In 1985, the master of b-horror, Larry Cohen, provided us with this weeks edition of Cheeseball Cinema in his release starring Michael Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, and Garrett Morris (Moneyball) in The Stuff. It’s about a product that is absolutely out of this world, literally! An ice cream company can’t figure out why this product is so huge and most importantly what the ingredients are. So, they hire a disgraced Former FBI agent named Mo Rutherford (Moriarty), who is the best in the business to figure out exactly what the product is and why it was approved. The only problem is that he bites off a little more than he can chew as he dives deeper and deeper in a mystery. The movie sort of reminds me of the John Carpenter film They Live as this guy believes that there is some alien force at work, but no one else believes it. There are people that are knee deep in it that they are afraid to divulge in what it is and they are those that are set to protect the secret. The film also stars Scott Bloom (John Q) as Jason, Danny Aiello (Moonstruck) as Vickers, Patrick O’Neal (The Stepford Wives) as Fletcher, James Dixon (It’s Alive) as Postman, Alexander Scourby (Giant) as Evans, and Russell Nype (Love Story) as Richards.
The thing I loved the most about this film is that when they were trying to come up with the stuff, it looks like they decided to use Fluff (the marshmallow product you can buy in the store) to portray the stuff. Danny Aiello makes a brief cameo appearance as a former food and drug administrator, who is deathly afraid of his dog. Some of the acting is a little cheesy, but overall, it’s top notch. I think the corniest scenes take place in the home of one of the characters whose parents are trying to force him into eating the stuff. Some of the scenes look as if they were shot in front of a green screen. One scene that bothered me as well was when Jason (Scott Bloom) is walking through a supermarket and he manages to damage so much of the stuff that it takes three guys to stop a kid who if I had to guess probably only weighs a 100 pounds if he’s lucky. Paul Sorvino (Goodfellas) stars in the latter part of the film and it is one of the stupidest roles of his career, it’s painful. On a scale of 1 being close to an A-List film and 5 being the cheesiest film of all time, I give this movie a 2.5. It’s a decent film, but if your looking for T&A, this isn’t the film for you.
Moshpits And Movies 