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| Images courtesy of Arrow Video |
The first time I saw Q: The Winged Serpent director
Larry Cohen's 1985 horror comedy The Stuff, I was in college
gathered around one of those over-sized rear screen projection televisions with
a group of friends. Much like the characters in the film itself, we were
eating this hysterically funny and darkly delicious number up. The snarky
and satirical 1950s inspired drive-in tale of a yogurt-like substance which
becomes the new national craze before it is revealed to be a deadly parasitic
creature ala The Blob is a movie with its tongue firmly
planted in cheek from beginning to end.
Marketed as a horror movie, The Stuff is
actually a dark comedy poking fun at our national penchant for junk food
replete with potshots at disingenuous marketing campaigns, junk food moguls and
corporate paranoia. Starring Cohen regular Michael Moriarty in a
perfectly deadpan performance as a former FBI agent assigned to investigate the
origins of The Stuff by the struggling ice cream industry, the
movie is equal parts a Twilight Zone fable and a Troma
oriented goof whose hilariously implausible plot twists and deliberately silly
looking special effects amount one of the funniest movies that treads a fine
line between horror and comedy. Think the Stay Puft Marshmallow The
Blob predating the corporate advertising satire of Paul
Verhoeven's Robocop.
This is one of those rare movies whose incredulous scenes
will make most viewers (myself included) instinctively reach for the rewind
button if we can just stop laughing for one minute. Take for instance the
film's opening sequence in which an industrial railroad worker first
spots The Stuff bubbling out of the ground like a volcano.
Before the opening credits even unspool, the worker reaches down to scoop
in his hand a small helping of The Stuff before promptly
eating it. Honestly, if you saw The Stuff bubbling white
out of the Earth's surface, would you without any prior health testing simply
pick it up and consume it? The joke is that we often take our consumption
of fast junk food for granted even when by all accounts eating The
Stuff is better left avoided.
Further still, the film even manages to inform the
monumentally bad Troll 2 by having a child actor being among
the first to see The Stuff for what it really is, much to all
adulthood's collective skepticism. Many of the film's visual effects can
be traced to The Blob as far as making the putty Stay Puft
yogurt move about, although one particular effect showing The
Stuff moving up a wall actually reused the same rotating set piece
in A Nightmare on Elm Street when blood explodes from a bed
onto the ceiling. For what is ostensibly a B horror comedy not to be
taken seriously, The Stuff also sports quite the star studded
cast included but not limited to Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino and the late
Alexander Scourby. Even Danny Aiello manages to sneak a cameo into this
thing, making this arguably the silliest eyesore on his resume.
Horror comedy is tricky business, especially when it extends
to corporate and consumer cultural satire. It can either work or in the
case of things like Snakes on a Plane or Sharknado feel
utterly canned. George A. Romero's Dawn of the Dead remains
the sharpest, meanest and most incendiary example of this kind of attack on
American consumerism, mixing comedy with what Roger Ebert called 'a savagely
Satanic vision of America'. The Stuff on the other hand is
far more goofy and playful in spirit, providing laughs along the way as well as
making valid points about how little we think about what we're eating when
everyone else seems to like it.
Years later, Morgan Spurlock took the argument to new
heights when he documented himself eating McDonald's only for thirty days,
showcasing the effects on his physical and mental health over time. The
Stuff more or less has the same goals in mind but it achieves the
health conscious message through horror comedy and satire rather than scaring
viewers straight. Yes the film is overtly cheesy and silly throughout but
has far more merit than most immediately give it credit for and it contains a
hysterically droll performance by Michael Moriarty. Even if you don't
take anything substantive from The Stuff, this is one of the
funniest movies you're likely to ever see and will absolutely provide a laugh
riot to the uninitiated.
Now the question becomes whether or not this new deluxe
two-disc special edition of the film is worthy of an upgrade over the previous
Arrow Video Blu-ray disc release which was made from a 2K restoration. Thankfully this new version not only comes
stacked with extras but it contains on the second disc a newly discovered
preview cut of the film including over thirty minutes of additional scenes and
an entirely different score, specially remastered for this edition by
Arrow. In addition to the deluxe
packaging and reversible sleeve art, the box comes with an illustrated
collector’s booklet which combined with the newly conducted and archival extras
from the previous version makes this a most definitive release of this corporate
satirical gem.
--Andrew Kotwicki
