Larry Hagman

A nuclear-powered bus driving cross-country from New York City to Colorado is destined for disaster because of the machinations of a mysterious group allied with the oil lobby. The ultimate disaster movie parody: A nuclear-powered bus is going non-stop from New York City, New York to Denver, Colorado, and is plagued by disasters because of the machinations of a mysterious group allied with the oil lobby. When the driver is injured, a washed-up, down-on-his-luck-but-used-to-be-great type who used to be engaged to the inventor's daughter is brought in to drive the giant bus, which includes a one-lane swimming pool and a one-lane bowling alley. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>

Picking up 15 years after the events of the first Blob movie, an oil pipeline engineer and geologist named Chester Hargis (Godfrey Cambridge) returns to his suburban Los Angeles home from a three-month excursion to Alaska near the North Pole, bringing with him a small sample of a mysterious frozen substance uncovered by a bulldozer on a job site... an off-camera story which he tells his wife Marian (Marlene Clark). Not aware that the substance is a piece of the Blob from the original 1958 incident in Pennsylvania, Chester stores the substance in a small metal container in his home freezer prior to taking in to the laboratory to be analyzed. When Marian takes the metal container out of the freezer and leaves it unattended on the kitchen counter, both she and Chester forget about it since Chester is planning to go away on a week-long fishing trip which he has stored several cans of beer in his fishing container. With both Chester and Marian distracted by their bickering, the substance thaws out and a red gelatinous substance oozes from the metal canister after consuming a small house fly. The small blob then quietly engulfs their pet kitten. Seemingly energized by the sustenance, the blob oozes out into the back yard, where Marian is searching for the kitten. As the creature grasps Marian's legs to engulf her, she faints in terror and succumbs, unknown to Chester, who is watching television in the living room. Soon after, family friend Lisa Clark (Gwynn Gilford) enters the house to find Chester sitting in his reclining chair being dissolved/digested by the ever-expanding blob. Horrified, Lisa races to her boyfriend Bobby Hartford (Robert Walker Jr.) at his farm for help, but when they return to the Hargis house, no evidence of the tragedy remains. Meanwhile, bowling alley owner Edward Fazio (Richard Stahl), having spotted Lisa speeding, reports her to the police and follows her to Chester's house to admonish her. When Lisa tries to explain to the police that her friends are missing, they search the house while Mr. Fazio insists that they arrest her for speeding. After finding nothing suspicious, the police release Bobby and Lisa. Elsewhere, two teenagers, a guitar playing hippy named Randy (Randy Stonehill) and his girlfriend (Cindy Williams), are smoking marijuana in a storm drainage culvert, when policeman Deputy Zed (Sid Haig) confronts them. When Deputy Ted Sims (Ted Baar) arrives and tells Deputy Zed to report back to the police station, he tells the two teenagers that they are under arrest for possession of a controlled substance. Sims then leaves Zed to arrest the two teenagers. Seeing the red, viscous material dripping into the culvert behind Deputy Zed's head, the teenagers warn the policeman, but he suspects they are trying to trick him and ignores their pleas. Within seconds, the blob engulfs Zed and the two teenagers. Later that evening, the blob seeps into a hair salon through the sewer system, swallowing the customer's head (John Houser) and hairdresser's arms (Shelley Berman) during a shampoo at the sink. Meanwhile, Bobby and Lisa return to her house, where dozens of Bobby's friends are waiting to throw him a surprise birthday party. As the festivities ensue, Lisa, upset that Bobby does not believe her story, asks him to take her to his ranch. In another part of town, a middle-aged Russian man (Tiger Joe Marsh) is taking a bath when the blob slips under the door and swallows his pet dog as the man watches helplessly. Petrified and naked, the man runs into the street, where police pick him up for exposing himself. Back at the police station, reports of missing persons are piling up, including a group at a bar that the blob consumes (off-camera). Boy Scout Taskmaster Adleman (Dick Van Patten) is with his troupe hiking through the area and observing the events that are unfolding around them. Adleman becomes a victim himself (off-camera) when he confronts the blob in a field near the late Chester's house, but most of his fellow Boy Scouts escape. At Bobby's ranch, the blob, having already consumed three hobos (Larry Hangman, Burgess Meredith and Del Close), is growing exponentially after consuming live chickens and possibly some livestock, and quickly envelopes Bobby's truck when the couple arrives. Knowing what fate awaits them, Lisa screams for help, but they cannot escape. Suddenly during the tumult, when Lisa accidentally switches the air conditioner of the car on full blast, the blob recedes for no apparent reason. This allows Bobby to re-start his car and drive away. Bobby and Lisa race to a gas station (where the Blob has apparently been and consumed, off-camera, the attendant and an unknown number of patrons) to call Sheriff Jones (Richard Webb) and are told that he is at the bowling tournament. Seeing their friend Joe (Gerrit Graham) and his girlfriend Leslie (Carol Lynley) driving by, Bobby and Lisa describe the horrific monster. Although Leslie is convinced of their sincerity, Joe mocks them in disbelief and drives off in his dune buggy to investigate their claims. As Bobby, Lisa and Leslie make their way to the town bowling tournament to find the sheriff, they are confronted by the Blob, which has covered the road and is enveloping Joe and his car. A hysterical Leslie rushes to help Joe, but dies with Joe under the oozing mass. Taking an alternate route, Bobby and Lisa reach the bowling alley, where Bobby uses the loudspeaker to advise everyone to leave the area, but his warning goes unheeded. Angered by the disruption, Fazio orders his bouncer to bring Bobby and Lisa to his office, where they explain the danger. Meanwhile, the blob, having already devoured the bowling alley mechanic, surges down all the lanes toward the terror-stricken people, who run for their lives. Bobby, Lisa and Fazio barricade themselves in a broadcast booth high above the adjacent ice rink, which is closed for repairs, and watch as dozens of people succumb to the fast-flowing blob. Using the speaker system, Bobby tells the sheriff and his men, who are waiting outside, that the blob is a giant single-celled animal that can ooze through cracks. As the sheriff and his men dress in riot gear to prepare to attack the creature, Bobby tries to electrocute it with a live wire, but does not succeed. Jones and his deputy shoot at the creature, which is unharmed and subsequently eats the deputy. Having devoured the remaining public in the facility, the blob seeps into the booth through a hole in the floor. Scrambling to get away from the creature, Bobby knocks over a small refrigerator and spills ice onto the blob, which shrinks from the cold. Realizing that the air conditioner in their truck must have been the reason the blob did not eat them earlier, Bobby and Lisa asks Fazio how to cool the rink to freeze the blob. Meanwhile outside, the sheriff, having lost contact with Bobby, assumes that he and the others have been eaten, and orders his men to dowse the building in gasoline so they can burn the blob, unaware that fire will have little effect on the creature. Inside, Bobby heroically climbs the ropes leading to the rink's switch box. Once the rink's cooling system is on, the blob freezes solid instantaneously. Bobby then runs out of the building just in time to stop the sheriff from setting it ablaze. Minutes later, the sheriff proudly stands on top of the mounds of the frozen blob to give a television interview about the shapeless monster that almost destroyed their town and possibly the world. Just under his feet, a small section of the blob defrosts from the camera light and begins to engulf the sheriff's boot..... Is this really....THE END?

Warren Black lives in New York City and suffers a recurring nightmare about attending a bullfight that ends in a piercing shrieking noise. The nightmare fills him with doubts about his job as a Brigadier General in the US Air Force who is assigned to nuclear weapons. Walter Groteschele is a professor with some audacious ideas about nuclear warfare - namely that the common conception that any exchange of nuclear weapons will inevitably and imminently lead to an all-out exchange and the annihilation of the world is wrong. He is a civilian advisor to the Defense Department and Defense Secretary Swenson. Frank Bogan is commanding general of Strategic Air Command, the nuclear weapons arm of the Air Force, and he possesses faith in the vast array of high-tech equipment at his disposal, enough that he leads a short-notice tour of a visiting Congressman, Hubert Raskob, of SAC headquarters - though he must roust his executive officer, Colonel Warren Cascio, from an unplanned visit with his elderly father, a drunken hillbilly who lives in a basement apartment and whose alcoholism periodically leads to violence. Jack Grady, a Colonel in the Air Force, leads Group Six, a squadron of Vindicator nuclear bombers, supersonic jet aircraft derived from the B-58 Hustler bombers of the latter 1950s and based near Anchorage, AL. Grady and his wingman Billy Flynn debate the utility of their fellow pilots, young men who seem more like machines than the pilots they flew with in the Second World War. All of these men are soon caught up when a computer malfunction at SAC headquarters results in replacement of a faulty control piece. The replacement is routine but momentarily freezes up SAC's mainframe as the array of computers reboots. It appears of no concern - except the glitch activates the Fail-Safe box aboard Group Six; at the same time all radios aboard Group Six are jammed by Soviet Russia, and when the fail-safe signal aboard the planes is verified, it leaves Grady and his men thinking that nuclear war has broken out and they must execute their final order - penetrate Soviet Russia from the North Pole and launch multi-megaton explosives onto Moscow. The President Of The United States now must become involved as he and his translator, Peter Buck, travel deep underground to the White House command bunker, where a "Hot Line" direct voice communicator with the Soviet Premier awaits, with Buck hearing the Russian's voice and translating his words to the President. The President, the Secretary of Defense, and General Bogan work to try and stop Group Six, but the power of the planes and the crews' unshakable working orders - orders that include disregard of all outside voice communication on the suspicion of enemy disinformation - means that the six bombers penetrate Soviet Russia and overcome the Soviet Empire's vast antiaircraft grid. Making matters worse, when The President innocently asks the Soviet Premier about jamming of Group Six's radios, the Russian initially lies about it, and when he finally tells the truth the President still cannot convince Group Six to disengage. A direct communication link to Soviet air defense headquarters is opened and General Bogan is forced to dragoon one of his technical sergeants into telling the Russians how to detonate nuclear-armed air-to-air missiles, thus blowing up their own planes. With all indications being that the bombers will reach Moscow, the President makes a deal with the Soviets - a deal so stunning as to shake even the Soviet Premier into realizing that the President's pleas that the attack is an accident are manifestly the truth, but with the sickening realization that the President's proposal is the only way to avoid omnicide.