Stellead Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Rainey Dawn Two years before The Blob (1958) we had X The Unknown (1956). X takes a more serious approach and a bit more adult of the two films, whereas The Blob is a bit more comical and teenager-ish. Both are good creature features if you like that sort of thing. I like The Blob better.The copy of X I watched had a weird wave to the entire film that is hard explain. It's not wavy lines though it. It's not a rocking motion of the camera man I don't think but almost as if the film was sliding around during the recording to DVD but it could have been originally filmed that way - it's hard to say. I can say that it made me a bit nauseous and dizzy watching it. (I watched it via YouTube).I would not go out to buy this film and would not care to watch it again, but I am not saying it's a terrible film... it's just not that much fun to watch.4/10

Robert J. Maxwell Dean Jagger is a scientist working at a lab in Scotland, trying to find a way to render radioactive materials (like a bomb) harmless. The earth splits open nearby and a rude lump of glowing stuff comes pouring out, lethal, crackling like bacon in a frying pan, and conveniently built of the kinds of radioactive stuff that Jagger is working on.The blob -- for the most part unseen -- manages to kill several locals by radioactive poisoning before Jagger and the authorities are able to deploy a full-scale replica of their laboratory model. It may not work because "the fans are out of synch." Or it may explode, like the tiny lab model does.Will it work? Is Jagger's fantastic theory of blobby organisms having been forced underground as the earth's crust thickened correct? Is the short, squat dilatory figure who runs the lab correct when he calls the whole thing balderdash? Will the whole mess blow up? Why does hail always have to be the size of something else? Did the Masons really design the first dollar bills? It starts off slowly and mysteriously. That's the best part. Then it gets fast, complicated, scientifically inaccurate, and very loud. Sometimes the suspenseful musical score, on top of all that crackling, as of cellophane being wrinkled, literally drowns out the speech so you can't hear what the characters are saying.It's not terrible. It's just a routine example of those 50s Briish SF movies that used an imported Yank as the main figure -- here Dean Jagger, there an improbable Gene Evans -- and sometimes they worked quite well -- Brian Donlevy as Quatermass. In this one, the performances aren't bad but the script has a tendency to lose itself once in a while. In the very last scene, there is a blinding explosion from the creature's fissure. Knocks everyone flat. What was that, asks a soldier. Jagger is staring thoughtfully at the smoke wreathing out of the fissure. "I don't know," he replies, "but it shouldn't have happened." Camera draws away. The End. It should have happened if you'd decided at the last minute to end the movie with a big bang in order to use up the left-over special effects explosive.

kosmasp Considering it was shot in the 60s, it is pretty graphic for that time. Then again, Night of the living dead came a few years later and put a new level of gore out there. This one is tame obviously in todays time. It didn't age well in some departments. People are used to more by now. Some of the acting also seems very wooden.This British effort is still a good movie, that build the blueprint for other similar (and I guess more successful) movies. The acting is nice and the effects are pretty decent too, although you should be aware that most of the time it's more what you imagine, rather than what you actually see on screen. If you don't mind the age, try it. You might even like it (which shouldn't be a surprise)

dougdoepke Two years before an alien blob of Technicolor jello menaced Steve McQueen and American teenagers, this b&w glob of radioactive mud menaced all of England. Except the alien blob was all for fun, whereas this power-hungry seepage from inner Earth is in deadly earnest. It's 80-minutes of unrelieved what-the-heck-is-this-stuff and how-the-heck-do-we- kill-it type dialog. Good thing actor Dean Jagger is on loan from America so his scientist can figure things out and save the trans-Atlantic alliance.Certainly can't say director Norman doesn't use about every suspense trick in the book, from screaming close-ups to unseen monsters to stricken hands reaching for an alarm. Trouble is that it's a movie of good parts that somehow doesn't add up to a memorable whole. I suspect two reasons hold back the end result. Let's face it, there's just nothing very scary about mud, even when dressed up in radioactive glow. So when the culprit finally reveals itself in all its gooey glory, it's more like "yuk" than "yikes". Then too, there's no one the audience can really identify with. Jagger's scientist is the hero, but too technical to identify with. As a result, we watch him, but don't participate with him.Nonetheless, those empty gravel pits are unusually gloomy and a real eye catcher for a backdrop. All in all, it's a decent thriller, but nothing exceptional.