Larry Cohen’s The Stuff is perhaps best described as Don Siegel’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Irvin Yeaworth’s The Blob, replete with a black humor, Z-movie premise, presented via Swiftian satire, as the director highlights the absurdity of mass consumerism in a manner akin to George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
Enraged CEOs of the ice cream industry contract former F.B.I. agent-cum-industrial saboteur, David “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) to unveil the contents of a product called “The Stuff,” which is outselling their dessert by more than 2-to-1. Midway through his investigation, Mo realizes that the substance addicts its consumer and, furthermore, is literally alive. Is it too late to save the world from “The Stuff”?
Several critics have commented that Cohen’s film is an indictment upon Big Tobacco. For example, it is well known that peer pressure leads many to take up smoking. The director wryly symbolizes this archetypical scenario when a pre-teen named Jason (Scott Bloom) is ostracized from his family for not eating the dessert after having witnessed The Stuff moving upon its own volition in the refrigerator the night before amid his hunt for a midnight snack. He is subsequently sent to his room with the stipulation that he can rejoin his father (Robert Telfer), mother (Colette Blonigan), and older brother (Brian Bloom) (masterfully, the family members are never given formal names in that they remain in a zombie-like trance due to their preoccupation with The Stuff) only after the boy consumes a pint of The Stuff. It is with this, the most unlikely of antagonists–a dessert which resembles yogurt by way of marshmallow cream (a flammable substance no less, which perhaps should serve as an indicator that something is amiss with the product), that Cohen creates one of the most ludicrous, and thereby one of the most poignantly satirical, films in recent times.
Many have noted the film’s exceedingly campy nature and over-the-top absurdity. For example, upon the discovery of a white bubbling plasma seeping through a hole in the ground, a miner (Peter Hock) voluntarily samples the goo. Most would agree that such action is, well, less than sensible but then again, whose revelatory idea was it to ignite dried leaves and inhale the smoke? Cleverly, by the end of the film, Cohen aligns his metaphorical tobacco with Cocaine as the white substance is made illicit, thereby becoming a black market affair which “Stuffies” are willing to buy at any price after, much like Cocaine, their initial fix left them awake the night before and in eager anticipation of their next big score.
Yet Cohen’s feature is not limited to the sole agenda of spoofing the tobacco industry. When the aforementioned events are placed alongside the mass hysteria which surrounds the product, such is no longer that far removed from normality. Although the film is plagued by logos, slogans, and sales pitches by such companies as Coke, Mobil, Whoppers, Kentucky Fried Chicken, 7UP, Tangy Taffy, Snickers, Mars, Pepsi, Barnes & Noble, Camel, NBC, Nike, Datsun, and McDonalds, it is “The Stuff” which people crave above all else, no doubt due in part to The Stuff’s advertising executives’ diligent efforts via Bikini campaigns, “The Stuff” parlors and street vendors, billboards, and commercials, atop The Stuff’s addictive qualities (Cohen thus predates additives placed in processed and fast food for the sole purpose of creating a biological need in the consumer). Understandably, an actress (Clara Peller) demands to her commercial audience, “Where’s The Stuff?” (à la Wendy’s annoying 1980’s “Where’s the Beef” campaign) before The Stuff’s surprisingly truthful slogan appears, “The Taste Which Makes You Hungry For More.” Shortly thereafter, Jason asks his mother “Why are you talkin’ like you’re in a commercial?” after she parrots “Low in calories, great taste,” prior to joyously reporting, “and doesn’t leave a stain.”
Even though we are presented with a dietary dessert which replaces food entirely (it is served as the main course at family meals) as it hooks its host, Cohen forbids his premise to carry the film single-handedly. Moriarty’s coy performance as the cock-sure Texan investigator–which, in more ways than one, recalls Jon Voight’s role in John Schlesinger’s Midnight Cowboy–is a delight to watch as he affirms the need for an inquiry into the suspicious food, “I suppose we do have to keep the world safe for ice cream.” However, in lieu of Cohen’s succinctly placed allusion to Stanley Kubrick’s equally non sequitur-based black humor masterpiece, Dr. Strangelove, by way of one Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears’s (Paul Sorvino), who has his own Communist/Fluoride conspiracy to bear, the ending is rather rushed and poorly edited as the notion is confirmed that the sporadic progression of the plot is due to the feature suffering from either (or both) a dwindling budget and a gaggle of nervous executives having their way in the cutting room.
Many viewers have lambasted Larry Cohen’s The Stuff for being too campy, citing that the film’s antagonist is too implausible to evoke fear and, as such, should have been presented more comically in order to be convincing and effective. However, the lunacy of the premise masterfully parallels the criticism which the feature is offering as we watch people scamper and claw for a common dessert. Few productions, within film and especially the realm of horror, are as effective in their pithy, unrepentant scrutiny as The Stuff. Sadly, Cohen’s film didn’t catch the popular mindset, perhaps because it hit a little too close to home as moviegoers filed in to see Back to the Future, Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rocky IV, The Goonies, and Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
