HALLOWEEN HORRORFEST 2020: The Stuff (1985)

In an unprecedented move in the history of the Halloween Horrorfest, my beloved Patreon Sean Foster decided to sponsor a second slot...and good thing, considering the utter garbage I endured yesterday, because Sean chose a film from one of my heroes and featuring one of his collaborations with New York-based actor turned right wing wackadoo, Michael Moriarty.  So let’s dive into Larry Cohen’s 1985 flick The Stuff!

David ‘Mo’ Rutherford (Moriarty with a deliciously over-the-top southern accent) has been hired by a consortium of ice cream manufacturers to discover what the hell is going on with the all-natural dessert sensation called The Stuff.  Now, we saw in the opening teaser that this white, gloopy gelatin bubbled up from the ground in a mine down in Georgia and is instantly addictive...but what we learn alongside Mo, a young boy whose family has become ‘Stuffies’ (Scott Bloom) and the ad executive who put together The Stuff marketing campaign (Andrea Marcovicci), this ‘benign bacteria’ is anything but benign; it’s actually a parasitic organism that first takes over its host’s mind, then consumes it from the inside out.  

Even though Larry Cohen was one of the writers for what would eventually become Abel Ferrera’s Body Snatchers, this is his version of the Don Seigel classic. Just as Seigel used his monster to represent Communism and the Philip Kaufmann remake covered new age thought, Cohen’s chosen as his bugaboo...well, we could say ‘consumerism,’ but let’s be honest, we’re talking Capitalism itself!  Larry’s taking both barrels of his satiric mind on the corporate greed and dishonesty that dominated the Reagan era.  Throughout the film, Mo encounters different types who could have asked the questions he’s asking now but didn’t bother; all that they cared about was that people would buy it in droves.  The executive who manufactures The Stuff (Patrick O’Neal) even admits that the people who brought this substance to his attention were already too far gone, and only thought of the profits!  This is a story not about a killer yogurt, but about how willing we are to just take anything at faith about something we want if we’re told we want it enough.

I think that’s why Cohen pointedly does not reveal what the Stuff is or what it wants...or why it looks like a certain, ummm, biological substance common to humans, or why when we see its ‘source,’ it seems to coagulate into certain phallic symbols. It’s almost as if our entropic element is the ultimate avatar of the ‘subliminal advertising’ panic that gripped the country in the late 70‘s; it wants us to think of it as the ultimate sex symbol.  The way that the commercials seen throughout the film’s ninety three minute running time are all sort of sexually charged (well, except for the one with Abe Vigoda and Clare Peller that will not be comprehensible to anybody who didn’t live through the ‘Where’s The Beef’ fad) are just being blatant about what we should already know--Capitalism is more than willing to sell you something dangerous to you by telling you using it will make you hotter, sexier and more popular.

A word about the commercials.  You might think they seem a little...forced into the film, and there’s a good reason for that: Cohen never intended them to appear in the film.  The four or five clips were intended to be broadcast on TV prior to the film’s release without any word that it was connected to a movie, which would be revealed as the release date grew closer.  New World Pictures, who financed the production didn’t felt the public would be ‘too confused’ by this advertising campaign and nixed it, so Cohen put them in the film when he was ordered to re-edit it to make it less ‘philosphical and dense.’

This is the second time Cohen worked with Moriarty (Q The Winged Serpent being their first collaboration), and while I do think it’s not their best collaboration, I think Mo Rutherford is Moriarty’s best portrayal of the four he made in Cohen's films.  There’s a line of dialogue where Mo assures one of the corporate types who is hiring him that ‘no one can be as stupid as I seem,’ and that’s the key to this performance.  In this film, Rutherford is consciously counting on those around him underestimating him to get the work done, and his personality on getting him what he wants.  The fact that he basically convinces a psychotic militia leader (Paul Sorvino having a ball and a half) to help him, even gets him to allow a former African-American cookie magnate (Garrett Morris at his most Garrett Morris-iness) to testify on his right wing radio station in spite of him being not white is indicative of the charm.  After seeing it numerous times, I’m still not sure if Mo’s broad accent is real or a calculated affection to get people to lower their guard.  It’s a bravura performance, which makes it all the sadder that he has become such a gross person in real life.

The special effects are of their time, sometimes being truly spectacular in their grotesqueness (the post-Stuff broken apart bodies are truly icky), sometimes being regretfully dated (some clumsy green screen effects), but mostly being...okay, I guess.  But then, the special effects are secondary to what Cohen has in mind; after all, if one of the people up the line questioned what the Stuff actually was, this film would never have happened.

For New Yorkers like me, there are a couple of surprising Easter Eggs, including an uncredited cameo by monologist Eric Bogosian (who goes on to star in my favorite Cohen film, Special Effects).  It almost upset me that so little of the film takes place in New York City, as Cohen was a New Yorker at heart.

I love this film like I love almost all of Larry Cohen’s productions, especially the ones set in our shared home town.  It may not be among his absolute best, but that great performance from Moriarty and the satiric grace notes make it more than viewable.  I recommend it!

Tomorrow, the last of my beloved Domicile of Dread Patreons to step into the spotlight, Angie Bulkeley, has chosen chosen for me the 2013 survival horror story Another Kind.  I know nothing about this film, so I am intrigued!

We are Going Into Overtime this Halloween Horrorfest, and if you want it to go longer into November, there are other options besides becoming a Domicile of Dread Patreon:
 
1) You can buy me a coffee at Ko-Fi.  Suggested donation is $3

2) You can make a donation to Black Lives Matter.  Suggested donation is $10.  Please forward your receipt to me as proof.

3) You can choose to make a donation to the charity chosen by a sponsor on his/her/their day. Like with the third possibility, please forward me proof of donation.