A gelatinous purple people eater crashes onto Earth and decides that humans taste pretty sweet.  It decimates a small town while the police and government try to stop it at all costs.  All they need is the ingenuity of a couple of teens to save the day!  

Directed by Chuck Russell

Starring Kevin Dillon, Shawnee Smith, and Donovan Leitch

Story

A meteor strikes the Earth, somewhere in the Continental United States, and releases a mass of goo that seems to do only one thing: envelop its victims and sucks em dry.  Only a pair of humans can apparently save the day.

Review

Kevin Dillon plays David, a high school hood/snappy dresser who always seems to be on the wrong side the law and Shawnee Smith plays Meg, a high school cheerleader.  One night, a meteorite strikes an area nearby and breaks open unleashing a living blob of ooze.  David, Meg and her date Paul (Leitch) come across a derelict who had an unfortunate run in with the ooze and take him to a nearby hospital.  It doesn’t take long for the tiny blob to consume the man and escapes the hospital to terrorize the neighbourhood, increasing in mass with every new victim.  The police show up, the government shows up, but it seems only a couple of teenagers can save the day!

I think he wants to skip out on Jell-O tonight.

Watching it now, the creature seems like the mood slime from Ghostbusters 2 when it’s really pissed off. The blob envelops and melts its prey to feed and does so in some pretty cool ways.  The effects team does one hell of a job bringing this creature to life and coming up with some inventive ways for it to get at its victims.  It can squeeze into anything, like a crack in a door or suck out the innards of a body to lie in wait for another victim or even suck a person through a sink hole (one of the best scenes in the movie.)  The movie can be gross but in a fun way.

The pacing is very much like a slasher movie, only with the unique twist of the killer being an alien glob of goo so if you’ve watched a few slasher flicks, you’ll get an idea of what’s going to happen though you’ll never guess how it goes down.  The acting is quite good for what you might expect for this type of movie.  Dillon and Smith play characters who aren’t very close to start off but get closer as they try to save the day.  The supporting cast does a good job though they have to be dumbed down to make it seem like our heroic teens are really heroes, they know what to do more than the government officials sent to isolate the creature.

When I said “Let’s suck face” this isn’t what I meant.

Though it has a small hint of humour sprinkled throughout, it takes the story way more seriously than the campy 1958 original starring Steve McQueen.  It’s a remake done right back in a time when there wasn’t a remake done every two weeks.  It updated for the times with a different story and improves on what what couldn’t be done effects-wise back then.  The film still holds up well, most of the effects are still impressive. 

Rating

Story: 7 – The remake expands on the original with a new spin on the story and updates a campy classic into one of the better horror films of the 80’s.

Blood: 8 – Surprisingly graphic, there are tons of scenes with bodies being melted, body parts laying all over the place.  The team behind the special effects did a great job!

Nudity: 0 – Movie didn’t really need it.

Overall: 8 – A well-made 80’s classic!