Beware! The Blob is, as you could probably have guessed from the title, a sequel to the 1958 horror classic The Blob. This sequel was made in 1972, more than a decade after the success of the original picture and it was directed by none other than Larry Hagman, earning the film the moniker of "The movie that J.R. shot!"

When the movie begins, a lab technician named Chester Hargis (Godfrey Cambridge) has the foresight to save a specimen of the original blob, retrieved from the North Pole, by storing it away for safekeeping… in his freezer at home. His wife, Mariane (Marlene Clark), is not told about any of this and before you know it, she's freed the blob from its frozen tomb and the creature has eaten the family cat! The blob moves over to Chester's chair where Chester promptly sits on it, only to become engulfed in blob goop, later found dead by poor Mariane.

While the quickly growing blob wreaks havoc on the Hargis household, a woman named Lisa Clark (Gwynne Gilford) discovers what has happened. She calls in her boyfriend, Bobby Hartford (Robert Walker Jr.), but by the time he and the cops, led by Sheriff Jones (Richard Webb), arrive on the scene there's nothing left to see. The blob has moved on and everyone thinks Lisa is seeing things or telling stories. That all changes when Bobby himself comes face to face with the blob, at which point the thing is making a move towards the center of town… is it already too late or can the giant goopy menace be stopped once and for all? Hippies and amateur bowling fans watch out!

Not a film we're really supposed to take all that seriously, Beware! The Blob is a pretty entertaining monster mash with some quirky comedy and memorable scenes. The opening bits involving the Hargis' are pretty amusing (note that when Chester sits down to watch TV and drink his beer the original The Blob is playing on his television screen). Seeing the kitten get engulfed by the red goo is kind of funny too, poor kitty, and you've got to love the scene where the blog goes after those hippies mentioned earlier. Once the initial setup is out of the way the movie really does play like a series of blob-related sketch comedy bits, wherein the gooey threat to all of mankind just sort of pops into an everyday situation to eat its inhabitants. If you look at it this way, rather than as a traditional narrative film designed to scare or to generate suspense, you can easily have a good time with it. Expect to see the blob go after a man in a Fez (Tiger Joe Marsh), to take on a few drunken bums (Burgess Meredith and Del Close), to gobble up a Boy Scout leader (Dick Van Patten) and, in one of the really stand out moments, take on a guy dressed up in a gorilla suit (Garrit Graham).

The movie is paced pretty well. It doesn't waste too much time between blob attacks and when we are in between those attacks, typically something odd is happening, be it Miller High Life product placement, an inane conversation about the youth of the day or people skating about having a good time. Not necessarily in that order, mind you, but those are some of the many mundane but easy to watch scenes that bookend the blob-centric set pieces. As to those set pieces, the effects are pretty uneven but they're not without their own screwy charm. Lots of bright red goop squeezing through windows and doors and enveloping people and props galore, it's pretty cool to see and completely in keeping with the effects employed in the original picture.

Add to this the fact that the movie has a pretty eccentric cast and it winds up a pretty enjoyable watch. Granted, most of the name actors in the cast really just have supporting roles, leaving Gwynne Gilford and Robert Walker Jr. to do most of the heavy lifting. Honestly, they're not great, but they get the job done. Richard Webb has a decent sized role here too and he's a bit more fun to watch. Really though, this is one you come to not for the acting but for the goofy scenes of the titular monster interrupting the mundane reality of everyday life in middle America!

Video:

Beware! The Blob arrives on Blu-ray from Kino Studio Classics in a 1080p high definition transfer framed at 1.85.1 widescreen and it is in very nice shape. Some scenes look softer than others but this would appear to be the way that the movie was shot. The colors come through quite nicely and detail is definitely stronger than DVD would have allowed fore. Skin tones look nice and there aren't any compression artifacts to note. The source used was evidently in nice shape as well, it's quite clean and nicely defined.