I originally saw this when I was about 12 years old and it scared the hell out of me. I remember laying in bed obsessively thinking about this shapeless killer sliming its way into my room. I've had affection for this film ever since. I watched it a few more times over the years, bought it when it first came out on DVD, and being in the mood for a decent 80's horror flick, decided to revisit it after running across it in my collection.

I don't believe I've ever seen the original The Blob all the way through. Sure I remember the imagery of Steve McQueen running from it, but that's about it. It's one of the classic sci-fi/horror movie ideas, and like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I wouldn't mind them remaking it every other generation. I'm sure there's a script floating around for it right now, with a 2000's twist to it.

Despite some bad blue screen backgrounds, which pop up sparingly through this film, it remains fairly timeless. A solid script by Frank Darabont and director Chuck Russell sets the perfect tone, which is dryly funny, a fairly realistic take, and also seriously scary at times. They didn't wimp out when it came to the film's death scenes. Even going so far as to kill a little kid, an extreme rarity. I remember being stunned when the kid dies, they'd always gotten away before that, and that freaked me out.

Kevin Dillan, long before his Entourage days, plays Brian Flagg, a small town bad-ass, with accompanying leather jacket, motorcycle and silky-smooth mullet. And way before her turn as a killer in the Saw flicks, Shawnee Smith played Meg Penny, the town good girl, who always does the right thing. Their paths cross when Meg and her boyfriend run down an old man, who previously stumbled across the Blob and is now slowly snacking his hand. Brian rides with them to the hospital, so they can get their stories straight, but takes off before the Blob swallows the rest of the old man and then eats Meg's boyfriend.

Of course nobody believes Meg's story about the killer Jello, chalking it up to the shock of her boyfriend's death, but she knows what's out there. Soon it's eating more people, including in one of my favorite scenes, a couple out for a night of parking. Meg decides to take action and escapes out her bedroom window, running into Brian, the only other person to have seen the Blob and live. Looking for clues, they run across a group of Government scientists who are searching for the Blob, and unwittingly reveal its true origins. Meanwhile Meg's little brother, his friend and a theater full of people are attacked while watching a horror movie. After absorbing a few dozen people, the Blob has grown to massive proportions and the whole town is under risk. It's up to the rotten-egg and the goody-two-shoes to save everyone.

This film is fairly straight-forward, you can pretty much guess where it's going the whole time. But it's almost perfectly executed, making it a very fun ride. Director Chuck Russell uses some great gruesome effects, with people melting and getting sucked into drains, to convey the true horror that this ever growing shapeless killer is capable of. The dialogue is crisp throughout, making the ridiculous seem realistic, and giving Kevin Dillon a couple of great one-liners. I believe The Blob a forgotten classic, and if it weren't for John Carpenter's version of The Thing, I'd call it the best ever remake. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a a favor and do so. - Grade: B+

After a fairly inspired opening, with an Empire State Building window washer getting his head bit off, and some funny sarcastic remarks by David Carradine playing a New York City detective who cleans up the mess; I thought I was in for some good cheesy fun. But unfortunately the film quickly devolves into a boring mess. About every 15 to 20 twenty minutes the ancient bird-monster Q shows up and carries some poor soul off to eat, and those moments are decent, but they're too few and far apart.

For some reason a movie called Q: The Winged Serpent, is more about some low life scum named Jimmy Quinn, played by Michael Moriarty (also in the much better Troll). Quinn is an unemployed alcoholic with a shady side; he has hopes to be a better man, mostly for his long-suffering girlfriend, but with no job offers, he takes up with a couple of jewelery robbers as a getaway driver. When they force him to come into the store with them, the robbery goes wrong, and he escapes with the jewels and runs for his life; eventually he makes his way up into the top of the Chrysler Building, where he finds a giant nest full of human skeletons.

Meanwhile, David Carradine and Richard Roundtree, great B-Movie casting, but sadly wasted, are detective partners looking for a serial killer with an Aztec twist. It seems an Aztec Priest, who's been sacrificing people by carving their skin off, has invoked the god Quetzlcoatl, a giant bird monster who has a penchant for rooftop sunbathers. Not a bad idea, but it's not too deeply explored. Again, they spend way too much time with Quinn. The guy's a total drag, he's constantly whining about how horrible his life is, and wondering why he can't be a better person. I wanted to see some people get eaten by a flying monster, not a lamely done drama about a guy with a conscience problem.

Quinn proves that he's a real scumbag when he holds the city hostage by not revealing the location of the bird's nest. He insists on a million dollars and some respect, or the killings won't stop. The last five minutes of Q are by far the best part of the film. We finally get to see more than a beak or a claw of the monster, as they show all of Q in glorious stop-motion animation, flying around the Chrysler Building as Carradine and his crew of cops shoot her down; the poor thing only wanted to collect some food for her soon to be hatched egg. So what if some heads had to be removed, she's an endangered species and should be protected.

If the movie had been about Q attacking New Yorkers, and Carradine and Roundtree investigating, it could have been a fun B-Movie; when those elements were on screen, it is an entertaining film. But they let what should have been a minor character take over the film; I didn't care about Quinn in the least, he could have found the bird, and that would have been enough. I didn't care about his feelings or his relationship with his girlfriend. His unredeemable character drags the film down so far, that it's not worth sitting through for the few good scenes of Q swooping in to grab people. It's unbearable for even those that love bad movies. - Grade: D