Due to what I can only assume was some kind of contagious brain damage, audiences didn’t bother to show up for The Blob in the summer of 1988. Despite its relatively low budget of $10m and surprisingly strong reviews, it flopped even without any other genre competition at the time.
Adding insult to injury, Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont were the creative team of the previous year’s much loved Nightmare on Elm St 3: Dream Warriors, and then had to watch as the next Freddy sequel (Dream Master) outgrossed their film in a single weekend when it came out two weeks later.
The ending of Russell and Darabont’s The Blob set up a potential sequel, but alas, all we ever got for Blob merch was, you guessed it, a novelization. Written by David Bischoff and released around the same time as the movie, this lean (barely over 200 pages) volume can probably be read in a sitting or two, and unfortunately doesn’t contain much beyond what was on the screen. There are a few changes of note, but most seem like budgetary decisions and will probably be barely noticeable to anyone who hadn’t memorized the final on-screen product.
For example, in the film, when Meg (Shawnee Smith)’s little brother goes to the movies, his doomed friend Eddie's older brother works there and helps them sneak into the R-rated slasher flick. In the novelization, the character is another young child (and seemingly another friend, not Eddie’s brother), though his purpose in the narrative remains the same – he gets out of the theater and tells the antagonistic hazmat guys that the Blob chased the others into the sewer.
These pages are among the few times the book doesn’t read like a transcript of the finished film. In the same sequence, we spend a few moments with the projectionist, who has a spider monkey to keep him company during his lonely time in the booth. The Blob gets the monkey and then him, offering a scene that might have produced a few drunken cheers from a late night audience. But if I’m producing this relatively low-budget movie with lots of complicated FX, I’m not going to add directing a monkey into the mix.
Most of the other differences aren’t even as notable. There’s a little more time with Paul (Donavan Leitch) and Meg at the clinic, prior to the point where he goes to get her a soda and ends up encountering the monster. They also talk a bit more before they hit the Can Man in the road, laughing about his disastrous first meeting with her dad earlier.
That earlier scene, by the way, also has a bit of a difference – instead of the man’s terse “ribbed…” punchline (referring to the condoms he sold earlier and was led to believe were for Paul and his “loose” date), he freaks out and begins screaming at the confused young man. As the “ribbed” gag is one of the movie’s comedic highlights, it’s a good thing that it was changed, assuming Bischoff wasn’t just trying a different (unscripted) thing out for himself to begin with.
It’s also, for lack of a better word, more sexually charged. Paul’s friend Scott (the one who bought the condoms) is much pushier with his date, and while they only share a hug and a few glances in the film, the novel actually gives Brian and Meg a couple of kisses, including a big one at the end. And this extends to the backstories; I was amused to discover that Sheriff Geller (Jeffrey DeMunn) liked to have quick affairs with the “ski bunnies” who would visit their local slopes during the winter season.
Speaking of Heller, one of the movie’s great (dark) comic beats is also altered; in the movie, when Fran the waitress calls his office, she is told he is on his way to the diner, just as his corpse appears inside the Blob. Here, the operator just says he’s out, which doesn’t quite give the same impact. The film's humor is almost entirely absent here.
Heller isn’t the only one to get a little more biography, but for the most part, these added backstories aren’t very memorable. The most illuminating was probably Paul’s, who, despite being the football star, was actually quite shy and a bit of a bookworm according to Bischoff’s description. The Can Man is also given a bit of a tragic backstory, as is Fran. Here, Fran’s diner is described as a Pullman traincar; not sure why that change was made, perhaps the script had it that way, and the production opted to just use a traditional restaurant.
It’s also revealed that she was coming out of a relationship with a real jerk and thus a bit hesitant to start dating again, despite her attraction to Herb. These little additions are almost certainly the author’s invention, and they do thankfully give the story a little added dimension, but they almost come off as padding to ensure that the book has SOMETHING to offer the reader that they couldn’t get by just watching the movie.
Another thing the author gave us that probably wouldn’t have come from any planned scene is the handful of passages from the Blob’s POV. They all amount to little more than “The Blob was hungry and saw its next meal nearby” kind of silliness, but it suggests it does have some kind of brain, even if it’s a one track, zombie-esque mind that only wants to consume things. We even get its perspective on landing on Earth in the first place, though again, it’s a very brief diversion.
Long story short, it’s not exactly a must-read novelization. The film’s strengths are the (still) impressive FX, the game cast, and the fast pace, none of which really come across via the author’s fairly by-the-numbers prose. And his insistence on using exclamation points, making action look like a 1960’s comic book narration (“George was… gone! And then the Blob started oozing down!”) gets very silly looking after a while.
It inexplicably sells for quite a bit on Amazon, though eBay copies tend to be cheaper (under $30, though I feel anything over $10 is too much). If you absolutely must read it, I hope you are prepared to get a bit bored and wish you were just watching the movie instead.
