20 best badass women of horror movies
8. Meg Penny (1988 The Blob)
To be totally clear, we’re not talking about the original 1958 release of The Blob. As you may well have guessed, few horror movies of the early 20th century feature female characters with any real grit or gumption. Jane Martin, the token female character in the original film, doesn’t do much more than exist in a state of near-constant peril. I mean, she’s also aggressively wholesome in a very 1950s sort of way, but that generally doesn’t qualify you as a “badass.”
Remakes, however, can be surprisingly progressive. The 1988 remake of The Blob featured not only much improved special effects, but a far more active female character. Meg Penny (Shawnee Smith) is a popular high school cheerleader. That earns her both the affection of football player Paul Taylor and the scorn of resident bad boy Brian Flagg.
Meg’s issues don’t really revolve around boys, however. The real trouble starts when a mysterious asteroid lands near her town and starts releasing an odd gelatinous substance. A local transient is affected first and dies a grisly death via the substance’s acid-like effects.
Paul, who turns out to be an honest, helpful sort of guy, is next. Meg finds him encased by the growing Blob and experiencing a horrible death via disintegration. She attempts to save him is thrown back against a wall and passes out.
I would probably have given up there, what with my kind-of boyfriend horribly dying at the hands of an acidic blob. Yet, Meg persists in learning about the source of the threat. She recruits Brian in the effort, fights back against menacing government scientists, save some kids from a theater-dwelling blob and, most importantly, pays attention. In this film version, she’s the first one to realize that the blob is sensitive to cold, making the way for its eventual defeat. Without Meg Penny, it’s likely that everyone else in her tale would be well and truly doomed.