Headscratchers / The Blob (1988)

• Does attacking Russia with a weapon that's completely neutralized by cold seem like sound like a remotely good idea?
  • Fridge Brilliance: A blob in Russia would avoid areas of cold and seek out areas of warmth, which is where living humans are likely to be found. After it has occupied all the areas of warmth, it won't move beyond into the colder areas, and so is contained.
  • More Fridge Brilliance: If deployed in the summer, it would wreck havoc and freeze over when winter arrived. This would allow the U.S. to come in and take over.
  • They didn't know that it could be neutralized by cold when they talk about its usefulness as a weapon.
• How did the Blob get inside Vicky, the girl in the car, without making a noise?
  • In fact, how DID it get inside her? She looks perfectly fine by the time her Jerk Jock date comes back, so how did it get inside her without dissolving her? Also, wouldn't she be screaming if it got inside her? Of course, some people have a theory that she had too many drinks from her date and that she died of alcohol poisoning instead.
    • It used Orifice Invasion and dissolved enough of her to make her a hollow shell to hide in. She was drunk enough at that point that she didn't feel a thing before she was dead. In the manner of a trapdoor spider, there it waited until the Jerk Jock actually touched her...which sprung the trap.
    • It still wouldn't explain how it got inside her without leaving a mark on her. Watching the scene again, it looks a lot more like something out of John Carpenter's The Thing (1982).
    • It's definitely just Orifice Invasion. We just don't see the spot where it crawled into her.
• Why didn't the two heroes try and save that guy with a plastic suit after blowing up the sewer exit? It never even shows what happened to him so his character was pretty pointless. They could have just taken the rocket launcher from his dead body.
  • Speaking of that soldier, how did he actually get all bloody during his initial altercation with the Blob? The thing dissolves people, it doesn't wound them in a way that'd cut them up.
  • Actually, if you look closely (but it's very brief), you can see the other soldiers pulling said soldier out of the sewer.
  • The main characters helped the guy because they are decent people who don't want for another human being to die horribly.
    • But they DON'T help him. They just leave him there.
    • Before the scene where the soldiers help him out, you can see Meg helping him climb out. It's kind of a "blink and you'll miss it" moment, but I swear that I saw it happen. So technically, they DID help him out. However, it's still confusing how he got blood in his helmet...
    • Just watched the film, and I can confirm, Meg does go back to the manhole opening to help the soldier out.
    • Clambering around in storm drains isn't the safest activity, even if you're not encumbered by a plastic suit. He could have fallen and suffered a head wound, which would bleed a lot even if small.
• The sequence where the old man dies, and then Paul gets killed. We see the old man writhing, presumably because the Blob is inside his body (he can't possibly be alive at that point). Paul sees this, then immediately runs to the doctor's room, back to the old man, then back to the doctor's room to use the phone. And somehow the blob is behind the door. How did it get there unnoticed? Either it had to slip past Paul, the doctor, and his patient (who is seen running straight out of the room where the blob is hiding before Paul goes in there). Does the Blob have Offscreen Teleportation?
  • Crawled up the wall and onto the ceiling, then down onto the back of the door, probably.
• Diner lady runs into phone booth. Blob slowly descends from the roof, covering all of the walls and sealing her in there. How did it get on top of the phone booth undetected?
  • The phone booth isn't in the middle of the street but in an alley, directly right next to the diner building. The Blob went upstairs, found a window or another sort of exit, and slowly poured itself down. It's hardly the only time in the movie that the Blob exhibits a sadistic patience while stalking its prey, the damn thing can think.
• How is Paul still screaming when he is immersed in the Blob? Wouldn't his mouth be filling with goo? The tagline is even "scream now while there's still room to breathe".
• After the Blob kills the two in the car, a close up is shown of the Blob with something stuck in it's mass. What is that thing? Is it an insect? A ribbed condom? Click for image
  • It's a ring. Earlier in the scene, the dude presented it to his date to butter her up. Shortly after, we see a whole box of them in his trunk, indicating they were cheap, mass-produced junk.
• So what happened to Eddie's older brother Anthony, anyway? Did nobody tell him Eddie got killed?
• Why does Fran the diner owner need to put money into the pay phone and dial the Sheriff's Department to report an emergency? Why doesn't she just dial 911? Even small towns had a connection to 911 emergency dispatch in the 80s. Furthermore, why did the Sheriff's Department hang up on her immediately after telling her that the sheriff was away?
• I noticed that, during the climax, there's a very brief moment where you can see the Blob... uh... shedding its slime? Like, you can see its red slime peeling off and then a white/pinkish one appears right before it goes for Meg on the nitrogen tanks. What's up with THAT?
• Just HOW invincible is the Blob, anyways? We know that bullets and explosives don't do anything to it and freezing it with liquid nitrogen only STOPS it until it melts... but what would happen if, say, molten iron or lava was poured on top it or if it was thrown into it ala T-1000? Would that be able to completely get rid of it?
  • They probably wouldn't want to risk it getting free by taking it anywhere near a source of warmth, especially when it's seen that even grenades going off inside it didn't even bother it, plus it survived re-entry, I doubt the satellite it was put in was shielded enough to stop it's insides being cooked.
• Why the hell would they keep the Blob in the town's ice house? The moment something malfunctions it's gonna sprung back to life! If I lived in that town I'd rather get the hell outta there instead of living in constant fear of having that thing coming back. Why didn't they just arrange something to drop it in the Arctic like the original?
• So, like... how and when did the Blob get the sheriff? We see him heading for the diner but then suddenly the very next time we see him the Blob already consumed him? The Blob was inside the diner pursuing Meg and Brian and then it dropped on the phone booth to trap Fran but at no point do we see it in a way that would indicate that it got the sheriff. I get that his death is supposed to be a shock but it always confused me.

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