Global warming, tinfoil hats, and screamers at America's family-friendliest celebration of horror.

PHOENIXVILLE, Pa.—He wore a tinfoil hat decorated with ramen noodle flavor packets. According to the manifesto he carried, the frugal meal had inspired the creation of the hat that protected his brain from evil rays.

Was he crazy? Possibly. He was also a participant in the first-ever Tinfoil Hat Contest at Blob Fest, an annual celebration of the iconic low-budget horror flick The Blob held in Phoenixville, Pa., the Philadelphia suburb where the movie was filmed. Since 2000, people have gathered each year to commemorate The Blob, but this year was going to be special: 2007 marks the 50^th anniversary of the filming of the movie, which was released in 1958.

I've never actually seen The Blob. But I had to go—the campiness and geekiness were too enticing to miss, particularly because, for reasons I'm still fuzzy on, my older brother, Nick, was slated to dance around onstage in a gorilla costume. ("I have an Ivy League education," he reminded me before he crawled onstage.) I even decided to skip a wedding so I could attend. And thank God I did: The reception had a cash bar.

On Friday the 13^th, the Colonial Theatre, an old-timey movie house with a balcony and a single screen, hosted the tinfoil hat and scream contests. What tinfoil hats have to do with the Blob isn't quite clear to me, but the creations were gorgeous—I would happily wear the winning entry if it ever turns out that alien abductees are onto something. As the huge line of hopeful contestants formed for the latter, my ears began to twitch in fear—but luckily, organizers were smart enough to cull a few of the wannabe participants to give us their best shrieks. Earlier in the evening, I chatted with Judy Hennessey, the 2006 scream contest champ. Her advice to the 2007 hopefuls: "You have to be really, really afraid." The winner was a little girl, probably no more than 5, whose screech was so perfect, she must scream often and loudly—or perhaps she was terrified of the drooling albino hunchback character from the New York-based TV show Ghoul a Go-Go who was shepherding the scream contest hopefuls.

Tinfoil hats and screaming are all well and good, but everyone was antsy for the big event: the running out, a re-creation of the picture's most famous scene, in which hordes of moviegoers run screaming from the Colonial to escape the Blob. People inched toward the aisles, hoping to get a head start. This only served to delay the big event—for safety reasons, the running couldn't start till the balcony aisles were cleared. We couldn't start running, anyway: The champion screamer, who was supposed to signal the start of the running, was nowhere to be found.

Once a substitute screamed, I jumped with everyone else into the aisles—only to get stuck behind the mob. No wonder people got eaten by the Blob in the movie. When the congestion cleared, I ran through the back of the theater, through the lobby, out the doors—and was greeted by people holding air-traffic-control wands. As soon as everyone was out of the building, everyone ran toward a man bearing a bucket labeled "THE BLOB." These were the meager remains of the original Blob, and this time—unlike in the movie—everyone rushed to get a glimpse of the once-menacing monster, now just a few handfuls of red-dyed silicone.