Summerfest 3 Day Three: The Stuff

After six consecutive fests of promising that "This year, we WILL watch The Stuff!" the Cap'n finally made good on his promise. For too long, Larry Cohen sat on the sidelines as lesser horror comedies made the rounds during Summer and Horror Fests, and for that I have no excuse, but we made up for it in a big bad way with the satirical grossout masterpiece about consumption (on both ends): The Stuff.


If, for some strange reason, you haven't been privy to this cult film from 1985, The Stuff starts out immediately promising you a film where no sensible human being exists: a miner in Virginia walks up to a bubbling white puddle and decides that he's going to eat it. Then he loves it, so he eats more of it, and so do his friends. Before you know it, the white gunk is being marketed as "The Stuff", an all purpose food with truly addictive qualities. It also (SPOILER ALERT) happens to some kind of sentient creature that... uh... well, I suppose it eats you and then crawls back out. Except that sometimes the people it crawls out of aren't actually dead, so maybe it doesn't totally eat you.

The bulk of The Stuff is devoted to David "Mo" Rutherford (Michael Moriarty), a corporate espionage agent who was hired to discover the secret ingredient to "The Stuff" by rival companies. Along the way he runs into "Chocolate Chip" Charlie Hobbs (Garrett Morris), the dethroned candy king who lost his company when "The Stuff" hit the market, and they wander around Virginia and Georgia searching for the insidious secret behind this seemingly innocuous food product. Which is that is may (SPOILER ALERT) have mind control and psychic link powers. Or not. It's really hard to say, because sometimes "Stuff" possessed people know where Mo is and sometimes they don't.

"The Stuff" is really kind of like The Blob, but white instead of red, which makes it easier to hide in places like mattresses, pillows, and in containers marked "The Stuff." Very sneaky, "The Stuff"... We don't really learn anything about the creature that everyone is eating, or that's eating everybody, but it seems to bubble up in quarries like the ones where Doctor Who is filmed. We do learn a lot about Colonel Malcom Grommett Spears (Paul Sorvino), who lives in a castle with his soldiers / militia. He's convinced "The Stuff" is a communist plot, but Spears is also almost certainly insane, so keep that in mind.

At no point should you take The Stuff too seriously, but since that was the idea, it's more fun to sit back and let the satire unfold. The film is punctuated with marketing campaigns for "The Stuff," including ads featuring models in bathing suits and fur coats, which I imagine helps sell the product to... well, somebody. Cohen is working with tongue firmly planted in cheek, but the gore effects (mostly revolving around what happens when "The Stuff" is done with its host) are impressive and pretty gnarly.

Personally speaking, I'd forgotten about most of the commercials, particularly the Wendy's take-off ad featuring Abe Vigoda and the "Where's the Beef" lady. To be honest, I wasn't really expecting to hear "Where's The Stuff?", but it hits you just the right way, I must say. I love that Danny Aiello actually says "Well, it wasn't called 'The Stuff' when we were testing it," because of how silly the premise is in the first place. Or that Jason (Scott Bloom) would rather eat Barbasol than The Stuff, and he does. It's a bold move for the kid (who is kind of the other protagonist, along with Andrea Marcovicci, who plays Stuff ad executive Nicole), but you have to go the extra mile to avoid being taken over by a sentient blob monster, right?

Up Next: Basket Case!