Sunday 10 February 2013

The Blob Vs The Thing: Who Would Win In A Fight?




Just like an MTV's Celebrity Deathmatch spin-off, the world of horror crossovers gave us Freddy Vs Jason and Aliens Vs Predators. There was even a rumour of Freddy Vs Jason Vs Ash (from Evil Dead). But why stop there? Michael Myers Vs Leatherface? The Woman Vs The Wolfman? Dracula Vs Dragula? The possibilities are endless, and mostly, obvious. But what about... The Blob Vs The Thing!


On your left: The Blob



The Blob is the easiest of the two adversaries to pinpoint. It crashed into Earth inside a comet, a simple and small but deadly organism. Made of pink goo and looking like what would happen if a bottle of Pepto-Bismol came to life and threw up, it dissolves and swallows up its victims, growing in size with each new prey. Starting off small, it gobbles its way through the inhabitants of a small town through various and disgusting ways until it reaches the size of Demis Roussos and threatens to eat up the entire population. The Blob is a riot, incredibly gory and a lot of fun, it also features one of cinema's most deserved death, a noisy man in a cinema who gets snatched up by the Blob from the ceiling (a scene which must have had every audience in cinemas looking up nervously!).

So how do you fight something you cannot touch ?


On your right: The Thing




The Thing is a superior film than The Blob, and I have ranked it in the top 20 of the best films ever made, thanks to its relentless tension and pervading sense of threat and paranoia, not to mention the still unbeaten and incredible animatronic effects of The Thing as it morphes into various horrific shapes.

Still, even the most die-hards fans like myself have got to admit that nature of The Thing is rather poorly defined, with some contradictions even. The Thing is, well, something of alien origin that is found on a scientific base in the North Pole as a crash landed UFO is discovered frozen in the snow. At times, it seems that The Thing eats then replicate its victims. Other times, it seems that it slowly invades its prey cell by cell until it is completely in control. I guess it is part of the film's appeal that the mystery is kept intact.

So how do you fight something that stays hidden and will assimilate you the minute you are alone, something that can be everything and nothing at once?


Fight!



Depending on its size, it seems that The Blob is in for a bigger chance. After all, no matter what form The Thing has taken on, its adversary would dissolve it and digest it in a pink flurry of gooey mess. But not so fast! The Thing also assimilates its victims by swallowing them up from within through touch. So what if The Thing invades The Blob without it noticing? What if the Thing sneaks in as The Blob swallows up McReady and slowly assimilates it at molecular level? What if The Blob doesn't even realise that it is slowly becoming The Thing, as The Thing itself is being dissolved? What do we end up with? Just like the Predalien as the end of Aliens Vs Predators, we would have a Blog/Thing which does not know whether it is the Blog or the Thing. A scary thought.

This was rather insightful. Next week we shall discuss what would happen if the Thing ate the Stuff while the Blob drank some Viper. Whoever wins, we lose I take it.

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