The Stuff (1985) Review
Director: Larry Cohen
Writer: Larry Cohen
Stars: Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino, Danny Aiello, Patrick O’Neal
There’s an old man walking through a mine at night. He sees white goop bubbling up through the ground and eats it. He smiles, “We could sell this to people!” The very next scene has a man with a packaged container of “The Stuff” in his fridge. A little boy sees it moving around inside the fridge, but nobody believes him. The next day the boy attacks a display for The Stuff in the grocery.
A competing company hires “Mo” Rutherford (Moriarty), an ex-FBI agent, to find out what’s up with The Stuff. It seems the FDA approved it for sale suspiciously fast. Everyone involved is either out of the country or dead. He runs into “Chocolate Chip Charley,” a Famous-Amos clone. The FDA testers all went to the town of Stater to test it, but now they’ve all vanished.
They’re chased out of town by a group of guys who spout white goo when punched. Mo’s starting to be followed and recognized by everyone, even people who haven’t seen him before.
The boy, Jason, is cornered by his family and sent to his room to eat a tub of The Stuff. He flushes it down the toilet and fakes having eaten it with shaving cream. He runs away and meets up with Mo. Mo convinces a TV publicist to help him as well. The three fly to Midland, Georgia, the home of The Stuff. They’re attacked in their motel room. They converge on the quarry where The Stuff comes out of the Earth. Mo plants explosive (that he brought with him) around the extraction site. He blows it up and it’s buried.
He runs to see The Colonel, played by Paul Sorvino, a crazy paramilitary-nut who lives in a castle. He convinces the Colonel to join up and fight The Stuff guys at the factory. At one point he says, “I kinda like the sight of blood, but this is disgusting!”
They go to the Colonel’s radio station to broadcast a warning. They catch up with Charlie, who basically self-destructs. They make their broadcast, warning people to “cook it.” People revolt, and the factories and restaurants are destroyed. They force the distributor eat it.
Still, it survives in the black market…
Commentary:
Quote: “Enough is never enough.”
“Mo” is thoroughly obnoxious in every scene. Many of the scenes appear to be shot in a yogurt factory.It was nice seeing the “Where’s the beef?” lady in a commercial.
There’s a scene where a guy gets run over by a semi truck with good gore, and Charlie’s explosion was good too, but otherwise, this wasn’t much of a HORROR film though. Overall, this really shows what cheap horror of the 80s was all about. Not good!