The Stuff (1985) / Shudder/Joe Bob

 This will also include old user comments from August 30th, 2008. I knew Larry Cohen's The Stuff (1985) wouldn't be making the October lineup this year, but I have been itching to watch the film as presented on Joe Bob Briggs' Last Drive-In on Shudder. Joe Bob picked it apart and wasn't particularly kind to it, while Darcy (modeling The Stuff yogurt in a blue bikini quite seductively and to great effect) seems to like the film a lot more than he does. Joe Bob's main criticism was there really wasn't that big villain and the ending where folks just ditch all the Stuff yogurt in the fire and wholly abandoning the addictive bubbling white cream because Marcovicci spoke to them off a teleprompter through a television signal at a commandeered station thanks to militant crazy, Paul Sorvino. I can see why Joe Bob has issue with the film, "The Stuff" he considers Cohen's worst film. I think that is "Wicked Stepmother" (1989), but I digress. This is the film where Joe Bob goes off on "Kimberly-Clark" for giving in to the social media mob for disbanding a type of Kleenex...the rant is long and, I'm sure, triggered folks, sending plenty into a practical breakdown. "Joe Bob boycotts Kimberly-Clark" 

This revisit was fun, but I do admit that "The Stuff" isn't Cohen at his best. Moriarty breezes through the film delivering his lines rationally and coolly despite a shit-ton of madness going on all around him. And boy Bloom nearly is forced to gorge on some of the possibly alien cream that can move like The Blob on its own, in a big puddle towards anyone it needs to invade and control. I don't know what it was but I found Marcovicci striking in this film...she is one of those marketing gurus who is skilled at selling products to the public and masses. She regrets that, obviously, once Moriarty clues her in on what the Stuff actually does to people. I thought that Garrett Morris "Stuff implosion" special effects scene is still epic. Some of the action sequences -- like when Moriarty breaks through a room's glass window in the television station or when the Starlight Hotel room Stuff blasts some guy in a plaid shirt attempting to attack Moriarty and Marcovicci when it leaves a pillow and under the bed where it was hiding -- didn't exactly wow me, either. I just feel Cohen is so much better with smaller-scaled scenes than big KAPOW scenes. I think a lot of that has to do with budget. And I love when he works with great actors. Sorvino cracked me up this go-around as the extreme right-wing colonel who has a castle with soldiers ready to defend their country against a serious Commie foe. Moriarty "appealing" to him through blackmail with Sorvino threatening to throw him off a tower as the two discuss engaging a serious enemy -- the Stuff -- is part of what I have always felt was Cohen's main strength...the theater of the absurd through the work of great character actors. Moriarty and Sorvino just a few years later were stars of one of the biggest (and most serious) crime shows in the history of television: Law & Order, and in "The Stuff", they are discussing defeating an invasion of moving white cream that has a mind of its own! 3.5/5 

Larry Cohen, that independent genre renegade whose films often look as if they were thrown together with adhesive tape, returns to spoof The Blob and commercial marketing with this often witty and goofy tale about an alien goo that has bubbled from the center of the Earth, discovered by an industrial worker and manufactured as a tasty yogurt. This goo, over time, begins to take control of the human host in a diabolical plan to obviously take over the world. Enter ex-FBI industrial spy extraordinaire, Mo Rutherford(Michael Moriarty)paid to infiltrate the manufacturers of "The Stuff"(..the commercial name for the goo that is sweeping the nation)to find the secret of how it's made finding out instead what the goo really is. Joining forces with Nicole(Andrea Marcovicci), a marketing guru truly responsible for how well The Stuff has profited, who feels she's to blame for how the goo has begun to take control of her fellow humankind. Also, Mo will find another unlikely ally in young Jason(Scott Bloom)whose parents have become afflicted with the goo, a kid who saw first hand how the substance "moved" while surfing through the refrigerator one night. Jason made futile attempts to destroy tubs of The Stuff in a rampage through a supermarket which was printed in the newspaper and is how Mo found out about his knowledge in the secret conspiracy. Another ally is "Chocolate Chip" Charlie(..the scene-stealing Garrett Morris, who Cohen just turned loose, unbridled)whose business was stolen right out from under him by those who make The Stuff. Mo finds out where the main manufacturing site is at and, along with Nicole and Jason, will attempt to find out exactly how the goo is distributed and created. After this happens, Mo will then coerce paranoid, very intense, military man, Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears(Paul Sorvino, hilarious as a leader so intense he could crush walnuts with his ass)into assisting him in crushing the "goo regime."

As always, Moriarty has a ball as the laid-back, confident, cocky, non-chalant, quietly determined anti-hero who never wavers in his goal to find the truth for his employer, while also black-mailing a few along the way such as NYC businessman, Fletcher(Patrick O'Neal). He's quite a spy who seems completely unflinching in the path of danger. I'm certain Cohen let him ad-lib with some zingers during very funny gore-scenes concerning humans falling to waste as the goo exits their mouths. There are scenes very reminiscent to The Blob where a river of white goo travels towards potential victims, often almost trapping them. There are some crude effects mixed with some stunning ones. I loved the icky effects where human faces melt as the goo comes up from inside them, out their mouths. We actually see a punch from Mo break apart a goo-infected man's face! There's a truly bizarre scene where the goo attacks Mo and Nicole in their bedroom nearby the manufacturing plant where fire is used with very outrageous results. It seems that fire can be used as an agent to hurt the goo, such as when it attaches to the faces of victims. And, the commercials of The Stuff(..enough is never enough)are perfectly realized jabs at marketers seducing the public to consume their products. I'm not sure myself what exactly Cohen is targeting, a many number of things I gather(Coca-cola, hamburgers, who knows?), but the end result tickles the funny-bone. He also pokes fun at the family dynamic as young Jason rebels against his parents' wishes to eat his yogurt because "it's good for him." Also, taking playful jabs at military men who are obsessive with their beliefs in evil Commies and secret conspiracies against America, using up-tight, foul-mouthed womanizing Colonel Spears(..initially Mo threatens Spears with certain evidence regarding his visit with a prostitute)as a model. Sorvino just buries himself in this parody, head-to-toe. If you are familiar with Cohen's style, which is anything but conventional, then "The Stuff" will be a treat(..pun intended).