Director: Larry Cohen
Writer: Larry Cohen
Cast: Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garret Morris, Paul Sorvino, Scott Bloom, Danny Aiello, Patrick O'Neal
Runtime: 87 mins.
1985
The Stuff begins abruptly with a man stumbling upon a strange phenomenon. A thick white paste bubbles out of the ground in a rocky quarry, distinct from its snowy surroundings. The first thing he expresses is, "That tastes real good! Tasty! Sweet!" The second thing he expresses is, "You know if this stuff keeps bubbling out of the ground like this, there might be enough of it here that we could sell to people!" We never see this man again, but that minute of screentime has framed the two core tenets of The Stuff. First and foremost, the movie is about The Stuff itself, a mysteriously delicious substance that ends up being a sentient body-snatching organism. More importantly, The Stuff is about the man's second conclusion: it can be sold.
The first act of The Stuff is a sociological exploration, flitting between scenes of personal enjoyment, marketing blitz, and corporate deliberation. The film shows us how addictive The Stuff is, but we also see the corporate machinery that cements it as a fixture of as many households as possible. It plays like a pandemic movie, or a large scale disaster film.
The sharpest commentary comes in a series of very '80s commercials complete with catchy jingles. There are three scattered throughout the runtime. First, a series of supermodels strut down the runway and then stuff their faces with the gooey marshmallow-fluff like substance. Next, a graffiti-strewn city block bustles with young people cartwheeling and shooting basketball. Finally, a restaurant scene features "only the most discriminating clientele" (read: old white people) who turn their nose up at their plates, exclaiming, "Where's the Stuff?!" Taken together we see an advertising campaign laser-focused on every demographic they can conceive of: Middle class glamour-worship, urban youth, and the bourgeoisie elite, respectively. All of these advertisements speak to the Lack of the intended audience. The message is basically this: you are incomplete because The Stuff is not inside you.
Can't get eno-o-ough... of The Stuff!
Of course, this is a monster movie, so the results of this product saturation are horrifying. The Stuff can move of its own volition, and although it has no chemically addictive properties, it compels its users to consume more. This leads to a collective cult-like fascination with The Stuff, and an insistence that even those who object must eat. We see this most eerily in the plotline of Jason (Scott Bloom), whose parents and older brother ignore his reservations about the substance and emotionally blackmail him into joining them. He forces himself to eat shaving cream as a subterfuge to open a window of escape.
We never learn much more about the nature of The Stuff, but we do learn more about what this perfect corporate product is capable of. This occurs in a series of escalating special effects sequences. What begins with little gloops and globs crawling around escalates to some delightful and impressive practical effects. The Stuff oozes from gaping mouths as it leaves a compromised host behind. Heads are cracked open to reveal a gurgling abyss of The Stuff inside. One showstopping motel sequence unleashes a cascade of The Stuff from its hiding place in a bedspread to pin a body to the wall and drag it, suffocating, to the ceiling. Other than some dodgy green screen in later sequences, the work of Effects Associated here is phenomenal.*
*Apparently Larry Cohen was unhappy with some of the shots and underpaid them, leading to a class-action lawsuit. I can only assume it was the green screen, because the practicals are nearly flawless.
All these words in and I have yet to mention the protagonist. David (Michael Moriarty) works in corporate espionage, and his role in the plot is to uncover the conspiracy and cobble together a response. Anything of interest about the character mostly comes from the performance. Moriarty's line deliveries are purposely fuzzy and rambling with no thrust or precision behind them. He talks almost like a ditzy, mumbling Yosemite Sam. It's the opposite of most film dialogue, which tends to be painstakingly cut and edited for clarity. His speech patterns bubble up with no prelude, walk a winding path to their point, then stutter to conclusion without a thesis to speak of.
Although David is the most extreme example of this speech pattern, it is shared by most of the characters throughout the film, going all the way back to that first guy who finds The Stuff. It's not dissimilar to the elliptical, uncomfortable speech of the characters in Cohen's It's Alive, though the stylistic choice felt more pointed there. I spent a few days wondering why this peculiar device is used in The Stuff, and finally hit upon an idea. There are isolated moments where characters speak with cool clear precision: the commercials! Beyond that, the humans who have been overtaken by The Stuff speak this way, especially when they are trying to manipulate. The film seems to be making a commentary about the messiness of humanity vs. the pristineness of conformity. Those who speak with clarity of purpose are not to be trusted, while those of us who are just trying to figure stuff out advance speech like tendrils, seeking, stumbling for meaning. This stealth commentary finds its quilting point in the character of Fletcher (Patrick O'Neal), corporate head of the company that sells The Stuff. He speaks with manipulative precision as well, but in a fantastic thematic wrinkle, he refuses to consume The Stuff. So we see that the monster is capitalism itself, and The Stuff is merely happy to enter into a symbiotic relationship with an already extant system.
I admit that the final act of the film lost me. Our heroes defeat The Stuff by joining with a militarized band of conspiracy-minded extremists led by the monstrous Col. Spears (Paul Sorvino). After sabotaging a Stuff production facility, Col. Spears mobilizes his resources to put out a radio broadcast informing the world of how dangerous The Stuff truly is. I couldn't pinpoint what the involvement of the extremists signified, and a radio broadcast seemed like an over-easy way to get people to turn against such an addictive substance.
Maybe the final scene of the film holds the key. The Stuff is removed from the market and burned, but there are still those who traffic in the substance. We see two shady individuals making a covert exchange of a crate of The Stuff. One of them sticks a finger in to taste test-- pure, uncut Stuff. This allusion to the drug trade leaves us with a chilling conclusion: maybe The Stuff allowed itself to be illegalized to make itself even more desirable. The law is no barrier to capitalism, after all, and there is nothing tastier than taboo.
3.5 / 5 BLOBS
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