Arguably the face of 80s horror satire, Larry Cohen made his name delivering a string of absurd B-movie premises such as killer babies and flying, Aztec God-monsters stalking the skies of Manhattan that were also deceptively smart and witty. Sure, he’d serve you up some trashy thrills, but at the same time he’d also screw around with conventions and expectations to throw his audience curveballs and keep them off balance. Possibly the most blatent example of his high brow, low tech approach to genre storytelling is The Stuff, a typically scrappy epic with big ideas that aims a smirking takedown of rampant consumerism and capitalism at all costs that sees America bending to the will of a sentient dessert that consumes you from within.
However, possibly one of Cohen’s most polarising aspects it that he almost never obtained a budget that could properly do his ideas justice and he tended to err on the side of quirky to compensate. Does arguably his most famous movie have the wit to elevate the concept above some obvious limitations, or does The Stuff ultimately end up consuming itself?
There’s a new product on the market called the Stuff and thanks to a relentless and catchy advertising campaign, this new dessert has become the new food craze sweeping the country. Not quite a yoghurt, not quite an ice cream, the Stuff is a type of white goo that not only tastes incredible, but ends up being incredibly addictive, with its most ravenous fans stock piling it like there’s another war coming. However, unbeknownst to the consumerist public, the Stuff was first discovered bubbling out of a fissure in the ground within a quarry in Georgia and as demand for this gorge-worthy goo grows, the owners of the suffering ice cream industry calls in smug industrial saboteur David “Mo” Rutherford to investigate the Stuff, find out what it is and eradicate it if necessary.
However, it doesn’t take Mo long until he uncovers a bizarre, Stuff-related conspiracy that potentially could spell disaster for the human race. You see, the Stuff is actually alive and if you eat too much of it, it takes on parasitic, mind controlling characteristics and turns you into its slave as it consumes you from within.
Soon, Mo is zipping from state to state, uncovering more facts about this insidious invasion and snagging a small band of like minded people to aid him. First there’s Nicole, the woman who came up with the Stuff’s ad campaign who wants to undo the damage she’s unknowingly done; then there’s Chocolate Chip Charlie, the enraged former owner of a dessert company that saw his business hijacked out from under him to way way for the Stuff. However, the most heartbreaking member is pre-teen Jason, who figures out that the dessert is alive before anyone else but is unable to stop his family becoming subservient yoghurt-zombies. Will the gooey advance of the Stuff ultimately be halted, or has Earth finally gotten its just desserts?
Generally as unbalanced as the sort of diet that would sustain eating unending servings of white goop, Larry Cohen’s The Stuff unsurprisingly feels like something of an acquired taste. As raw, innovative ideas go, Cohen’s horror/comedy features enough for three movies, throwing in various threads that include a Body Snatchers type plot that sees Scott Bloom try to avoid his Stuff snared parents like the very best of McCarthy era sci-fi, Cohen regular Michael Moriarty charmingly blunder and ramble through yet another anti-hero role to expose the hypocrisy of giant corporations like a charismatic drunk and whatever the hell is supposed to be going on with Paul Sorvino’s right wing, militia owning, ex-general. However, those not familiar with the writer/director’s particularly chaotic brand of anti-establishment cinema may end up being flummoxed by the end results which frequently come off as noticably amateurish as the director struggles to wrangle such a massive story.
Considering that the movie was made in 1985 with not a lot of money, I would urge some viewers to try and ignore the occasional iffy visual effect, choppy editing and histrionic acting in order to penetrate the film’s overriding themes. Corporations actively selling things that either dull the senses, or empty the wallet due to its addictive nature can be leveled at virtually every invention over the last 100 years, from the cigarette to the iPhone. But while while Cohen urges us to point a disapproving finger at unscrupulous suits, he also makes sure that three fingers are pointing back at us with the people succumbing to this deadly treat turning into subservient drones who spout product tag lines in dreamy voices – “Sure, blame the money”, Cohen seems to be saying “But you’re the ones who are falling for it”.
The cast is made up of the usual gaggle of oddballs who usually make up a Larry Cohen cast, but you genuinely feel that the filmmaker is really pushing the anti-establishment angle as hard as it will go when he make his main character someone who assassinates entire companies for the highest bidder. However, if Cohen wasn’t casting Moriarty as some sort of mysteriously heroic scumbag, something would feel very off and it’s always an amusingly counter intuitive joy to watch the actor utilise his drawling, sleazy persona for good. Elsewhere, The Stuff manages to assemble a bizarrely starry cast for 1985, with Saturday Night Live cast member Garrett Morris as the ranting Chocolate Chip Charlie who also claims his hands are registered as lethal weapons and Paul Sorvino in full scenery chewing mode as yet another deliberately off-beat choice of a savior of humanity (could you imagine a right-wing, militia owning, conspiracy theorist being cast as a movie hero in this day and age?).
And yet while Cohen is treating this all as one big joke, there are times where you wish the film was a little tighter and a lot more polished. Oh the physical effects that see the titular gunk emerge from the gaping maws of hapless “Stuffies” are a cool, Thing-style image that’s both ludicrous and creepy on equal measure, but you can’t help but feel that this is one film – along with the similarly satirical C.H.U.D. – that would actually benefit from a modern effects and bigger production values to help put its point across.
Those who are unable to put ratty production values and deliberately uneven performances behind them are unlikely to get the joke that The Stuff is trying to excitedly tell, but those people will be missing out on a movie that may be incredibly rough around the edges (and the middle too, to be honest), but has an incredibly relevant punchline to deliver. Quirky, irreverent and surprisingly smart beneath those primitive visuals, give this goopy, goofy satire a chance and you may very well discover that it has the right stuff…
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