THE STUFF
"When a new snack sensation threatens to put ice cream makers out of business, industry tycoons draft a spy to uncover the dessert's secret formula."
So some dim bulb loser working at a quarry or a coal mine or an oil refinery or something weird stumbles across a most peculiar sight one evening while just wandering out, it would seem. What does he find? A rather large quantity of what appears to be marshmallow fluff bubbling up from underground. Just some unidentified white viscous fluid lazily erupting from a fissure in the earth's crust. So what does he do when he discovers this bizarre sight?
Naturally, he shoves a handful of this goop right into his fat mouth, because this asshole clearly doesn't have more than two brain cells bouncing around in his empty fucking head. He very quickly convinces his just-as-stupid pal to do likewise, and before you know it, they're addicted to this weird white shit, and they hook up with a confectionery corporation to market their newly branded "The Stuff" all over the U.S. of A.
What the hell kind of ridiculous excuse for a human being sees some unidentified gooey shit puddled up on the ground in an industrial park and just jams it into his mouth? I don't give a good goddamn if it tastes good, you don't know what the hell it is! It could be any number of things you don't want residing in your body, so just let it all in because you're too drooling stupid to think twice (or even once) about the consequences of your actions!
So "The Stuff" becomes a big phenomenon, and people just can't get enough of it. Nobody knows what it is, or what's in it, but they don't give a shit because it tastes like fresh unicorn jism and it's fat-free! Everybody is fiending for this shit, and the company that sells it is drowning in money. So naturally the other major confectionery corporations are watching their profits sag like their old, wrinkly scrotums, and they hire badass corporate spy Michael Moriarty (himself) to get to the bottom of this "The Stuff" mystery, learning the secret ingredient so this cabal of rich old white men can improve upon the formula, making enough money in the process to build a second, smaller planet Earth entirely out of recycled one hundred dollar bills, and cornering the market on "The Stuff" for all time!
Good old Michael Moriarty falls in love with the happening marketing chick who branded "The Stuff", and they set off on their quest to screw over some very wealthy people to make some other very wealthy people even wealthier. Mikey runs into Garrett Morris in the small town where the FDA test-marketed "The Stuff", because Garrett Morris is a rolling stone who gathers no moss, and must keep on keeping on lest he wither and die like a blooming rose that succumbs to an early Autumn freeze.
The two team up for a quaint ten-minute-long buddy mystery movie while they investigate the ghost town, and Mikey punches some deranged dude's face right off after he attempts to murder the duo in an unprovoked attack! His face just comes right off! Garrett also rabbit punches some guy in the throat, and a geyser of "The Stuff" comes pouring out of the massive hole where his neck once was! These people are literally stuffed to the gills with "The Stuff"!
I think maybe Danny Aiello was in this movie. Maybe I hallucinated it, but I'm pretty sure I saw him pop up a little earlier being interviewed at his home by Mistah Moriarty. He was supposed to be an FDA administrator, and the guy who gave "The Stuff" the Food & Drug Administration seal of approval, allowing it to flood the market and turn a bunch of people into "Stuffies". He was acting really odd, and his dog wouldn't stop staring at him with a hungry look. After Mikey took off, Aiello's dog just blindsided him with a brutal attack because the once and future The Last Don ran out of "The Stuff", and that dog needed his fix bad. He even pulls the phone line right out of the wall when Danny tries to call for help! That's the last we see of both characters, so I have to assume things did not end up well for the poor bastard. But seriously, the dog pulled the phone line out of the wall. That's nuts.
Where was I? Um... I guess Moriarty and his main squeeze kidnapped a kid and dragged him across the country to the main "The Stuff" processing plant, where they discover that the corporation is just backing up tanker truck after tanker truck into that quarry or coal mine or oil refinery I mentioned earlier, dropping their hoses into this big pond of "The Stuff", and siphoning this shit right up before driving it back to the packaging plant, where they ship it off the grocery stores all over the country. And this giant "The Stuff" pond is pulsating, clearly alive and writhing under the guidance of some rudimentary intelligence.
What is "The Stuff"? Is it a scientific experiment gone awry? Or is it some kind of ancient organism that has lived deep within the planet for untold eons, rising up to consume all life on Earth by being delicious, so that it consumes us as we consume it? Is it the agent of some alien intelligence, tasked to unite us all as one hyper-intelligent hive mind as we are all joined together, both literally and metaphorically, by our consumption of "The Stuff", as it becomes our reason for living, our light, our path, our new God?
I have no fucking clue. And I don't think the movie does, either. And what's more, I doubt the movie cares. It's "The Stuff", and it's clearly a bad thing, and somebody has to stop it from... doing things. Bad things. Sometimes it's enough that the antagonist, be it a man, a woman, or a "The Stuff", is just bad, without explanation. Let "The Stuff" remain an enigma. A delicious, malevolent enigma.
So Mike blows up the quarry with some plastic explosive he just takes with him wherever he goes, then he visits Paul Sorvino (whaaaaaaaaaat?!) and his conservative militia at the man's fucking castle, convinces him to go to war against the makers of "The Stuff", and then Sorvino and his militia... go to war against the makers of "The Stuff". Garrett Morris shows up again for a quick cameo, melts into a throbbing pile of "The Stuff", and it quickly dispatched by Moriarty via a live electrical cable.
Why was he even in this movie? Why was this character in the movie? I'm teased with ten sublime minutes of Moriarty teaming up with Morris to solve this goofy fucking mystery, then Morris is immediately written out of the movie for an hour, only to reappear right at the end, infected by "The Stuff" to provide one more bad guy for our protagonists to destroy. You cocktease of a movie!
That's the end of the movie, I guess. The good guys win, and Garrett Morris is dead. Abe Vigoda appeared in a television commercial for "The Stuff" with that "Where's The Beef?" lady for no reason, and that was cool, I suppose. The movie's good, for what it's worth. Director Larry Cohen knew he was making something goofy and off-kilter, and he knocked it out of the park. I really, really liked The Stuff.
I seem to remember seeing this movie before, perhaps on an episode of USA Up All Night many moon ago. Do you remember USA Up All Night? I do. Rhonda Shear and her ample bosom kept me company on many a lonely weekend during my early adolescence. I think she makes and markets corrective undergarments for women, these days. I remember finding an issue of Playboy hidden among my father's insanely elaborate Easy Rider Magazine collection, and finding my beloved Rhonda Shear nude within a pictorial entitled "Funny Girls". I couldn't believe my luck!
Anyway, The Stuff is a thoroughly entertaining movie. You should watch it.
Now I would like to introduce the 74th installment of the podcast this blog forgot, The Stuff 2: The Stuffening! This wonderfully informative episode is called See You In The Funny Pages!, and features both yours truly and my pal Titus. After a brief diversion featuring former child actor Elijah Wood and has-been boxer Butterbean, the discussion focuses on comic books. We talk about our favorite superheroes and why we love them, the primary differences between American funny books and their popular overseas counterparts, and the major problems with the industry at large. It's real, and it's spectacular:
Chapter 74: See You In The Funny Pages!
There will be more tomorrow. That's it.
YOUR TIME IS RUNNING OUT!
THE STUFF IS CLASSIC
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