posted 07-16-2003 12:01 PM                    

The Blob has been re-animated!

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PHOENIXVILLE, Pa. -- The town where "The Blob" first made horror history is celebrating the movie monster that made it a star.

Several hundred people kicked off the Fourth Annual BlobFest weekend in the former steel town outside Philadelphia by bursting from the Colonial Theatre on Friday night in a re-enactment of the famous escape scene from the 1958 cult classic.

"Every year this event has taken on a life of its own," said Mary Foote, executive director of the Association for the Colonial Theatre. "I'm glad so many people came out for it."

Opened as a vaudeville hall in 1903, the Colonial hosted Broadway-bound musicals, magician Harry Houdini, musicals and a local orchestra. But the theater's main claim to fame was its use as the set where the oozing space creature chased horrified movie-goers.

People arrived for the re-enactment dressed in a wide variety of outfits, from 1950s garb to gorilla suits.

Foote gave the countdown to the audience inside the theater, and seconds later the screaming audience members came barreling out of the front doors.

Brian Etrachan, 42, of Collegeville, and Dori Eisenhauer, 34, of Brooklyn, N.Y., were told of the re-enactment by a friend.

"I've seen 'The Blob' ten times and it is one of the first movies I'd ever seen," said Etrachan, who came dressed as actress Kitty Carlisle.

Added Eisenhauer, "This definitely was something crazy to do. I didn't realize how many people got involved in something like this."

The Colonial's fortunes declined along with the steel industry's, and by the 1970s the glitzy front entrance had been converted into brick.

But in 1996, the nonprofit Association of the Colonial Theatre took over the site and began renovations.

Architects restored the theater's art deco facade using photographs from the 1958 Steve McQueen movie and the marquee now sports eye-popping neon and new sheets of yellow-and-black pigmented glass, just like it had in the 1950s.

"We tried to emulate the filming the same way it was in the original movie," said Tom Amici of Pottstown Community Television, which filmed the event and plans to show it on the borough-run station.

BlobFest weekend includes screenings of the movie, and a street festival with vintage cars, music, food, and entertainment outside the Colonial. There also is a piece of the original Blob on display that's owned by Wes Shank, a horror movie fan and a collector of movie props.

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posted 07-16-2003 05:18 PM                       

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The researchers believe the whale was curious about the inanimate object on his whale buddy's back.

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