{"id":57818,"date":"2014-03-15T16:34:14","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T16:34:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=57818"},"modified":"2014-03-15T16:44:10","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T16:44:10","slug":"the-stuff-blu-ray-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/the-stuff-blu-ray-review\/","title":{"rendered":"The Stuff Blu-ray review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI kinda like the sight of blood,\u201d declares Paul Sorvino\u2019s Commie-hating Colonel. \u201cBut this is disgusting!\u201d The Stuff<\/em><\/strong>, from B-movie legend Larry Cohen, packs plenty of gooey horror into its 90 minutes, but fans of the writer\/director will tell you that attempting to fit any of his films into one subgenre is to do them a disservice. Like\u00a0the very best of Cohen\u2019s work, it’s a cultural and political satire, but this one happens to have killer ice cream in it.<\/p>\n

A new dessert is taking America by storm: The Stuff. No one knows what it\u2019s made of, but everyone wants it. Eager to find out the secret, rival food companies hire industrial spy Mo Rutherford (Michael Moriarty) to get inside and find out how on earth this stuff gets made. He soon realises that eating the Stuff isn\u2019t a one-way street\u2026<\/p>\n

Although The Stuff<\/em><\/strong> doesn\u2019t rank with Cohen\u2019s finest films, it\u2019s possibly one of his most crowd-pleasing, putting his sense of humour front and centre. He sets out his satirical stall in the film\u2019s opening minutes, filling the screen with the Stuff\u2019s garish marketing campaigns and establishing it as part of the modern American consumer landscape. Rutherford interviews FDA authorities who tell him they can only work to needs of the majority, while his own scientist compares the Stuff\u2019s secret formula to Coca Cola\u2019s. Cohen\u2019s society is unquestioning, na\u00efve and, above all, hungry.<\/p>\n

The film\u2019s funny bone goes beyond satire, as regular Cohen star Moriarty fleshes out his slightly sleazy hero with his inimitable off-key delivery and deadpan wisecracks. While it\u2019s not the strangest of his performances for the director, it\u2019s the perfect fit for a film about killer goo, teetering between disaffection, outrage and broadly comic. The film is at its best during the first half as Mo traces the source of the Stuff\u2019s origins to sinister small towns, allowing Moriarty to play a weird spin on the Marlowe-esque private eye and Cohen to engage in some Invasion Of The Body Snatchers<\/em><\/strong> paranoia.<\/p>\n

As with many of Cohen\u2019s films, The Stuff<\/em><\/strong> has an excellent supporting cast who make the most of the colourful characters. Andrea Marcovicci plays it straight as the remorseful ad-woman, Paul Sorvino is a hoot as the right-wing military commander who appears late in the film as an unlikely ally, Garrett Morris (Saturday Night Live<\/em><\/strong>) works brilliantly with Moriarty as a cookie tycoon who wants payback for The Stuff stealing his business, and Danny Aiello makes a hilariously bizarre appearance as the FDA man who\u2019s afraid of his dog (with very good reason).<\/p>\n

The second half loses some of its momentum and focus as the mystery is solved and the fight back begins. The special effects work best when Cohen keeps the scale relatively small, specifically when the Stuff makes its dramatic exit from the people who ate it. Later on, as the Stuff cascades around as a sentient mass, everything looks a little more dated. Still, things do pick up with the introduction of Sorvino\u2019s character, as Cohen makes fun of American military arrogance and better-dead-than-red paranoia.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all fairly daft and lacks some of the impact and daring of some of Cohen\u2019s finest work, but the first half is especially sharp and it\u2019s one of his most accessible and straightforwardly entertaining films. The Arrow Video treatment is as impressive as ever, with a lengthy documentary examining the film and Cohen himself. There are plenty of hilarious stories from Marcovicci and the crew of the filmmaker\u2019s eccentricities, including a naked Cohen passing the script for Q: The Winged Serpent<\/em><\/strong> to a producer through a crack in his front door.<\/p>\n

If The Stuff<\/em><\/strong> isn’t Cohen’s best, it’s great, gooey, satirical fun that serves as a good introduction to one of American genre cinema’s most fascinating and subversive filmmakers.
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