Ok, this is the last meteor crashing on Earth movie for this 31 Days of Horror. If focusing on Space: The Spooky Frontier has taught me anything is that Earth needs to come up with some sort meteor destroying defense system and fast! Nothing good comes from meteors hitting the Earth just ask the dinosaurs and the vast majority of B-movie victims from sci-fi horror movies.
Anyway in this 1958 classic young Steve Andrews (Steve McQueen) and his girlfriend, Jane Martin (Aneta Corsaut), are making out in lover’s lane when they see a meteor crash near by. They go and investigate and find that an old man (Olin Howland) has beaten them to it and has gone and poked that meteor with a stick causing a weird gelatinous blob to crawl out of the meteor, up the stick and attached it self over the old man’s hand. Steve and Jane take the old man to a doctor.
Doctor Hallen (Stephen Chase) sends Steve and Jane back to the site to get more info. Meanwhile the good doctor decides to he has to amputate the old man’s hand since they can seem to get the blob off. The doc steps out of the room for a minute and the blob grows bigger consuming the old man and then a nurse and then the doctor.
Soon the blob is getting bigger and bigger and eating more and more of the town. Naturally the cops initially dismiss Steve’s claims of an alien blob but after it attacks a movie theatre they try to figure out a way to stop it.
The movie helped kick off Steve McQueen’s acting career and eventually had a really bad sequel in the 1970s. It was remade in the 1980s and it’s probably only a matter of time before someone decides to remake it again. The original is still the best.