bad/awesome flixxx review: The Stuff (1985)

"Don't you know who I am? I am Chocolate-Chip Charlie! My hands are registered with the mid-New Jersey police as lethal weapons, and I eat them guns for breakfast!" - Chocolate Chip Charlie Hobbs

"Everybody has to eat shaving cream once in a while" - Mo Rutherford

"I kinda like the sight of blood... but this is disgusting! " - Col. Malcolm Grommett Spears

One of the better "bad" flicks I've seen in a really long while! I had no idea what it was about, hadn't heard anything about it, I just went purely on the cover and the recommendation of netflix for this one. A super low budget flick made in '85 that is SO low budge that it looks like it was made in '80. Paul Sorvino, Garrett Morris, and longtime LA LAW dude Michael Moriarty star in THE STUFF!!!

Some old man is digging around in the ground at a quarry and sees some "stuff" that looks like marshmallow fluff bubbling up outta the ground. Don't ask me why he decided to try it. Maybe it was the smell. Maybe it smelled good. Because that is the ONLY way that I'd try and taste something that was oozing up out of the ground. I GUESS maybe I'd try that. But, you'd have a hard time convincing me that it was safe. Anyway flashforward and the shit is already in production. It's everywhere. People are buying it, there's a HUGE marketing campaign behind it, and we see commercials reppin' it and stores stocking it. We are then introduced to a family with two sons. The parents are just getting into it. They all love it, except for the youngest son.

The youngest son is kind of freaked out about how ga-ga his family is going for this shit. He opens the fridge at night after waking up and sees it move in the fridge and his dad catches him up at night and FREAKS OUT. He acts like he's going to beat him for being out of bed. Jebus, the kid just wanted a late night snack. Or water or whatever..... dad is UPtight. Anyway, the kid tries to tell the fam what's up but they think he's crazy. Either way, he's over "the stuff". Cut to a boardroom of ice cream execs. Former ice cream rivals have teamed up and hired an ex FBI man named "Mo" Rutherford (he's REALLY psyched on his nickname) who's a corpo saboteur to help rid them of their new nemesis "The Stuff" before it bankrupts them all. So in the beginning, I'm thinking Mo is a bad guy. But he's like a super charming dude full of colloquialisms all throughout the movie, and it makes me want to watch more flicks with him in it. So Mo starts to dig around, meets and swoons the chick who came up with the campaign (but has no idea how harmful the Stuff is). Then Mo goes to the town where the Stuff was first found, and meets up with Chocolate Chip Charlie, a cookie mogul who is trying to keep from going out of business himself. They see a deserted town with some weird motherfuckers creeping around and decide to bolt.  

Meanwhile, the young kid goes on a rampage in a grocery store and kicks the shit out of the whole store because he's so disgusted and wants to stop the Stuff from doing whatever evil shit he knows its doing. Mo catches wind of this story and goes to find the kid. Just in time too because the kids folks are taken over by the shit and the fridge is full and he tries to fool them, but they almost kill him. He says fuck em and hops a ride with Mo. Over the next lil bit, Mo and the kid, and the chick witness an whole array of dudes who are eaten up on the insides by the Stuff and it is somehow alive and looks like it can form into shit like that old cartoon Gleep from THE HERCULOIDS. They find out that its all a huge corpo scheme ran by some old 1% looking dudes that want to end world hunger and probably would RATHER it not kill everyone and take over their bodies, but they don't really give a shit, as long as people keep buying their product and they keep getting richer, then fuck everyone.

So our heroes find out that the Stuff is coming from this big lake and they hijack a tanker full of it, and Mo goes to see an old war buddy who's this psycho militia guy, but who is a powerful dude nonetheless. He has men, and radio stations, and they start spreading the word on the shit. We think we've seen the last of the stuff, but when Mo confronts the old man in charge, in walks the ice cream execs, and they've struck up a deal where they mix the Stuff with 88% ice cream, just enough to get everyone hooked but not take over their minds. BULLSHIT says Mo and the kid, and they bring in a case of the Stuff and make them eat it at gunpoint. VENGEANCE. Epilogue? Bootleggers selling The Stuff out of the back of vans on the black market. YOU CAN'T STOP THE STUFF BROTHA!! Should you? Yup.

Friday, July 27, 2012