Modern Cult Classic: The Stuff

Happy December!

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but rather than inundate you with more holiday sweets we’re going to do a bit of counterprogramming. And by “counterprogramming,” I mean we’re kicking off

BUY & SELL: CONSUMERISM GONE WILD! MONTH

 

All month long here at The ‘Bin, we’re gonna… you know, I think this is all pretty self-explanatory. Let’s get to the review.

 

Directed by Larry Cohen, 1985, 87 minutes, Rated R
“Enough is never enough”

 

What are you afraid of?

Oh, don’t be like that, tough guy. Everyone is afraid of something. Why else would we have such an extensive list of phobias, from achluophobia (the fear of the dark) to zoophobia (the fear of animals).

Everyone is afraid of something. Indiana Jones is afraid of snakes. The A-Team’s B.A. Baracus is afraid of flying. My sister is afraid of Lucille Ball. Me? I’m afraid of something so strange, so unsettling, so… alien, that you can’t really blame me. I’m talking, of course, about cottage cheese. 

Mmm... wet

 

What is that stuff? And why would anyone want to put it in their mouth?

Which is why I thought The Stuff was really on to something. The titular “stuff” is a precursor to frozen yogurt, a pint of sinister white goo with only a third of the calories of ice cream. In other words, it’s almost as creepy as cottage cheese.

The Stuff opens on the set of The Thing, where an Old Man finds a pile of white goo bubbling up from the ground. Naturally, he eats it, because that’s just what you do when you find bubbling white goo in the wild. And hey, it’s yummy! So yummy, that he immediately starts thinking about selling it, whatever “it” is.

Next scene: Young Jason is having a hard time getting to sleep, so he goes downstairs for a little midnight snack. He opens the fridge to find a container of The Stuff knocked over and a bunch of white goo running (sludging?) around the containers of leftovers.

Yes, that’s the second scene of the film. I suspect the filmmakers were afraid of building suspense.

But I guess that doesn’t matter, because it’s pretty clear that the makers of The Stuff weren’t too concerned with that kind of thing. Like many a horror film before them, they had a whole lot of satirizing to do, and the film takes a number of shots at our consumer culture, our gluttony, our business practices and our marketing schemes. In fact, we get a number of commercials like this sprinkled throughout the film:

You cannot underestimate how popular that “Where’s the Beef?” lady was back in the 80s.

The story: The Stuff has come out of nowhere and swept the nation, so Big Ice Cream (like Big Oil, but… you get it) hire industrial spy Mo Rutherford (a drawling and droll Michael Moriarty) to find out exactly what is in The Stuff so they can “improve” on the formula. His investigations lead him to a shady former FDA official (Danny Aiello!), a junk food mogul running his own investigation (classic SNLer Garrett Morris) and a lovely advertising exec (Andrea Marcovicci) who created The Stuff’s ad campaign.

Mo also teams up with young Jason, who – in one of the film’s many leaps of logic – deduced from his family’s weird behavior and that second scene sighting that The Stuff is an evil sentient substance that takes over peoples’ minds. He’s right, of course, but… that’s one helluva leap in thinking.

Jason handles the situation by going on a rampage at the local supermarket, destroying all of the product displays for The Stuff. Later, in order to evade his increasingly Invasion of the Body Snatcher-y family, Jason dupes them by eating shaving cream out of a The Stuff container. This leads Mo to give the best quip of the film: “Everybody has to eat shaving cream once in a while.”

Shaving Cream: It's What's for Dinner

Yes, Mo keeps incredibly cool about the on-goings, to the point where he’s barely phased when The Stuff starts mind-controlling people, oozing around on its own or spraying out of people’s mouths in the most horrific manner possible. Mo has an almost magical ability to understand exactly what is going on with The Stuff, making deductive leaps that would be fantastic if it weren’t for the existence of sentient edible goo.

There’s all the usual sneaking around and close calls and body horror, and then it gets weird. With nowhere else to turn, Mo and co. head out to a remote castle (!) run by recluse right-wing looney Colonel Spears (Paul Sorvino!!) for help. Not only does Spears throw his own private army into the effort, he gives Mo and co. airtime on his personal radio network.

The wingnut makes a radio announcement about the true nature of The Stuff… and the nation believes him. I’m not sure I can think of anything scarier.

Actually, I can

 

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