Pre-Introduction
I usually write body of a review before the introduction, but this time I got royally stuck. Since getting official space to air my brainmeats out, I’ve chosen movies that I consider iconic or historical or something - ones I think are noteworthy for whatever stupid ass reason. Then I go off on a fifteen-page geek diatribe trying to exonerate myself.
I seriously had no idea why I picked The Stuff.
I mean really. Yeah, they got a jaw-dropping number of famous people duking it out for the coveted Embarrassed Actor Award™, but that’s nothing new. It’s a cheap rip-off/spoof of both The Blob and Invasion of the Body Snatchers featuring a bloodthirsty dessert, sure, but you couldn’t call that historic. The most iconic thing about it is it’s a Larry Cohen movie (yeek!), but if you’ve seen any of his damn near a hundred screwball flicks you know that’s just how the dude rolls. There’s no excuse I can think of for immortalizing this silly flick, even on an itty little page tucked back in the dark recesses of the internet like your cousin with the wiener growing out of his head you didn’t want anyone to know about.
Then I thought about it and realized that I was getting a little hoity-toity. Hell, I don’t watch these flicks for a history class. I don’t write these reviews to educate. I do this because I love crap.
On the topic of crap, you may have noticed I never write about ‘mainstream’ movies. At the risk of sounding like an asshole (I am an asshole but I don’t want to sound like one), it’s because I think most of them stink out loud. I bring this up because it might seem a small contradiction to submit a loving review of Attack of the Giant Leeches while bitching about how rotten modern cinema has become. The difference is this; the awfulness is still here, but the fun seems to have been sent on an extended vacation to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Before I come off like some codger grousing, “you kids today…” I’ll admit to some notable exceptions. Big budget Hollywood sneaks out neat stuff. But in those rare events, everybody and their dog has a review posted halfway through the first screening, and if I wrote about movies people have actually seen someone might find out I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.
Besides, ask yourself what the chances are of a Michael Bay/Jerry Bruckheimer summer blockbuster about homicidal marshmallow fluff? It’s about the same odds as your ex-girlfriend being really glad you called her up at three in the morning drunk off your ass.
So screw it. I’m reviewing The Stuff because it’s a fun little movie. It has no meaning, it’s totally worthless, and it’s something if you bother to see at all it’ll probably be once and then you’ll forget about it. I’ve finally sussed out a lead-in piece appropriately thoughtful and informative for our subject matter, so let’s ditch the bullshit and get to it already. Enjoy.
Introduction
Okay, this one is just dumb.
The Stuff (1985)
While wandering about a snowy mining facility in the dead of night, a crusty-looking old man finds a strange gooey substance bubbling out of the ground. Rather than do something stupid like calling Hazmat, he goes the more sensible route and crams a handful into his gob. We know any type of unidentified sludge will eat you, dissolve you, or mutate you, so my guess is he was playing the odds that he’d turn into a triple-wanged toxic super-being. But surprise, it’s delicious! He offers a taste to his slightly less crusty friend, who rather than do something stupid like take his buddy to get checked for intestinal parasites, goes the more sensible route and eats some too. They excitedly agree that people would pay big money to chow down on the alien gook.
Friends, before going any further I want you to promise me that if you ever find a puddle of mysterious spooge oozing out of the ground you will not eat it, I don’t care if it tastes like caviar pizza.
Elsewhere, a kid named Jason (Scott Bloom, who went on to fame and fortune in six episodes of “Who’s the Boss?”) sneaks downstairs late at night to grab a snack. He’s about to lose his appetite though, as in the fridge is a pint cup of a yummy new dessert called The Stuff. What’s so bad about that? Said yummy dessert has escaped its cardboard prison and is slithering about devouring the rest of the food! As he looks on with horror, his dad catches him. Dad, to put it bluntly, is a total douche and obviously sees nothing amiss at all. What, you thought someone was going to believe the Little Kid character this early in the movie?
Turns out the Stuff is the new taste sensation that’s sweepin’ the nation. It’s nutritious, low-calorie, and so ambrosial it’s practically… addicting. You just can’t get enough of that wonderful Stuff. Incidentally, the commercials are quite entertaining, the most hysterical featuring the for real-real Clara Peller yelling, “Where’s the Stuff?” The jingle is catchy as hell too. But every popular product has competitors, and some evil ice cream tycoons have their panties in a wad that they can’t create their own version. They decide to hire an industrial spy to steal the formula, and so enter David 'Mo' Rutherford.
This is Michael Moriarty who you should recognize from his four-year stint on “Law & Order”, his role in Menagerie that won him the Emmy Award for best-supporting actor of the year, and Troll. I can’t decide if Mo is the worst written character in the movie or the best. He’s a creepy pedo-looking motherfucker who talks like he’s out of Deliverance and delivers the most amazing Immortal Dialog™ ever to come from a human orifice.
Immortal Dialog™: “Ah, that’s a sweaty palm, that’s two sweaty palms. Ah, that’s another sweaty palm. Yes sir, hello sweaty palms.”
Umm… yeah. It doesn’t help that Moriarty doesn’t so much chew the scenery as devour it. I’m amazed they had any scenery left.
Back to Jason’s house where a balanced-breakfast of the Stuff is being served. Jason’s Father (that’s how he’s credited) is still a douche and is pissed that Jason doesn’t want any of the ooey-gooey awesomeness. Jason’s Mother and Jason’s Brother (yep) make with peer pressure straight out of “Marihuana, the Weed From Hell” while in a display of Terminal Honesty™ Jason protests that he saw it move. For some reason, they don’t buy it so he dumps the bowl of Stuff on the floor and flees the scene.
Meanwhile, at the filming of a Stuff commercial (“Enough is never enough… of the Stuuuuff!”), Mo interrupts the ad manager Nicole Kindle. This is Andrea Marcovicci, who you should recognize from “Hill Street Blues”, “Taxi”, and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. He fakes that he wants to hire her, hoping to pump her for information about the secret formula. She eagerly agrees to go out with this strange man who looks like he’s cornered the market on trench coats and roofies.
Immortal Dialog™: “I bet mine’s bigger than yours.”
Great pick-up line, Mo, I’ll have to remember that.
In a scene you’ll want to watch over and over again, Jason visits a supermarket packed to bursting with the Stuff. Huge stacks are on every end cap, the freezers boast rows and rows of it, and banners are everywhere. Customers push and shove, their shopping carts full to the top with velvety-smooth, mouthwatering Stuff. Our young hero reacts by completely losing his shit.
While the intercom summons the security guards (at a suburban supermarket?), Jason goes on a rampage. He kicks over the pyramid stacks, tears down banners, breaks the freezers, and basically gets medieval all over the Stuff screaming, “It’ll kill you all”. Nobody can stop him! Jason transforms into an unyielding force of destruction while the hapless authorities can do nothing but look on in horror as he decimates their stock and escapes triumphant. Jason, my young friend, you got some serious balls on you.
Mo now goes after an ex-FDA man, Mr. Vickers (Danny Aiello, who you should remember from The Godfather: Part II, Bang the Drum Slowly, and Hudson Hawk). Vickers was part of the team that approved the Stuff for public consumption and even his dog loves the tasty treat. Here it’s revealed that the rest of the team is either dead or “traveling abroad”. After creepy, creepy Mo makes his creepy, creepy exit, Vickers’ normally lovable doggie attacks him and vomits a torrent of the Stuff all over his master’s face! Considering the movie we’re in and the fact the Stuff is clearly shaving cream, this bit is surprisingly effective.
Now we meet one of the greatest characters in movie history: “Chocolate Chip” Charlie W. Hobbs, former big shot executive and resident kung-fu badass. This is none other than Garrett Morris who you should remember from his amazing 106 episodes of “Saturday Night Live” and his somber yet touching work on The Pound Puppies Movie. He encounters Mo in Stader, Virginia, population 452. This used to be a thriving town, but the elderly postmaster informs the duo everyone suddenly moved to Middlin Georgia. Incidentally, you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Michael Moriarty drawl his way through “Middlin” as though he’s simultaneously eating a small furry animal.
In the middle of the conversation, the postmaster falls ill and yarks up a flood of the Stuff that crawls out the window! Mo and Chocolate Chip Charlie give chase and are ambushed by a gang of Stuff-obsessed madmen. Well, ol’ CCC ain’t lyin’ about his hands being deadly weapons and kung-fu’s the fuck out of them, but horrifyingly, they spurt Stuff instead of blood and break apart like rotten wood upon meeting with Charlie’s iron fists. The pair make their escape from what Mo dubs the “stuffies”, which is extremely icky to hear him say if you know what the modern common usage of that term is.
Back to Jason, grounded in his room. Jeez, he only did about $400,000 in damages, give the kid a break. When he refuses his healthy Stuff dinner, Jason’s Father, Jason’s Mother, and Jason’s Brother lay it on like a seriously fucked up PSA. They send him to his room for with a carton of the Stuff, saying when he finishes it he can come down and be part of the family again. In a (pardon the pun) delicious sequence, Jason dumps it in the toilet and battles to flush it down as it tries to escape. Getting over his case of Terminal Honesty™, he refills the cup with shaving cream and goes downstairs munching away, declaring his family was right all along. I told you this kid had balls of steel. Unfortunately, Jason’s Father (fuck it, JF from hereon) busts him and he, JM, and JB chase the kid into the night where in a moment of plot convergence Mo rescues him.
Friends, before going any further I want you to promise me that if Michael Moriarty ever offers a ride you will not get in the car, I don’t care if you’re being chased by an amorous zombie Rush Limbaugh.
Immortal Dialog™: “Everyone has to eat shaving cream once in a while.”
Mo, nothing you say surprises me anymore.
By now Mo has sussed that all is not well, and recruits both Nicole and twelve-year-old Jason to fly out to the Stuff factory in Quit Saying ‘Middlin’ You Fucking Freak, Georgia. Friends, I want you to promise me that if Michael Moriarty ever offers to fly to you Georgia… oh forget it, you deserve what you get. The grown-ups leave the kid on the plane and fake their way into the facility where huge tanker trucks stand ready to deliver creamy goodness to the mouths of the American public. Hmm… that came out way more perverted than I intended.
But trouble looms for our heroes. Mo and Nicole spend the night in a motel paid for by the friendly Stuff staff, completely forgetting about young Jason. These guys would make great parents. In a terrifying double-sequence, the two learn the hard way that their mattress is full of Stuff and a flowing mountain of it attacks the plane, forcing Jason to hide in one of the tankers destined to be filled with the carnivorous snack!
Will Mo and Nicole find a way to destroy the treat from Hell? Will Jason escape his Stuffy doom? Will the film reach a perfectly satisfying conclusion and then drag on for another twenty minutes? I wouldn’t tell you if you made me watch The Wizard of Oz without Dark Side of the Moon playing.
Okay, I lied. If this movie has a serious issue besides the presence of Mo, it’s that it really seems Cohen wrote an hour-long script and padded out the ending to reach feature-length. The one thing that keeps the flick from wearing out its welcome is the late introduction of Colonel Spears, played by the legendary Paul Sorvino. I don’t even have a joke for this one; it’s Paul fucking Sorvino for Chrissake! The man literally rescues the movie before it can (pardon the pun) leave a bad taste in your mouth.
I have to hand it to Larry Cohen though; if you’re going to make a movie this absurd, you better play it straight. And he did, the flick never completely drops its poker face despite the ludicrousness that saturates every scene. If The Stuff had actual jokes written into it, the result wouldn’t be nearly as balls-out hilarious as it is.
Perhaps the most amazing thing is how ambitious it is. All sorts of tricks are used to make the Stuff come alive, and the weird part is Cohen managed to make fire extinguisher foam oozing around a tilted miniature room fairly threatening. Watching Mo scream with a bunch of melted Haagen-Dazs smeared on his face isn’t something that’ll haunt your nightmares - well, actually it probably will - but the earnestness of everyone involved makes it work. By rights this film should have been buried alongside its creator (yeah, I know he’s still alive), and yet I’m glad it exists.
See, this is what it’s all about. We watch films to see the fantastic, and not many things are more fantastic than predatory Go-Gurt. It’s silly, goofy, and the most dangerous thing about it is the risk of a bad case of the munchies. I take back everything I said earlier; this film isn’t worthless. Well okay, it is worthless, but in it’s worthlessness it reminds us why we watch worthless shit in the first place: Because goddammit, it’s fun.
Final Rating: You will believe that marshmallow fluff can eat you.