The Stuff (1985)

Expectations

I'm back! So, I think I've mentioned this but horror movies aren't my thing; however, after missing last week I felt kind of obligated to find something within the genre. I watched the most ludicrous B horror movie: The Stuff. Came out the same year I was born, and yes, it is painfully obvious that this is an 80s movies. So according to IMDb:

A delicious mysterious goo that oozes from the Earth is marketed as the newest dessert sensation. But the sugary treat rots more than teeth when zombie-like snackers begin infesting the world.

The name of the movie alone helps you understand how generic and lazy this movie is, not to mention once you start watching and realize why it's named "The Stuff". Since I know some people are into old 80s horror, there will be no spoiler today.

In a Nutshell

The movie gets started quickly, with the first ten minutes introducing characters and foreshadowing how it's about to get freaky.

The movie starts with a worker walking through some industrial area where it's snowing. As he's walking he sees some white stuff moving around, that's clearly not snow. He touches it with his finger and then does the most logical thing possible.  He eats it. He discovers this white stuff taste pretty good.

Cut to a young boy, Jason (Scott Bloom), about 10 waking up in the middle of the night and going down to the kitchen to get a snack. He opens the refrigerator door to find a carton of "The Stuff" (now referred to as, TS) spilled out of the container and moving around. A second later his father appears and TS is back in the container, still, albeit turned over.

A quick commercial about TS, with a woman saying how she now loves TS more than ice-cream now.

Next up, we see business men on a yacht out on the cusp of some harbor. They're ice-cream men and are worried about their profits with TS coming into grocery stores and winning consumers over. They bring on Mo (Michael Moriarty) to help them with a little company espionage. They tried to go through the regular routes of asking the FDA, but mysteriously everyone that helped get TS approved is unavailable for some reason or another.

Just so you can have a visual, TS looks kind of like Fluff.

Dafuq?

Now it starts to get "good". We follow Mo and Jason as they are both ever more skeptical about TS and searching for answers about what it does, where it comes from, and resisting eating it.

Mo enlist the help of Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci) the ad/pr/marketing exec who helped launch TS. Jason? Well Jason resist eating it at any cost. He's even in the grocery store and flips out in a big way. He goes through wreaking displays, breaking the glass to the coolers and allowing displays to be spilled all over the floor. Once at home, he fakes eating it, by filling a carton with shaving cream instead.

Mo goes around to chemist, the one FDA official available, and going through to the small town where TS was originally found. He meets Chocolate Chip Charlie (Garrett Morris) down here. CCC was drove out of business because of TS.

Little by little we start to see how TS is making people crazy. This low-fat, delicious choice is making everyone neglect all else. No real food. They don't get tried and are neglectful of everything that doesn't help them get more of TS.

Eventually Mo, Andrea, and Jason, go to Georgia to go to the plant and figure out what's really going on. Yup. They bring a 10yr old along. Safest place? Debatable. 

Let me say this. My thoughts might be choppy, but that's because the movie is edited that way. Very choppy. Also, I'm not really sure how this is a true horror movie. More of a cheap thriller. I'm use to horror movies that scare you (psychologically or with gore) within the first 20 at the most. This movie never really got scary. At times, it even seemed like a propaganda piece about American consumerism and eating.

Once down in GA, the three realize that TS comes right from some weird geyser in the earth. They're out of their depth when it comes to getting rid of it all so enlist the help of  Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears (Paul Sorvino). Spears is an army colonel who lives with his troops off the beaten path. He's also, fascist, racist, conservative and paranoid about the government he works for.

I'll stop there.  I don't want to give too much away. There's still a fun-filled 30mins I haven't described yet.

Extras

For those who enjoy terrible old horror movies, I can't recommend it. This movie manages to move fast but still too slow where the action is concerned. Plus no questions are answered. 

There are a lot of famous people in this movie. Fun fact. Three Law and Order alums appear in this movie. Michael Moriarity, Paul Sorvino and Eric Bogosian (who initially went uncredited). I can't imagine why they all did this movie. I don't know if they were slumming it, or if they genuinely thought this move was to be an awesome horror movie.