Criterion Collection, out now

When a farmer investigates a crashed meteorite, a gelatinous alien traveller within attacks him and leads to the siege of a small 1950s American town.

“Beware of The Blob, it creeps and leaps and glides and slides across the floor, right through the door” jive The Five Blobs as they belt out Burt Bacharach’s opening song against groovy psychedelic titles. Directed by Irvin S Yeaworth Jr – he would subsequently helm such treasures as Dinosaurus! and 4D Man – att 83 minutes, it’s just the right length for its slender plot and a wonderful definition of this type of independent, 1950s low budget movies made in a real town with real people.

A 27-year-old Steven McQueen (he’d later just be Steve) made his feature film debut as a fairly old teenager in this drive-in classic, which was programmed on a double feature with I Married a Monster from Outer Space. McQueen aside, the acting is low grade and the script barely serviceable, and yet it’s a classic due to its titular creature, a pulsing, raw, alien gonad that would give Erato a run for its money.

Criterion Classics have sourced a clean HD print for this UK Blu-ray premiere, which also inevitably highlights shortcomings in the original film. It boasts ‘Color by De Luxe’ which is a primitive format that looks like colourised black and white. The colours are oversaturated, but so too is the eponymous blob, a glorious scarlet mass of goo that engulfs all human matter in its path.

The extras are a little sparse for this collector’s edition – commentaries by H. Harris and film historian Bruce Eder and the other by director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. and actor Robert Fields. There’s also a trailer and Blobabilia!, a photo gallery of uber-fan and collector Wes Shank’s, posters and props and an essay by genre expert Kim Newman.

The stalemate at the end is resolved by the old cliché of ‘Oh, it’s allergic to sun/rain/noise’, this time being extreme cold, which leads to the hilarious and casual parachuting of the frozen beast onto the Arctic. The titles tease ‘The End?’ And I think even in 1958 the answer was pretty clear. It’s a shame that 1972 Larry Hagman-directed comedy sequel Beware! The Blob wasn’t also included on this disc (there’s certainly room) if only because they could resurrect the wonderful tag line – ‘The Movie That J.R. Shot!’

Verdict: Gooey and clunky but a wonderful time capsule of the ‘monster on the loose’ genre. Designed for teenagers at the drive-in who didn’t want to be distracted by too much plot, it’s a classic in its field and that blob itself is still unnerving. It’s just a shame that the extras are a little limited. 8/10

Nick Joy