"What's more fun than that?" Shoemaker said with a grin.
It would be just like 1957, when townsfolk had bit parts in a sci-fi flick that, by today's standards anyway, was so hokey, so cheesy, so astoundingly corny it became a cult classic.
It was The Blob, one of the first color monster movies, the one that launched Steve McQueen's career.
Some might say it also launched Phoenixville, although if anything did, it was steel, not a B movie from more than 40 years ago. Steel, however, is gone, and The Blob is back.
This is where most of the scenes were shot. Decades later fans still show up from time to time, wanting to see the house at Third and Main where the goo from outer space ate Doc.
Or the school on Second Avenue where they got the fire extinguishers to freeze the blob.
Or, best of all, the theater, still in operation, where the creature oozed from the projection booth and attacked the audience, which ran screaming.
One might think the hoopla would eventually fade - as director Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr., of Paoli, keeps hoping. Not that he's ashamed. It's just that he's moved on. Blob mania is sort of like your parents still showing your childhood bathtub photos. "We just can't escape it," said his wife, Jean, with unintended humor.
A few years ago, John De Luca, owner of the Chef's Diner in Downingtown, which is merely on the same site as the one filmed in The Blob, held a hokey burial of a toy pink Cadillac - it didn't have any relation to the movie, but what the heck - supposedly to disassociate himself.
But today, the menu features a barbecue sandwich doused with red sauce. The Blobwich.
If anything, interest in The Blob seems to have grown.
Three years ago, the Colonial held a small "Blobfest" with two showings of the film. About 600 people showed up.
Last year, three showings and a locally made tongue-in-cheek sequel - superbly horrid, everyone agreed - attracted 900.
