You Can't Keep a Good Blob Down

I. Watch the Skies

If there's a fact to science fiction, it's that people have always wanted to believe in life out there. In 1968, amateur Swiss astronomer Erich von Däniken unexpectedly became a best-selling author by positing that religions and technologies of ancient civilizations were influenced by alien astronauts who were welcomed as deities in the book Chariots of the Gods? Von Däniken wrote several similarly themed tomes, all of which were summarily rejected by academics and scientists who deemed his theories unworthy of any credible attention and dismissed them as pseudo-history.

Nevertheless, von Däniken's theories became popular fodder for contemporary science fiction. A 1970 West German documentary based on Chariots of the Gods? was dubbed in English in 1973 for a TV presentation titled "In Search of Ancient Astronauts," narrated by "The Twilight Zone's" Rod Serling.

In his 1865 novel From the Earth to the Moon, Jules Verne launched an intrepid trio out of a super cannon. Thirty-six years later, in The First Men in the Moon, H.G. Wells, who shared the sobriquet of the "father of science fiction" with his sometime rival Verne, sent a pair of Victorian era explorers to the Moon, where they discovered a sublunar race of advanced, insect-like creatures dubbed Selenites.

In 1898, Wells depicted an attack on Victorian England by bellicose Martians armed with superior weaponry in The War of the Worlds, regarded as the seminal alien invasion story.

A Brazilian-born artist living in Belgium named Henrique Alvim
Corrêa created this eerie depiction of a Martian for an early edition
of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.

In 1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs the pulp writer who introduced readers to the feral orphan raised by apes known as Tarzan, transported a Virginia Confederate Army captain named John Carter to the surface of Mars, where he encountered numerous alien beasts and humanoid beings in several novels.

Launched in 1931, Yalie and polo champion Flash Gordon experienced endless comic strip adventures among Robin Hood-like forest bandits, undersea Shark Men, and winged Hawk Men on the hostile planet of Mongo, dominated by the despot Ming the Merciless.

Before the passings of the fathers of science fiction - Jules Verne, in 1905, and H.G. Wells, in 1946 - Georges Méliès, an ingenious French illusionist and pioneer filmmaker, cranked out what most regard as the first sci-fi movie ever made, 1902's "A Trip to the Moon" (pictured below) which mashed up the fiction of both authors.

II. Commies from Outer Space

During the Red Scare of the Cold War in the 1950s, when communist agents were suspected of lurking everywhere, common fears were manifested by a variety of extraterrestrial marauders on movie screens. Nowhere was the paranoia of the period more obvious than in the portrayal of emotionless pod people in 1956's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," directed by Don Siegel (pictured below).

Filmmakers' imaginations were seemingly stretched to the limits when envisioning alien surrogates for the communist menace. In 1951's "The Thing from Another World," James Arness (four years before establishing law and order in Dodge City on "Gunsmoke") played an angry, defrosted "intellectual carrot" from deep space (pictured below).

The thrifty producers of 1953's "Robot Monster" put an actor in a moth-eaten gorilla costume, threw a plastic skull mask on his face, and slapped a toy-store space helmet over his head as Ro-Man, on a mission from the Moon to destroy all humanity on Earth with a death ray.

In 1957's "Kronos," starring Jeff Morrow (a commanding, stentorian-voiced presence in "This Island Earth," "The Creature Walks Among Us," and "The Giant Claw"), an alien flying saucer unleashed a gigantic cubic Tinkertoy that syphoned energy from the Earth to grow ever larger while pulverizing the landscape with its colossal pumping pistons (pictured below).

Even more bizarrely head-scratching, "The Monolith Monsters" (1957) had an errant black meteor spawn an advancing army of unstoppable craggy spires that literally petrified the fleeing citizens of a California desert community pictured below).

One of the most endearing space invaders in the 1950s had to be the laughable plus-size zucchini with a grimace from Venus (pictured below) in B-movie mogul Roger Corman's "It Conquered the World" (1956), featuring Peter Graves and Lee Van Cleef as rival scientists.

When Beverly Garland, the costar of "It Conquered the World,"
first set eyes on the papier-mâché Venusian, affectionately
nicknamed "Beulah" by its creator, she wisecracked, "That
conquered the world?" before knocking it over with her foot.

III. The Blob, the Whole Blob, and Nothing But the Blob

In the annals of '50s science fiction, however, there was never anything to equal the Blob, a mass of quivering, flesh-eating goo that crash-landed inside a meteorite and grew larger as it engulfed and dissolved the inhabitants of a fictional Pennsylvania town.

Which brings us to then first-time producer Jack H. Harris, an old-fashioned showman and motion picture producer who passed away March 14, 2017, at the age of 98. He began his show business career as a vaudeville performer when he was six and later worked as a theater usher. He was a decorated World War II veteran before working in film marketing, publicity, and distribution and eventually opening his own office.

In the book Interviews with B Science Fiction and Horror Movie Makers by Tom Weaver, Jack Harris recalled that the original idea for "The Blob" was conceived by Irvine Millgate, a visual aid consultant for the Boy Scouts of America who, with the help of legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille, had recently made a movie about the Boy Scout Jamboree in Hollywood. Millgate capitalized on Harris' expertise to get the documentary out in the marketplace.

While traveling together across the country, Millgate asked Harris what kind of picture he really wanted to make. Harris recounted, "I finally said, 'Listen, what I want to think up is a movie monster that is not a guy dressed up in a suit - not a puppet - but some kind of a form that's never been done before. I want it do things that will undo mankind as we know it if it's not...destroyed. But I want the destruction to be something Grandma could cook up on her stove on an experimental Sunday afternoon.'"

Nothing came of their conversations, until Harris, staying at a hotel in New York City, received a phone call at three a.m. "It was Irvine," Harris remembered. "I said, 'What is it?' and he said, 'A mineral monster.' I said, 'I'm hanging up.' He said, 'No, no - don't hang up! This mineral, if you get involved with it, can absorb your flesh.' I liked it. But I wondered , if you were wearing a nice suit, does it spit it out or eat that? And how do you do it in? We had to work those things out. But I'd never seen anything like a mineral monster, so I knew we had better get serious...We figured we couldn't burn it, shoot it or destroy it with acid, but we could immobilize it if we froze it. And that was our basic synopsis for a film we initially called 'The Molten Meteor.'"

The picture was also known as "The Meteorite Monster." Some sources say it was going to be called "The Glob," until the filmmakers learned that "Pogo" cartoonist Walt Kelly had recently co-written a children's book titled The Glob.

The director of "The Blob" was Irvin Shortess ("Shorty") Yeaworth, a sometime Presbyterian minister who wrote, produced, and directed hundreds of motivational, educational, and religious film shorts (some with Reverend Billy Graham). Later in life, he conducted tours of Israel and Jordan for Christians and was designing a religious theme park in Amman, Jordan, when he died there in an automobile accident in 2004.

"The Blob" was an experimental venture for Good News Productions, an outfit that usually focused on theological topics. According to Yeaworth's widow, the church elder often struggled with the legacy of "The Blob," noting, "He was not very proud of it." Interestingly the shooting script for the movie was co-written by Theodore Simonson, described by Harris as "another minister" whose "writings were all religious in content until 'The Blob' moved him in another direction."

Harry Guardino, Steve McQueen, and Vivian Blaine
enact a scene in "A Hatful of Rain" on Broadway.

Harris originally had his eye on Tony Franciosa for the lead role in "The Blob" and went to see the actor perform in a Broadway staging of "A Hatful of Rain." At the time, Steve McQueen was performing as the understudy for Ben Gazzara, who was sick. Harris, who thought McQueen was "superb," subsequently caught McQueen's performance in "The Defenders" as a murder suspect defended by father-son attorneys Ralph Bellamy and William Shatner in a two-part 1957 drama on TV's "Studio One" anthology series.

William Shatner and Steve McQueen costar in
"The Defenders," directed by Robert Mulligan.

After popping up as a background extra in a 1953 potboiler called "Girl on the Run," McQueen had a bit part as a street thug in 1956's "Somebody Up There Likes Me," a screen biography of middleweight boxing Rocky Graziano, starring Paul Newman in the title role, which was originally planned for James Dean before his untimely death.

One could say that "Somebody Up There Likes Me" initiated
the two-decade rivalry for top box-office stardom between
McQueen and Newman that culminated when they shared
top billing in 1974's "The Towering Inferno," at which
time McQueen finally came out as the #1 box-office draw. 

McQueen had the second lead in a 1958 crime melodrama called "Never Love a Stranger," starring John Drew Barrymore (Drew Barrymore's father), so Harris knew he had experience in front of the camera, and "his stage presence was excellent." Jack Harris was convinced Steve McQueen "was the guy for our picture." The problem was, McQueen's wife, actress and dancer Neile Adams, had appeared in a religious short film made by Irvin Yeaworth, during which time, according to Yeaworth, McQueen hung around the set, behaving like "a dirty jerk, an opinionated pain in the ass." Yeaworth declared, "We know he's gonna rot in hell 'cause he's no good, but besides that we may kill him!

"The Blob" was co-directed (without credit) by Russell S. Doughten Jr., an Iowa native and yet another Christian filmmaker. He made a series of four films that depicted life on Earth after the Rapture, casting himself as the same minister whose weak faith prevented him from ascending to heaven.

Leading a surprisingly color-coordinated posse of teens, high
schooler Steve Andrews (McQueen) asks the local constable,
"Do I look like somebody playing a practical joke? Am I laughing
or am I scared stiff?" Frankly, Steve, you look like a 28-year-old
man trying to pass himself off as a teenager.

The role of Steve Andrews' girlfriend, Jane Martin, was given to Aneta Corsaut (pictured below), best known as Mayberry schoolteacher Helen Crump, Sheriff Taylor's girlfriend and eventual wife on "The Andy Griffith Show."

Steve McQueen was paid $3000. He turned down an offer for a smaller up-front paycheck-plus-ten percent of the profits because he needed immediate money for rent and food. Filmed in and around Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, on a budget of $110,000, the movie ended up grossing $4 million.

Early shots of the Blob were of a modified weather balloon. The Blob itself was made from a silicone gel that was increasingly injected with red vegetable dye as it absorbed more human victims.

When Paramount Pictures decided to distribute "The Blob," they imposed a new theme song on the picture, initially much to Harris' bemusement. Of all people, Burt Bacharach and Mack David (the older brother of Bacharach's longtime lyricist, Hal David), composed the bouncy "Beware of the Blob," featuring the forgettable lyrics:
Beware of the Blob, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, blotch
Be careful of the Blob
...Repeat ad infinitum ad nauseam.

Jack Harris summed up his experience with Steve McQueen thus: "Really, the long and short of it was that he played Steve McQueen in everything - the same gestures, the same little smile, the same excitement level. That indicated star quality to me. But it didn't indicate it enough, because I had agreed to star him in two more pictures...'4D Man' and 'Dinosaurus!'...but he was such a royal pain, and I hated him so much I didn't use him...I've regretted that decision, but he was so impossible."

"I couldn't foist him upon the same people," Harris said. "I'd have to find a whole new crew and director." Harris quoted producer Walter Mirisch, who worked with McQueen on "The Magnificent Seven," "The Great Escape," and "The Thomas Crown Affair: "He's a pain in the ass, but worth it."

Which was a sentiment apparently shared by director Robert Mulligan, who worked with McQueen in the previously mentioned "The Defenders" and subsequently directed him in 1963's "Love with the Proper Stranger" and 1965's "Baby the Rain Must Fall."

(Top) Steve McQueen and Natalie Wood star in "Love with the
Proper Stranger"; (bottom) Steve McQueen is paired with Lee
Remick in "Baby the Rain Must Fall."

But we digress. Without the "star quality" of Steve McQueen, producer Jack H. Harris forged ahead, with director Irvin Yeaworth at his side, on the production of the science fiction thrillers "4D Man" and "Dinosaurus!"

Robert Lansing, an intense actor who never escaped his unrelentingly glower demeanor (best known for his guest appearance as dour time-traveling Gary Seven in a first-season episode of "Star Trek" that featured a scene-stealing turn by Teri Garr as Seven's ditzy secretary), stepped into McQueen's intended role as a misguided scientist in "4D Man" (1959) who invents an electronic amplifier that allows him to pass freely through solid objects (pictured above).

In "Dinosaurus!" (1960), a crew of American roustabouts constructing a Caribbean harbor accidentally awakened a pair of prehistoric reptiles, including a T-rex (pictured above), along with a sympathetic caveman, from eons of suspended animation. In lieu of Steve McQueen, the filmmakers cast a B-movie wannabe-lead-actor-but-never-was Montanan, Ward Ramsey (real name John Sutphen Jr.).

Tousle-haired tough guy Ward Ramsey poses for a publicity photo
with "Dinosaurus!" costar Kristina Hanson. Hansen turned her
back on a show business career to become a 6th grade teacher.

Jack Harris had long wanted to make a sequel to "The Blob," which ended with the frozen menace transported to the Arctic on a cargo aircraft. Richard Clair, an actor who had bit parts in the TV series "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis" and appeared in the '60s exploitation pictures "Psychedlic Sexualis" and "LSD, I Hate You," wrote a script titled "A Chip Off the Old Blob," but the project was shelved. In late 1970, Harrris' son, Anthony Harris, a recent graduate of USC who was employed at a music publishing company, wanted to work with his father, and they decided to collaborate on a sequel, which the younger Harris called "Curse of the Blob."

Coincidentally, actor Larry Hagman, who had recently completed a five-season on the popular sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie," lived in a beach house next door to Jack Harris' Malibu home. When Hagman offhandedly mentioned never having seen the original 1958 movie, Harris personally screened his 16mm print.

Hagman enthusiastically told Harris he would be able to gather together friends and neighbors for a sequel but only on the condition that he direct the film, eventually titled "Beware! The Blob." Hagman had directed three episodes of "Jeannie," and this would be the only feature picture he would direct. Hagman asked Malibu neighbors Burgess Meredith and Carol Lynley if they would like to be "blobbed," to which they happily consented, as did cronies Dick Van Patten, Cindy Williams, Godfrey Cambridge, and Shelley Berman. Hagman cast himself in a cameo as a hapless hobo.

Jack Harris hired Robert Walker Jr. for the lead role as Steve McQueen's counterpart (pictured below), with Gwynne Gilford as the girlfriend. Cult movie fans will remember Gilford as Tim Thomerson's wisecracking police partner in the 1980 thriller "Fade to Black."

Gwynne Gilford, who retired from acting in the late '80s to pursue a
career as a psychotherapist, has long been married to actor Robert
Pine, best known as Sgt. Getraer on TV's "CHiPs." Their son, Chris
Pine, portrayed James Kirk in the rebooted "Star Trek" movies.
Gwynne's mother, actress Anne Gwynne, costarred in the 1940's
horror pictures "The Black Cat" and "House of Frankenstein," as
well as the Abbott and Costello comedy "Ride 'em Cowboy."

The title entity in "Beware! The Blob," which had a budget of $150,000 (slightly more than the 1958 original), was created from a red-dyed powder blended with water to form the desired consistency. Other materials included a large red balloon.

Besides the original material in Richard Clair's "A Chip Off the Old Blob," the screenplay was co-written by Anthony Harris and Jack Woods, a fledgling filmmaker who had previously written and directed "Equinox," an ultra-low budget horror outing that producer Jack Harris expanded from a student film project for theatrical release. Anthony Harris, however, later noted that the finished script was largely ignored by director and cast, and most of what ended up on the screen was improvised on the set. That might explain why the terror and mayhem were played for laugh, such as Godfrey Cambridge's goofy demise (pictured below).

Regarded by some film historians as "a relic of mid- to late-hippiedom," the picture was re-released in 1982, advertised as "The Film That J.R. Shot!" capitalizing on the shooting of his character on "Dallas" and the tagline "Who shot J.R.?" It was retitled "Son of Blob" for its DVD release.

In 1988, Jack H. Harris produced a remake of "The Blob," directed by Chuck Russell from a script by Russell and Frank Darabont (the future filmmaker behind "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile," and "The Mist," as well as executive producer and the primary developer of TV's "The Walking Dead"). Russell and Darabont had previously worked as a director-writer team on 1987's "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors," featuring Patricia Arquette, which is considered by many to be the most imaginative entry in the slasher franchise. Russell and Darabont first met working in the crew behind the camera on an earlier slasher film, 1981's "Hell Night," starring Linda Blair.

Rather than run a picture of either Chuck Russell or Frank Darabont,
here's a look at Linda Blair's plunging wardrobe in "Hell Night."

Just as the 1958 "Blob" sounded an alarm bell warning against communist ideology, the remake, 30 years later, played upon paranoia of covert government conspiracies, not unlike the sinister corporate machinations at work in the "Alien" series of films. Some even viewed the 1988 version as a metaphor for the AIDS pandemic. Cast as the rebel with a cause in this round was Kevin Dillon, best known for his role as Johnny "Drama" Chase on the HBO series "Entourage."

Kevin Dillon's use of Triumph motorcycles in "The Blob" might be
an homage to Steve McQueen, who owned several Triumphs.

The antihero's female-companion-by-proxy - her original boyfriend having been dispatched early in the gruesome proceedings - was played by Shawnee Smith (pictured below), familiar to "torture-porn" fans as Jigsaw's apprentice, Amanda Young, in the "Saw" series of films.

Shawnee's unlucky high school steady (pictured below) was Donovan Leitch, the son of '60s pop star Donovan (of "Mellow Yellow" and "Hurdy Gurdy Man" fame). The cast of "The Blob" also featured Jeffrey DeMunn (best known for his leavening presence as the sagacious Dale Horvath in "The Walking Dead," alongside memorable appearances in Frank Darabont's "The Shawshank Redemption," "The Green Mile," and "The Mist"); Candy Clark (forever endeared to movie buffs as the platinum blonde Debbie Dunham in George Lucas' "American Graffiti"); and Joe Seneca (a veteran character actor many will recall as Danny Glover's pop in "Silverado").

Del Close, who had a significant role in "The Blob" as a Bible-thumping doomsayer (pictured below), was a revered guru of improvisational comedy, as a teacher and director for The Committee and Second City and as a "house metaphysician" for "Saturday Night Live." Among his protégés were Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, Tina Fey, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray, Amy Poehler, and Gilda Radner.

Del Close's maniacal minister adds a question mark to the end of
the movie when he displays a slab of Blob in a Mason jar.

Coincidentally, Del Close had a cameo as one of a trio of doomed hobos, along with Larry Hagman and Burgess Meredith (pictured below), in "Beware! The Blob." In 1959, Hagman and Close had appeared together in a short-lived Broadway musical called "The Nervous Set."

Del Close (left, with Larry Hagman and Burgess Meredith) wore an
eyepatch because his pet cat had scratched his eye prior to filming.

The remake of "The Blob" was a box-office flop when it was released in the summer of 1988 but, as was the case with the original, achieved cult status and is regarded by many fans as one of the best remakes ever, not unlike John Carpenter's "The Thing." And, much like "The Thing," "The Blob" boasted state-of-the-art practical effects, before the era of computer-generated imagery.

Compare the sterile simplicity of this scene from the 1958 original,
featuring the old man who first discovers the deadly meteorite... 

...with the gross-out overhaul in the 1988 remake.

Of the remake's $19 million budget, $9 million went to the jaw-dropping effects. Considered one of the goriest films of the 1980s (alongside "The Thing" and George A. Romero's "Day of the Dead"), it was described by critic Leonard Maltin as a needless "if undeniably gooey remake."

Director Chuck Russell (sometimes credited as Charles Russell) went on to direct Jim Carrey in the 1994 comedy "The Mask," Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1996's "Eraser," and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in "The Scorpion King." In 2004, he, along with Frank Darabont and others, executive produced the Tom Cruise-Jamie Foxx thriller "Collateral."

In 1991, the original "The Blob" was redubbed by the improvisational comedy troupe L.A. Connection, much like Woody Allen did in 1966 by overdubbing a Japanese spy drama and retitling it "What's Up, Tiger Lily?" "Blobermouth" was initially presented onstage, but Jack H. Harris sanctioned a video version, with his name and that of his wife, Judith Parker Harris, credited as producers. The Blob itself was given rotoscoped lips and mouthed one-liners in a voice imitating Henny Youngman (pictured below).

At the age of 95, Jack H. Harris (pictured below, with his wife, Judith Parker Harris) became the oldest recipient of a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2014.

In an interview from October 2015, Harris proudly announced he was producing yet another remake of "The Blob." Six years earlier, Rob Zombie, the director of "House of 1000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects," was said to be working on the remake. In early 2015, it was reported that the remake would be directed by Simon West (best known for "Con Air," "The Mechanic," and "The Expendables 2").

On the set of "The Expendables 2," director Simon West
explains to Sylvester Stallone, "No, you're other left."

Studio suits exclaimed, "Simon West has a unique gift for blending cutting edge effects, visual spectacle, and a hint of humor. He's the perfect choice to re-imagine 'The Blob,' and we're so excited to be partners with him."

At the time, West proclaimed, "With modern CGI, we can now fully realize the potential of 'The Blob.' The world I create will be totally believable, immersive and emotionally satisfying. It's a thrill to introduce an enduring icon to a wider audience and a whole new era of fans." Producers Richard Saperstein and Brian Witten released a statement reading, "We grew up on 'The Blob.' Simon West has a terrifying vision for bringing this iconic outer-space creature to life for a new generation. We're
grateful to Jack Harris for the opportunity to reintroduce a classic franchise."

Harris had excitedly declared that the upcoming remake would star Samuel L. Jackson. Press releases confirmed that Jackson had been signed to play a biochemistry professor. The nonagenerian filmmaker gushed, "I'm hoping lots more socks will be scared off!"

Now, a year and a half after Harris' enthusiastic announcement, there seems to be no action taken to bring "The Blob" back to life. Producers Saperstein and Witten worked on the screen version of Stephen King's novel "Cell," starring John Cusack and, coincidentally, Samuel L. Jackson, which was released last summer. Director Simon West was reportedly working in post-production on an action comedy called "Salty," featuring Antonio Banderas.

As for Jackson, he most recently appeared in "Kong: Skull Island," released in early March. Frankly, the Moviehouse was afraid Mr. Jackson would just trot out his usual, vein-popping apoplectic persona and indignantly holler, "I have had it with this motherf---ing blob in this motherf---ing movie theater!"


IV. Beyond the Blob

In 2015, Jack H. Harris (pictured above, in his heyday) wrote his memoir, titled Father of the Blob: The Making of a Monster Smash and Other Hollywood Tales. Others wrote of Harris that he, like Roger Corman, Samuel Z. Arkoff, and William Castle, became a legend in the realm of low-budget genre cinema. Just as Corman served as a mentor for filmmakers the likes of Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, James Cameron, and Peter Bogdanovich, and for such actors as Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, and Bruce Dern, Harris has been acknowledged for kindling the early careers of Steve McQueen, John Landis, John Carpenter, Ivan Reitman, and Patty Duke.

One of Patty Duke's earliest film roles - three years before her Oscar-
winning performance as Helen Keller in "The Miracle Worker" - finds
her onscreen with former Miss America Lee Meriwether in 1959's
"4D Man," written and produced by Jack H. Harris.

John Landis (best known for directing "Animal House," "The Blues Brothers," "Trading Places," and "Three Amigos") made his screen debut as the writer, director, and star of 1973's "Schlock," portraying a prehistoric apeman, mistaken for an oversized, furry dog by a blind Southern California teenager. The wacky spoof of missing-link science fiction films was produced by Jack Harris.

John Landis, as Schlock (in full costume created by future
multiple-Oscar-winning special-effects makeup wiz Rick Baker),
poses with Jack H. Harris.

"Dark Star" (1974), a low-budget science-fiction comedy, was the feature film debut for co-writer, producer, and director John Carpenter (best known for "Halloween," "The Fog," "Escape from New York," and, among others, "The Thing"). Executive producer Jack Harris' production company distributed the picture.

"Dark Star" co-writer Dan O'Bannon, who appears onscreen as
bombardier Sgt. Pinback (right), went on to script 1979's "Alien."

Such was the nonexistent budget for "Dark Star" that the cast's ill-fitting space helmets were actually child-sized Ideal toys. Purportedly, the relationship between Carpenter and Harris was contentious, elusively communicated in an onscreen computer image in "Dark Star" that flashes the message, "F--- YOU HARRIS." However, it should be noted that when Harris published his autobiography in 2015, Carpenter contributed the blurb, "Jack is a colorful character, the book an interesting read." John Carpenter's breakthrough as a major screenwriter, the 1978 Faye Dunaway slasher "Eyes of Laura Mars," was likewise executive produced by Jack Harris.

It was probably not a gold-star entry in his cinematic transcripts when Jack Harris presented the '80s women-in-prison/sci-fi hybrid "Prison Ship," released on video as "Star Slammer: The Escape" but titled onscreen "The Adventures of Taura: Prison Ship - Star Slammer." Released in 1986, the T&A exploitationer was actually shot two years earlier by Fred Olen Ray, a notorious grade-Z moviemaker with such potboilers as "Beverly Hills Vamp," "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers," and "Bad Girls from Mars" to his credit. Ray was always able to persuade a number of faded Tinseltown luminaries to appear in his basement-budgeted bargains. For "Star Slammer," he recruited Hollywood old-timers Aldo Ray (no relation to the director) and John Carradine, neither of whom are pictured below in a scene from "Star Slammer: The Escape."

Aldo Ray, who  popped up in four films made by Fred Olen Ray, recalled, "He'd give me $1000 in cash, pay my expenses, and I'd do a day's work. Somebody showed me one of his cassettes - 'Starring Aldo Ray' - but it was just a one-day job...I needed the money at the time, and Fred knew I needed a buck, so I did it. He exploited me, yeah, but I was ripe for it."

In movies since the 1950s (including a Golden Globe Award nomination as Most Promising Newcomer for the 1952 Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn comedy "Pat and Mike"), one of Aldo Ray's last mainstream Hollywood roles was as John Wayne's senior NCO, Sergeant Muldoon, in the 1968 flag-waver "The Green Berets" (pictured below).

Jack's boy, Anthony Harris, provided the electronic keyboard music score for "Star Slammer." The film's end titles promised a sequel, "Chain Gang Planet," which has yet to be produced.


V. Curtain Call for the Blob

With the passing of Jack H. Harris in March of this year, the fate of a re-imagined Blob remains uncertain. One thing for sure is that, since 2000, the community of Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, has hosted an annual summertime Blobfest.

Located three miles northwest of Valley Forge, where much of the 1958 "Blob" was filmed, Phoenixville is the home of the Colonial Theatre, which served as the location for the creature's climactic rampage. The much anticipated highlight of the weekend-long event is an enthusiastic reenactment of the riotous evacuation of the theater, which was restored specifically for the festivities. Pictured below is the original scene, along with a re-creation.

VI. Epilogue: Once Upon a Time...

The one and only time Jack H. Harris stepped behind the camera as a director was for the 1966 release, "Unkissed Bride," a bizarre sex comedy starring Tommy Kirk as a new husband who passes out whenever someone mentions a fairy tale character, preventing him from consummating the marriage. A beautiful female psychiatrist diagnoses his problem as a "Mother Goose complex" and treats him with an atomizer that emits a hallucinogenic blue mist (which some reviewers deemed was LSD). The movie was originally called "Mother Goose-a-Go-Go" (which is the title of the opening theme, sung by Kirk), although the characters - Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Goldilicks, etc. - come from classic fairy tales rather than nursery rhymes. At one point, Kirk's character wails, "This honeymoon is turning into a pretty grim fairy tale!"

The curvaceous psychiatrist in "Unkissed Bride" is played
by Danica d'Hondt (above), Miss Canada 1959, who allegedly
turned down the role of Ginger on "Gilligan's Island."

According to Harris' autobiography, he saw a musical show at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas that put "a naughty twist" on Mother Goose nursery rhymes. He was inspired to work on a film based on that premise with Richard Clair, the previously mentioned actor who wrote the unused screenplay "A Chip Off the Old Blob." When the initial investor for the production backed out, Harris decided to direct it himself to save money. Co-produced by his then-wife Muriel Harris (who also served as production designer, dressing the sets with borrowed furniture), the movie was shot in ten days. Harris thought the title "Mother Goose-a-Go-Go" was too difficult to pronounce and too cumbersome to fit on a theater marquee. One exhibitor joked that "The Unscrewed Bride" would be an ideal title, prompting Harris to come up with "Unkissed Bride."

In his youth, Tommy Kirk enjoyed a flourishing career at Walt Disney Studios, with roles in, among many others, "Old Yeller," "The Swiss Family Robinson," "The Absent-Minded Professor," and "The Misadventures of Merlin Jones."

Tommy Kirk appeared in seven Disney productions
with Annette Funicello.

Kirk's tenure at the studio was jeopardized when Walt found out his juvenile star was seeing a 15-year-old boy he met at a swimming pool. Outside the Magic Kingdom, Kirk became a popular player in beach party movies, including "Pajama Party" (with Annette Funicello), "The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini," and "It's a Bikini World."

To portray the frustrated "Unkissed Bride," Jack Harris cast Anne Helm (pictured above), a starlet who attracted national attention as the love interest of Elvis Presley in the 1962 musical "Follow That Dream." In 2010, Helm recalled, "I really fell for Elvis - I mean, who wouldn't? We did have a romance, it was quite wonderful, we were on location in Crystal River (Florida), Elvis was away from the madding crowd, it was like a shipboard romance with Elvis...It was a more innocent time...He was a baby, and I was, too. We were very young. As much as Elvis was a celebrity, he was a big kid, he was a lot of fun."

Jack Harris, writing in his memoir, insisted that "Unkissed Bride" "looked like a million dollar movie" with "sexy humor" and "decent performances." He filled the screen with hammy emoting, shameless mugging (frequently directly into the camera), the overuse of speeded-up photography, and corny sound effects. "Guest star" Henny Youngman, the venerable comedian famed for his one-liners (including the well-known, "Take my wife...please!"), appeared on-camera for one line - and it's not even a gag!

Jacques Bergerac, a French actor best known for his starring role in a cheesy 1960 chiller titled "The Hypnotic Eye," portrayed - with a barely penetrable Gallic accent - Anne Helm's creepy uncle with a butt fixation. At one point, he ogles his nubile niece and muses, "'Tis a pity, you know, if you were 20 years older, and I was 20 years younger - but then you'd be too old for me."

Previews for the comedy (in "Blushing Color") proclaimed it to be "The Far-Out Film for the In-Crowd!" Just to remind audiences who exactly made the picture, Jack H. Harris had Tommy Kirk complain, "I have all the warmth and charm of the Blob!"