DIRECTED BY: Larry Cohen
FEATURING: Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino, Scott Bloom, Danny Aiello, Patrick O’Neal, Laurene Landon
PLOT: An investigator makes grim discoveries when he searches for the formula of a dangerously addictive, malignant new taste sensation.
WHY IT SHOULD MAKE THE LIST: The Stuff is a classic example of disgusting exploitation horror about a living parasitic desert that oozes up through the ground “like a bubblin’ crude.” Gooey creme that is. White gold.
COMMENTS: Eleven year old Jason (Bloom) just can’t understand his family’s strange, compulsive behavior. They are going nuts over a weird new dairy-like confection. What starts out as a treat that mom brings home a couple of times a week becomes their constant craving. As his brother and parents increasingly hunger for more of it, The Stuff soon becomes the primary staple in the house, replacing all of the other food in the fridge. When Jason sees the dessert literally crawling around the icebox late one night he goes on a one man campaign to warn people—but will anyone listen?
The dessert is pretty weird. It’s deposited in thick white pools and man, is it ever tasty! It’s The Stuff, a bizarre white globby substance that percolates up through earth from God knows where. When a mining company finds a lake of The Stuff in their lime quarry, they mass distribute the product and it becomes the new consumer passion.
Fluffy, uncommonly smooth, satisfying, low calorie and more addictive than heroin, it also makes a good wood polish. The ravenous public just can’t get enough. Its mysterious composition has become a trade secret, so there’s notelling what the hell it is.
There’s one nagging lil’ ol’ problem, however. The insidious Stuff has a plasma-like animal mobility and a mind of its own. There seems to be a self-promoting collective consciousness to the Stuff supply that turns everyone who eats it into a vapidly mindless, Madison Avenue product placement spokesman—for The Stuff.
Like stampeding fans at a Who concert in Cincinnati, enthusiasts will literally walk right over Continue reading RECOMMENDED AS WEIRD: THE STUFF (1985)