Time to talk Larry Cohen! Haven't heard of him? Not surprised. Even beside your Romeros and Carpenters, he's very much a cult filmmaker among cult filmmakers. From flying serpents to aliens playing god, he's always had a weird streak, one that's never been afraid to express an overtone of middle-fingered satire. And as far as being weird and satirical goes, he certainly outdid himself with all the stuff in, well, The Stuff!
Here, Cohen aims both barrels at junk food marketing and eighties consumerism...by starting the film out with people discovering a white goopy substance bubbling from the Earth's core, that just so happens to make for a tasty dessert. Yup, that's what we're in for. In any case, The Stuff, as it's soon sold as, proves an instant hit, selling even more than Rubik Cubes, pet rocks, headbands that look like they were dipped in fluorescent sewage, and other things all the rage in the era of Reagan.
Jealous ice cream companies thus hire industrial spy Mo Rutherford to find out the secret of the Stuff; Mo is played with the best kind of southern nonchalance by Michael Moriarty. Moriarty plays Mo with the apparent direction that literally nothing seems to surprise him; confronted with parasitic killer yogurt that consumes people from the inside out? Eh, just worth an eyebrow raise. Witness the Stuff burst out from pillows to consume a whole bedroom? Minor inconvenience, shrug it off a minute later. It's ridiculous, but it just adds to the cheesy but all too watchable nature of it.
And dear god, if you want an eighties film that isn't shy about how eighties it is, this is it. Some people think Stranger Things is one the nose with its period-piecing? This one does that and was actually made in the time! You've got Atari games on full view, you've got a kid sleeping in Return of the Jedi merchandise, television commercial models wear fur coats on top of swimsuits, and you get 'Where's the Beef' parodies. There's music videos drenched in all the tasteless purple you could stomach, and more than a few jabs at the 'deregulate everything and then deregulate it more!' governmental attitudes of the time. If there's only so many crimes against hairstyling you can stomach this might not be for you, but if you live for it, this one provides.
Anyway. The real draw is the special effects--silly, yes, but actually effective for the most part. There's a memorable sequence where a mass of Stuff yanks someone across a room in much the same way as Nightmare on Elm Street, and considering the budget here, it looks better than you might expect. Sure, it's still people being threatened by evil masses of whipped cream, but damn if the movie doesn't go nuts with it. There's one sequence near the end where a poor infected 'stuffie' has his face distort and vomit Stuff out into a huge mass--it looks, well, much less convincing, but hilariously memorable. Even the poorer effects here are most entertaining, and that's just the right sort of schlock anyone could ask for.
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| Hey, you'd have the same reaction to guacamole and peanut butter combos too. |
The characters are largely fairly typical--there's a female companion for Mo, the marketing director for the Stuff no less, who is swayed to his side with very little beyond 'trust me on this okay?' And you've got a kid character whose family is subsumed, escaping from them in one of the few scenes that actually do prove somewhat creepy. Nearer the end, they also join forces with a right wing militia group--who, while portrayed as somewhat full of themselves, are still also quick to join the forces of the good guys. That bit probably wouldn't fly as well today to say the least.
So, if you're in the mood for a lesser known eighties B-piece with some somewhat bizarre yet funny acting performances, ludicrous effects, and a whole lot of anti-consumerism (you could probably see this being remake with more of a satire on 'influencers' these days), The Stuff provides. It's not a long piece, so it might just be right for a movie night with copious amounts of beer and a schlock-horror theme. And ironically? You probably will find yourself in the mood for icecream afterwards anyway.
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