Oozing Charm

Let me explain this so you don’t think I’ve made a permanent sojourn into Bat Country. It all started with Sham AKA Dave’s excellent look back on the Little Brown Books. Amongst this week’s offerings, he ruminated upon the “clean-up crew” of the various oozes, slimes, puddings and jellies that plague the dungeon depths. While these beasties have no direct correlation to monsters of myth or literature, it was generally agreed that the 1958 film “The Blob” served as inspiration on some level.

This reminded me that I had watched that film again a few months ago thanks to its inclusion in my local library’s video collection. It was every bit as goofy and great as I remembered it to be, plus you can never, ever go wrong with Steve McQueen, so it turned out to be an enjoyable 86 minutes of my time. But the real pleasure was the film’s theme song. I had either completely forgotten it or never paid much attention the first time around, but on this go-around I thought that I could stop watching immediately after the opening credits and still be satisfied. At a game session a few weeks back, I tried to expand the horizons of my fellow gamers by singing a stirring rendition of the theme song, but my hazy memory of the lyrics – the single repeated stanza that it is – and lack of any natural talent failed to convey the greatness of the piece.

It has come up once or twice since that time, and I kept meaning to track it down to play for them, but I kept forgetting to find it. Now, thanks to a twisted train of thought that started at Sham’s intellectual train station, I’ve finally arrived with the goods. So if my DM is reading this, play the below video for Karis. Everyone else, I dare you to listen to this – composed by Burt Bacharach! – and not hear this in your head the next time you run into a black pudding or ochre jelly in a game.