You Can't Get Enough of THE STUFF, now on Blu-ray

THE STUFF on Blu-ray from Arrow Video is a release of one of those mid-eighties schlocky-horror movies that you just love to watch because it brings back memories. At least for me it did. It should also serve as a reminder to networks such as SyFy on how to do it right.

I am tempted to use the name of the movie in more than one pun here, but I will try to refrain.

THE STUFF is about, well…stuff: white, gooey, whipped cream looking stuff that is found bubbling up from the ground somewhere up in the frozen north at an oil refinery. And of course the first thing you do when you see something bubbling up from the Earth is to taste it, right?

Well the Stuff ends up tasting really good. Really, really good, and it isn’t long before someone finds a way to bring it to our neighborhood grocery store. But our story doesn’t end there. It also appears that the stuff is not only addicting, but is in fact some form of living organism that ends up taking over the humans who consume it. Think of a gooey yogurt version of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS, only a lot less serious.

There appears to be no stopping the Americans’ hunger for The Stuff until an ex-FBI agent turned industrial spy named David “Mo” Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) is hired by rivals to find out how it is made so they can copy it. He stumbles upon its dark secret with help from “Chocolate Chip Charlie” Hobbs (Garrett Morris), the ex-owner of a successful chocolate chip cookie franchise (a rip off of Famous Amos, I believe, back in the day) whose chain of stores was bought out by the “makers” of The Stuff and turned into Stuff shops.

Mo teams up with the owner of the ad agency that developed the campaign for The Stuff, Nicole (Andrea Marcovicci), after she is convinced of the terrible nature of The Stuff. They are joined by a young kid named Jason (Scott Bloom) who saw his entire family get taken over by The Stuff after he refused to eat if after seeing it move one night in the refrigerator. Together they try to bring the knowledge of The Stuff to light in order to get Americans to stop eating it, while dodging the humans under control of The Stuff that are trying to stop them.

This movie was so much fun to see again. It’s chock full of stars from that era, like Paul Sorvino as Colonel Malcome Grommett Spears, an ex military man who still has his own military compound because he believes the communist menace is still at hand. He helps Mo and crew get the word out because he owns radio stations (remember this is before the Internet). Danny Aiello plays Vickers, one of the FDA inspectors who approved the sale of The Stuff to the public (after, of course, he consumed it). There are even fun cameos such as a commercial shown on a television screen that had Abe Vigoda and Clara “Where’s the Beef?” Peller, who asks--you guessed it: “Where’s the Stuff?”

It is that sort of fun, don’t take it seriously, kind of enjoyment that is missing in movies like this these days. It has a good story to it, and moves along at a good pace to keep you interested from start to finish.

I forgot how much fun it was to watch Michael Moriarty. He really is such a fine actor, and he is so good here; it reminded me of when he starred on “Q the Winged Serpent,” another movie made in sort of the same vein. Garrett Morris is another real hoot here too.

Yes, the special effects are campy, but they are not done all that badly either. They are done with a lot of makeshift props instead of all CGI the way they are done these days, which gives it a sort of genre realism. I don’t know exactly what the stuff was they were eating--it looked a lot like shaving cream or really runny Marshmallow Fluff. I just know if I had to eat that much of it, I would have probably gotten sick.

Rendered in Blu-ray, the movie is as crisp and sharp as it was back when it first was shown. Would it have been just as much fun in regular DVD? Yeah, most definitely, but why not see something as crisp and sharp as it can be?

Now of course if you haven’t lived through the eighties, many of the actors and references won’t mean anything to you, so you might not enjoy the movie on as many levels as I did. But if you’re a fan of campy sci-fi, you will find much to enjoy here. You might just say that THE STUFF…has… ”the stuff” (okay, one pun) and will have you saying you too “can’t get enough of The Stuff!”

There are a couple of extras included with the DVD but nothing monumental.

Extras:

• Can’t Get Enough Of The Stuff: Behind the scenes with Larry Cohen on the making of The Stuff
• Darren Bousman Trailer Commentary
• Original Trailer