The Sleaze-A-Saurus knew that evil yogurt would, one day, conquer Humanity. Just a matter of time, really.
What do you get when the subversive directing and writing talents of Larry Cohen (It's Alive!, God Told Me To) are combined with "A-picture" actors Garret Morris, Danny Aiello, Micheal Moriarty and Paul Sorvino slumming it up on the set of a B-movie production?
You get one of your old pal the Sleaze-A-Saurus's all-time favorite bad movie: The Stuff (1985) which went on to become an inspired staple of late night television unleashed by Roger Corman's New World Pictures.
In the Stuff, an intelligent virus is unleashed on America in the form of a popular desert that people just can't seem to get enough of...The picture's tag-line: "Are You Eating It Or Is It Eating You?" sets the viewer up to unwittingly examine the paradigm of consumer culture while watching some very respectable special effects that include men and women regurgitating what appears to be vast oceans of intelligent marshmallows as the product they love to consume consumes them.A former FBI agent turned industrial saboteur(!), David "Mo" Rutherford (Micheal Moriarty of Troll), is hired by the leaders of the suffering ice cream industry, as well as junk food mogul Charles W. "Chocolate Chip Charlie" Hobbs (Garrett Morris), to find out exactly what the Stuff is and destroy it.
His efforts reveal that the craze for the dessert is far deadlier and much more evil than anyone had believed – the Stuff is actually a living, parasitic, and possibly sentient organism, and it gradually takes over the brain, mutating those who eat it into bizarre zombie-like creatures before consuming them from the inside and leaving them empty shells of their former selves.
A young boy named Jason (Scott Bloom) discovers the Stuff is alive and sees how it affects his family. He gets arrested for vandalizing a supermarket in trying to smash displays of the Stuff, attracting the attention of Rutherford, who comes to his aid. Rutherford also manages to charm Nicole, an advertising executive who becomes his partner and lover when she sees the effect of the Stuff.
The trio infiltrates the distribution operation, which is actually an organized corporate effort to spread the Stuff on the basis of eliminating world hunger, and destroy the lake of Stuff with explosives. Paul Sorvino co-stars as Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears, a retired right-wing soldier who leads a militia in battling the zombies and transmitting a civil defense message for Americans to break their addiction to the Stuff by destroying it with fire. The Stuff addiction is ended and Rutherford, Nicole, Jason, and Col. Spears are hailed as national heroes!
References:
IMDB, The Stuff
80's Rewind, The Stuff
Bad Movies.org, The Stuff
The Stuff is available at:
