Beware! The Blob [Son of the Blob](1972)

Perhaps this is one of those sequels that needs to be seen before the original film.  After all, there’s nothing here that wasn’t done better in the first film – or in the 1988 remake.

In fact, the general sense one gets of the film is of a certain tiredness of it all.  It is more of a burlesque of the original than a sequel, and the blob effects are carried out with the least effort possible.  It might best be described as a series of eccentric cameos strung together into a film, with a beer-obsessed explorer camping in a tent in his own living room, a naked Turk running down Main Street, a hero more interested in making out with his girlfriend than in her story, a party-goer in an ape suit and a dune buggy, and a whole slew of goofy hippy teens.

One of the odder changes stems from how much things had changed between the two films.  The original asks us, in a very Fifties way, why adults just don’t pay attention to us kids, while the kids here are portrayed as weird eccentrics too strange or too stoned for anyone to pay them the slightest mind.  One has to wonder why the hero would chose to send two of his friends to talk to the cops when it is perfectly obvious that no one would ever take these two idiots seriously.  Curious.

The other notable fact about the film is that it was directed by none other than Larry Hagman, best remembered as J.R., from Dallas (with this film marketed at one point as “the Film J.R. shot”) and from  I Dream of Jeannie, who also plays a hobo.