Hellraiser Director David Bruckner To Remake Another Horror Classic, The Blob

2023 did not lack for good-to-great original horror movies. You can't hate a year that gave us "When Evil Lurks," "Skinamarink," "Talk to Me" and "M3GAN" (among several others). So who cares if Hollywood persists in remaking horror classics, even if it's already been remade (and remade well)?

Irvin Yeaworth's 1958 "The Blob" is hardly a sacred text. It's an effective monster movie that gets surprisingly decent mileage out of its gelatinous, slow-moving creature. Yeaworth tries the viewer's patience by trying to shoehorn in a rebellious teen storyline (which was the rage at the time thanks to hit films like "Rebel Without a Cause"), though who could blame him with first-time leading man Steve McQueen doing the rebelling? All that matters is that he sticks the landing with a fun, movie-theater-set finale. The awful 1972 sequel, "Beware! The Blob," is notable for being the only feature directed by Larry Hagman, who would later find fame as oil baron J.R. Ewing on CBS' hit drama "Dallas."

16 years later, the screenwriting duo of Chuck Russell and Frank Darabont teamed up for a reimagining that turned the gooey extraterrestrial into a decidedly fleeter creature capable of shooting up through sink drains and dissolving people in phone booths. It's a genuinely fun and creepy B-movie that reveals The Blob is no alien at all, but actually a man-made biological weapon gone horribly wrong. Alas, critics didn't get it, and the R-rating kept a huge chunk of the film's potential audience from buying a ticket. It's got a devoted cult following now, but it was a massive bomb at the time.

But that was 36 years ago. Perhaps now is the time to give "The Blob" another go, and maybe the proficient horror filmmaker David Bruckner is the man to do it.