beloved sci-fi "epic". His report:
PHOENIXVILLE,
PA – JULY 13/14 -
Perhaps there is no more fitting a date than Friday the 13th to kick
off the Colonial Theatre’s 8th Annual “Blobfest.†The year 2007
marked the 50th anniversary of the actual filming of the revered science-fiction B-movie classic and the “Blobfest†committee planned to
commemorate this hallowed event accordingly. For starters, this year’s
“Blobfest†was subtitled “An Inconvenient Blob,†a not-so-subtle nod and a wink
to Al Gore’s alarm-bell documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.†The tie-in here
is, of course, Steve McQueen’s final line of dialogue in “The Blob†when he
earnestly notes that the world will remain safe from the monster – now frozen by
CO2 fire extinguishers and soon to be imprisoned in ice – “as long as the arctic
stays cold.†On this summer’s day, the sold-out crowd at the two o’clock
screening howled at the line.