Review of The Stuff (1985) by R.c. K — 01 Mar 2008

Larry Cohen as a director is someone I first associated with Leonard Maltin's reviews of Q, the Winged Serpent and the three It's Alive films. I didn't get around to seeing any of his work until the last few years, and found his style shockingly unlike I expected.

The Stuff continues in the same stylistic vein as his other films I've seen (so far, primarily the It's Alive trilogy), a strange sort of low-budget cinema-verité-fantastique. Shots tend to be very straightforward, and with a strong emphasis on characters, situations, topics and ideas rather than effects. Of course, the fact that his effects and the supernatural or abnormal things they are part of tend to be highly satirical, euphemistic or symbolic probably helps to solidify this feeling. It is in this light that he maintains a stunning cohesion and skill in films about mind-controlling, man-eating dessert and mutant killer babies. Somehow both are approach with, at most, a very black sense of humour. The Stuff is certainly more toward the amusing side of things, filled with ridiculously accurate and (intentionally) stupid ads for "The Stuff," a white, creamy substance that bubbles up from underground and is apparently both addictive and great-tasting. Cohen, as usual, makes his satire sort of vague--obviously criticizing consumerism and advertising, but what is "The Stuff"? Is it just a dessert--or are the similarities to cocaine many have noted intentional? Coca-Cola is used as a reference point in the film for the ability for The Stuff to have a secret recipe--is it any coincidence that part of Coke's secret recipe used to be cocaine? These things are never really answered (and I'm too far behind in movie-watching to run around listening to commentaries).

David "Mo" Rutherford (Cohen regular Michael Moriarty) is an ex-FBI industrial saboteur, hired to find out the source and origin of "the Stuff" and what its recipe is. He comes to various people, including FDA man Vickers (Danny Aiello!) and ad-campaign designer Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci) and eventually young boy Jason (Scott Bloom) whose entire family is taken over by the Stuff. Cohen is a little clumsy sometimes in getting from one place to another (though on occasion it appears he is deftly sweeping away a partial failure of an effect, for which he is to be commended), but by and large chooses paths a film like this would not have chosen in other hands. The rather chilling scene where Jason's family encourages him to join them in their Stuffy-zombie state, for instance, using parental pressure to test his stance. Certainly on the surface this is something I've seen before, especially in 80s films about Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style takeovers, but the exact approach, and the way the family interacts is at least a little bit smarter than we usually see.

Moriarty is as creepily off-putting as always. I really shouldn't have watched that interview with him on the DVD for Cohen's Masters of Horror episode. He comes off as a pseudo-intellectual conservative lunatic with a slim grip on reality, and it put me off him forever after. He has fantastic energy and really has fun with any part he plays--here a clever investigator masquerading as a total goof, but something about him is just unsettling to me. All the same, his performances work in the movie anyway as it's only a background twitch. However, his energy is pretty thoroughly exhausted when compared to Garrett Morris as "Chocolate Chip" Charlie Hobbs, an ice cream man whose company was taken away from him by the men who fund the "mining" and sale of the Stuff. He has hands "registered as lethal weapons," and a smooth-talking businessman's approach to things.

I've got to say the most amusing surprises of all, though, were Paul Sorvino as a Commie-obsessed secluded Colonel, poking clear fun at the gung-ho attitudes of some military men (and further confusing the suggestions of Cohen's politics seen in films and in Moriarty's creepy analysis) and the paranoia intrinsic to the Cold War, and Patrick Dempsey (not that I'd recognize him...) in a brief cameo. But my favourite bit--and I had to rewind to make sure I didn't imagine it--was Eric Bogosian, author of Talk Radio, as a supermarket clerk who has to restrain the Stuff-hating crusader Jason when he realizes that it can move on its own. And did I mention that? The Stuff moves on its own, in a fascinating and interesting way, either pouring in a viscous but rapid fashion or stretching and jumping in a form that resembles something from my youth--a sort of home-made silly putty that I seem to recall involved bleach, but it has been quite some time. It's both nauseating and actually almost enticing. What does this stuff taste like? I imagine something airy and sweet, sort of like Icees. But maybe it's better not to be enticed by The Stuff.