A meteorite strikes near Arborville, California. An elderly transient (Billy Beck) discovers it and a substance like slime-mold sticks to his hand. Three high-school students—Brian Flagg (Kevin Dillon), Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith), and Paul Taylor (Donovan Leitch) take him to a hospital. Before they know it, the bottom half of the transient is melting away. When Meg arrives, she sees it devouring Paul. She is thrown aside and the blob oozes out of the hospital.
The police are, of course, sceptical. Meg and Brian meet at a diner, and she tells him what happened. He is convinced when the handyman is sucked down a sink-drain. They hide in the freezer, and it retreats from the cold. It consumes owner Fran Hewitt (Candy Clark) and Sheriff Hern Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn), and then it goes back to the sewers. Meg and Brian return to the police station, where the dispatcher tells them Deputy Briggs is at the crash-site. A military operation is taking place, led by scientist Doctor Meddows (Joe Seneca), who orders the quarantine of the town. Brian escapes, but Meg is taken to the town where she finds out that her little brother Kevin (Michael Kenworthy) is missing. He had snuck into a horror movie with his friend Eddy (Douglas Emerson). The blob overruns the theater.
Brian overhears that the blob is a cold-war biological warfare experiment launched into space. Doctor Meddows decides to trap the blob in the sewers, though Meg, Kevin, and Eddie are down there. Caught listening, Brian takes off on his motorcycle into the sewers to rescue Meg. Eddie is consumed, but Meg and Kevin flee. Kevin climbs out on a pipe and Meg is saved by Brian, who confronts Meddows in front of the townspeople. Meddows tries to shoot him, but the blob grabs him. Then it attacks the whole town. Reverend Meeker (Del Close) pronounces it the end of the world, and then he is burned by a flamethrower. Meg saves him with a fire extinguisher and discovers that the blob can’t stand cold.
The survivors gather in the Town Hall, holding off the blob with fire-extinguishers, but it engulfs half the building and devours Briggs. Brian steals a snow-maker truck from the town garage. As the blob is about to consume Meg and her family, he covers the creature in snow, and it knocks over the truck. Meg rigs the liquid nitrogen cannisters to explode. The blob is about to overrun them when the cannisters explode and the blob is flash-frozen into crystal snow. Reverend Meeker preaches a doomsday sermon with a piece of the living blob in a jar.
The film is a remake of The Blob from 1958, with a faster pace, bigger and better special effects, but no Steve McQueen. It was directed and co-written by Chuck Russell. As usual, it was a box-office failure and panned by critics, but became a cult favorite later. The blob in this one is not actually an alien, but a biological weapon shot into space to get rid of it but mutated into a monster. So, kind of an alien. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it, so I can review both Blobs in the same document. Screenwriter Frank Darabont and director Chuck Russell also worked together on Hell Night and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3. Special effects were done by Tony Gardner. Critics called it gooey but needless, or gracefully repulsive.
The partially dissolved soldier was played by Noble Craig, a triple amputee from the Vietnam War. Of the 19-million-dollar budget, 9 million was for special effects. The budget was 80 times that for the original movie. They offered the role of Brian to Chad McQueen, but he refused to reprise any of his father’s roles. Two minor roles went to Playboy models Julie McCullough and Erika Eleniak, who was the girl Elliot kissed in ET. Much of the blob was milkshake thickener. Producer Jack Harris also produced the original Blob. A message on the screen informed viewers that the evil and heartless government scientists in the film were nothing like the real noble and patriotic American military.