This one is belatedly tying into a few of my previous themes: another in the “non-animal monsters” series, the final entry in the Tubi overview (consider it a bonus since they took Rubber off the service as soon as my post ran), and also my interest in covering some of what I would consider the “Old Creature Canon”, which is to say monster movies that are already sort of vaunted but I haven’t seen yet (my post about Matango was technically the first one of those.) I’d been planning to do this one for a while, and we already passed its 35th anniversary, but hey, better late than never. Anything to keep your memory alive, Larry.
One of the earlier monster-based reviews I wrote for this blog was about the late Larry Cohen’s bonkers classic Q The Winged Serpent, a giant monster movie filled with eighties grime and wackiness. The Stuff was Cohen’s horror follow-up released three years later, and in some ways is even more heightened and ludicrous than Q—but that’s what made Cohen’s work so special. All of his genre films have some sort of animating idea behind them, and will boldly express those ideas in whatever ways he finds striking and entertaining, no matter how out there it gets. There’s something very heartening about an artist with that much confidence—even if it means that they end up eternally niche, they stand by their aesthetic convictions, and their output becomes all the more distinct because of it. Something like The Stuff is not afraid to look implausible or even utterly nonsensical in order to get its point across (that goes for both the script and the acting choices), and sometimes in spite of itself the point it’s making still resonates. Fact is, for as silly as the basic premise of the movie is (killer dessert, one of those pitches that probably either gets you greenlit immediately or tossed out the door, with no response in between), many of the satirical observations about consumerism and corporate culture are actually remain fairly realistic, which only makes the monster angle that much better—it’s reality taken to its illogical extreme.
Cohen’s confidence in the material is also reflected in the speed in which things get moving: we see the first discovery of the mysterious sweet, white creamy substance within the first five minutes, and within ten we’ve already established that it’s being sold as a confection called The Stuff that has taken America by storm, and is also a living organism that does strange things to people. It’s not a difficult premise to understand, so why dwell on it? Soon enough, we’re introduced to industrial saboteur David “Mo” Rutheford (“They call me that ’cause when people give me money, I always ask for mo’”, as he explains), played with a ridiculous southern drawl by Larry Cohen regular/original Law & Order DA Michael Moriarty, who is hired by the country’s ice cream magnates to dig up dirt on the distributors of The Stuff and help them bury their competition. He talks to the people behind the very eighties advertising campaign (which we get to see a lot of, including one commercial where Abe Vigoda co-stars with the “Where’s the Beef?” lady), including head ad exec Nicole, who becomes the movie’s love interest, but he doesn’t get many answers from his conversations with distribution and even the FDA, specifically about what the stuff is made of, where it comes from, or how it was approved in the first place. Along the way, he meets cookie mogul and martial arts expert Chocolate Chip Charlie (played by original SNL cast member Garrett Morris), who is also investigating The Stuff after the distributor bought his company from under him. Mo very quickly discovers the horrible secret of the dessert: not only is it addictive, it’s also a mind-controlling parasite that forces people to keep eating and get other people to eat it before hollowing them out—it’s basically a blob monster that creates zombies. Eventually, Mo, Nicole, and a kid who started a one-person mission to destroy The Stuff after his entire family becomes infected (which includes vandalizing a grocery store, and the employees’ reaction to him tearing through the aisles is very relatable to this decade-plus grocery store veteran) head to the source in a bid to destroy it and inform the American public about the danger of their new favourite food.
The points being made here are very broad and loud—and also put into the most B-movie context possible, with lots of excuses for gross special effects provided by David Allen from Q and Jim Danforth, who had worked together on Equinox—but also pretty astute. The vapidity of the advertising campaign, the way people become obsessed with products (especially when there are apparently no downsides, and The Stuff is even sold as a “diet” food) and never question anything about them, and the corporate disregard for public safety are all there, but there’s even more specific points as well, such as the intentional obfuscation of the manufacturing chain (everyone pointing at someone else, no one taking responsibility) which actually feels ahead of its time. In this movie about evil mind-controlling dessert blobs, the business and social satire actually feels pretty grounded (or, as grounded as anything in this movie could be), and let’s be honest, the idea of business executives foisting such a thing on the public without proper testing (and of a family replacing all the food in their house with junk food) is not just believable, but a historical fact. The dessert blob is just there to make these facts more fun to watch.
Also making them more fun to watch: the characters. Moriarty’s bizarre performances in previous Cohen movies like It’s Alive III and Q were always considered a highlight, and that goes for his turn as Mo in here as well. In some ways, it’s a real contrast to his character from Q, who was a small-time dirtbag with the anxious energy of an adult child, while here he is a cool, collected dirtbag who mostly reacts to the unbelievable things he sees with general nonchalance (and also, as mentioned, talks like a cartoon southern gentleman for no reason in particular.) His very existence in this universe is amusing, whether he’s delivering funny lines (“Well, everybody has to eat shaving cream once in a while”) or playing off the other actors (although it’s unfortunate we don’t get more with him and Chocolate Chip Charlie.) Unconventional leads also seem to be a recurring theme for Cohen: despite a debonair approach, Mo is not exactly a scrupulous or moral person (I mean, he was kicked out of the FBI), lies constantly to get what he wants, and despite eventually doing the right thing, the only reason he found about The Stuff’s sinister nature is because he was being paid by millionaires to sabotage another group of millionaires. Later on, Mo’s big idea is to recruit a heavily armed, jingoistic militia group led by the boisterous Colonel Spears (played by Paul Sorvino, another future Law & Order star), mostly by comparing The Stuff to commies putting fluoride in the water, to help him raid the mining operation and factory where The Stuff is collected. Sorvino and his militia are over-the-top caricatures, and while they are the butt of jokes (when Spears says “We’re Americans! We’ve never lost a war!”, the kid immediately replies “What about Vietnam?”, and Spears explains “We lost that war at home”), they’re also portrayed as heroic—and it comes off as valorizing these sorts of people to an extent. I think the movie is treating them much the same way as it treats Mo, positing that sometimes the only way to deal with a lunatic situation is to sic a bunch of lunatics on it.
The ending treats us with an escalating series of silly scenes and interesting ideas, with the public turning on The Stuff on a dime when they learn the truth (the idea that people would so easily give up a pointless indulgence when they learn it’s harmful is probably the most unrealistic thing in the whole movie, even more than the existence of a living dessert), a moment where they dynamite a Stuff stand cheekily placed between a McDonald’s and a Kentucky Fried Chicken, one executive revealing their plan to sell a watered down version of The Stuff with a different name (which he is doing in conjunction with one of the ice cream executives from the beginning of the movie) before Mo and the kid force them to eat their own product, and the final scene where we see that The Stuff has simply become an illicit drug sold in back alleys. It somehow comes as both wildly optimistic (and who can say no to rich people getting hoisted by their own petard?) and also highly cynical, which is the kind of conclusion that you’d probably expect after everything else you’ve seen before. Just when you think it’s done throwing everything at you, it still manages to surprise.
Larry Cohen’s tendency is towards smart dumb movies, with an atmosphere all their own, revelling in their ridiculousness while also trying to making a point. Something like The Stuff is basically the best you can hope for with a high concept monster movie, something deceptively simple, but also interesting and cogent, and also a good platform to just have wild nonsense occur on a regular basis—it follows through on its own promises. It comes from a mindset that thinks it’s okay to be gross or funny or shocking if it gets people to pay attention, and while it probably doesn’t make every viewer go and check the ingredients list on their groceries more closely, you have to appreciate the effort.
A Scrapbook of Infinite Noise 