"The brief era of protoplasmic horror." Topic

In the latter half of the 1950s there was a brief flap of protoplasm horror films: X-The Unknown 1956,The Blob 1958, and Caltki: The Immortal Monster 1959.

These came so close together that it seems likely that all were inspired by the same source material. Lovecraft's shoggoth that he introduced in At The Mountains of Madness is one possibility. I seem to recall another early sci fi tale about a planet of similar amorphous blobs, but I don't remember a title or author. Of the three, The Blob was the best and had a 1972 sequel and a great remake in 1988. These terrors would wind up inspiring low-level monsters to populate dungeons in classic RPGs..The three films offer interesting origins for their monster: X is an organism from deep within the earth, the blob arrives from outer space, and Caltiki in habits a sacred cenote in a ruined Mayan city.

I stopped by my library yesterday to see if they had "The Blob" on DVD. They did, so I checked it out! I'll try and get to it sometime this week.

It's a nice little B-movie that introduced the great Stee McQueen.