The Stuff (1985) – Review

Eating healthy has been an issue facing many of us over the years, with friends decrying “If you keep eating like that you are gonna die” but in Larry Cohen’s 1985 horror film The Stuff we get the idea that eating something that is bad for you being taken to a whole new level in a film that is both a satirical look at consumerism as well as a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers with elements of The Blob thrown in for good measure.

In this classic Larry Cohen film, we have a small group of protagonists fighting against the rapid consumerism of harmful junk food that not only mind controls the consumer it’s later revealed to be a sentient organism from beneath the Earth’s crust that plans to enslave mankind, basically, swap out The Stuff with McDonald’s and Burger King and we’re talking a documentary here. Cohen isn’t much for subtlety or world-building and this film doesn’t spend much time explaining how any of this works or goes down, the movie opens with some worker at a mine coming across a white cream-like substance bubbling out of the ground and his immediate response is to taste it. Sure, that’s the first thing I’d do in that situation.  Clearly, this movie’s premise was never intended to be taken seriously and what meagre plotting unfolds does so without care of whether or not any of it makes a lick of sense. How does a product go from being found burbling out of the ground to becoming the number one fastest-growing food product in the world, it doesn’t matter it just happens.

“I started reading the script but gave up after page three and just took the money.”

Enter David “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) a disgraced ex-FBI agent who has been hired by a bunch of ice cream magnates to steal the secret of The Stuff as well as possibly perform some good old fashioned industrial sabotage. Rutherford is two parts charm to one part slime and Moriarty dives into the part with great gusto and gives us great lines such as “No one is as dumb as I appear to be.” He quickly enlists the help of Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci) who is an advertising executive responsible for making The Stuff a household name through such brilliant ad campaigns as “Enough is Never Enough” and her inexplicably joining up with Rutherford is simply another victim of a very trimmed down script. We also get Rutherford briefly teaming up with “Chocolate Chip Charlie” (Garrett Morris), whose company was stolen out from under him by the people behind The Stuff and their journey to what appears to be a ghost town operated by a group of Stuff controlled zombies gave me a very Halloween III: Season of the Witch vibe but was also one of many sequences that doesn’t really go anywhere.

“Hey, which one of us is a Lethal Weapon?”

It’s also clear that Larry Cohen was a fan of the movie Invaders from Mars as this film also includes a young boy named Jason (Scott Bloom) who discovers that there is something seriously wrong with The Stuff and has to flee his home when his parents insist that he become “One of us” which leads him to partner with Rutherford and Nicole who, for some reason, think a twelve-year-old boy would be a great asset in taking down a massive corporation that is brainwashing America through junk food. That the kid marches into the enemy compound alongside soldiers is right out of Invaders from Mars and the right-wing paramilitary nut Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears (Paul Sorvino) is a perfect stand-in for Colonel Fielding from that 1953 classic.

“Son, if your parents are here I’ll lend you my rifle.”

Stray Observations:

• Upon seeing white goop bubbling out of the ground and having the immediate thought of “I wonder what that would taste like?” has to be the oddest response ever. I’m more cautious about leftovers I find in my own fridge than this guy is about stuff popping out of the ground.
• I will give the filmmakers credit for coming up with the name “The Stuff” for this mysterious new product and I’m genuinely surprised it hasn’t been used by a food manufacturer yet.
• Actor Patrick O’Neil plays the corporate distributor of the mind control Stuff which is pretty fitting considering he was also the man behind The Stepford Wives.
• That the FDA is revealed to be either ineffective or out and out corrupt is the most believable element in this movie.
• The Stuff is very slow when it comes to attacking one of the protagonists, it’s as if our heroes have some kind of plot armour.
• Rutherford says they have to get to a big city because all the small towns are probably already controlled, but then seconds later they’re pulling into a paramilitary compound in the middle of nowhere. He’s damn lucky right-wing nut jobs don’t like tasty desserts.
• That the public would immediately believe a radio broadcast claiming that their favourite food is actually an alien invader is less believable than the idea of this film’s entire premise.
• Chocolate Chip Charlie was sent by Rutherford to get help from the FBI but when he returns all we get for this is the alien screech scene from the 1978 remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

“I could have brought a gun or a bomb but yawning seemed like a better attack.”

Watching The Stuff I can appreciate Cohen’s blend of satirical comedy but where the film fails isn’t in the goofy fun stuff but in the horror area as we never really get a sense that The Stuff is much of a threat to our heroes – the kid escaping from his possessed family was the only moment of tension in the entire film – and that slow-moving Stuff is never properly explained doesn’t help this in any way, it also failed to overcome the problem of making a pile of Cool Whip look scary. When the film stumbles to its conclusion we are left with more questions than answers, “Did the Stuff come from space and was hiding underground waiting for its moment to strike or was it always there like some ancient Lovecraftian monster?” Cohen’s script was more interested in the wacky shenanigans of Mo Rutherford and friends than answering such queries and thus we never learn the motivation behind this particular monster or the reason it was mind-controlling people in the first place, we can assume global domination but a clearer agenda couldn’t have hurt.

This is clearly a rock quarry why didn’t someone call Doctor Who?

If the film has one saving grace it is in the performance of Michael Moriarty who eats up lines like “My friends call me Mo, because no matter how much I get, I always want mo” as if they were mana from Heaven and it’s his goofy charm that keeps this movie afloat.  That all said, I still preferred his two-bit hustler in Larry Cohen’s Q: The Winged Serpent a little more but his industrial spy/con man in The Stuff was easily the most entertaining element which was greatly needed in a film when your antagonist is a pile of white goo. It’s fair to say Larry Cohen’s attempt at satire had its moments but he never quite nailed down the balance between the comedy and the horror, regardless it is a very entertaining movie.