Quick Hits: I Remember: Married to the Blob

We used larger things too. As in magic, just when the audience thinks they know that you’re going to do it with wires, you do it with levers. When people think it’s done on a stick, you’ve got to show them that there is no stick. So we used weather balloons with the Blob on top of them. We used huge cutouts that looked like the Blob from a distance that we just slid around. The cutouts and balloons got bigger and bigger until we finally used animation on the Downingtown Diner.

We spent close to $140,000 on the movie. That’s nothing. And it made $8.5 million its first year. The new one [released in 1988] cost something close to $20 million. And that one really looks real.

You never had a feeling of realism about our version. It was something that you just wanted to go see because it was sort of in and campy. But I always wanted to make sure that the kids acted like they were real. Steve McQueen was perfect for that because he was the kind of guy that made you feel like this was a real thing that he was going to solve in some way. We cast Steve because we wanted that ambivalent quality, that "What is he going to do now?" characteristic. In real life, Steve was that kind of guy. He liked to take risks.

After The Blob I did have studios ask me to work with them, but I had my own objectives and I didn’t want to just end up making science fiction pictures — that wasn’t my calling in life. The kind of films I wanted to make were not Hollywood films. We made a lot of films over the years that we’re proud of. We did a film called Twice Convicted, about a guy who struggled back out of alcoholism. Then we made a film called Way Out, which was the American entry at the Cork Festival in Ireland in the ‘70s. It was a theatrical film about heroin addiction. These days we make films for world’s fair exhibits, permanent exhibits, theaters and amusement parks.

I remember The Blob with affection, but I don’t remember it as the high point of my life. Our movie wasn’t that great, but a lot of wonderful things happened to it, and the movie stood up in those days. It has been called the science fiction classic. Look at it now and you can’t believe it.