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Beware of the BlobA town celebrates the famous horror movie brought to the screen by Kate Phillips.

By Torie Bosch
Posted Monday, April 28, 2008, at 2:20 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Though Phillips might not have intended The Blob to have a political message, she did accidentally insert an environmental warning, which was reflected in the Blob Fest's 2007 theme: "An Inconvenient Blob." I thought it was just an attempt to ride the green bandwagon until I finally caught one of the three weekend screenings of the movie. At the end of the film, the Blob is imprisoned in the Arctic, where, as the narrator menacingly intones, it would remain as long as the North Pole stayed cold. Green activists should add the return of the Blob to the long list of global-warming-related dangers.

Getting into the spirit of Blob Fest with blob face painting. Click image to expand.

Unintentional references to communism and environmentalism aside, there's no reason why The Blob should still be a cultural icon. (I can only hope that Snakes on a Plane isn't being celebrated in this manner 50 years in the future.) But Blob Fest isn't just about a really terrible movie. It's about nostalgia. As almost every local mentioned in our short conversations, in the decades from the filming of The Blob to the 1980s, Phoenixville changed from a safe small town to a place with a serious drug and crime problem—a trend that has reversed with recent gentrification, as evidenced by the kilt store, artisanal cheese maker, and Hipster Home décor shop downtown.  Blob Fest celebrates Phoenixville's return to the secure community it once was. Sure, for the horror aficionados, the three screenings of The Blob and the chance to hear movie extras talk about the filming are the big draw. For the rest of the thousands of attendees, it's a chance to take part in hula-hoop contests, listen to a truly awful rockabilly cover band, and bask in the comforting glow of the 1950s. In some ways, it really is what a community fair should be: a celebration of something special about that town. Any place can deep fry a candy bar. Only Phoenixville and the Colonial can do Blob Fest.

Correction, July 24, 2007: This article originally misidentified Burt Bacharach's partner in writing the song "Beware of the Blob." It was Mack David. (Return to the corrected sentence.)

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Torie Bosch is a Slate copy editor.
Photograph of painted face by Nicholas Bosch.
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