The Stuff
Short description
A creamy substance bubbling up from the ground is found by workers who taste it, find it delicious, and turn it into a commercial product. Marketed as "The Stuff," the dessert becomes a nationwide sensation and cuts sharply into ice cream sales. Nobody knows what it contains or how it is made. Amalgamated Dairies hires David Rutherford, a former FBI agent now working as an industrial saboteur, to look into the new competitor. He finds himself investigating a product that people crave in a way that goes beyond ordinary appetite, and a boy named Jason makes a similar discovery from a different direction. What links the two is the suspicion that the substance is not inert.
The film is a satirical science-fiction horror comedy written and directed by Larry Cohen, released in 1985 between Q and A Return to Salem's Lot in his filmography. It was produced by Paul Kurta for New World Pictures and Larco Productions on a budget of 2 million dollars. Michael Moriarty leads as Rutherford, with Andrea Marcovicci as Nicole Kendall, Garrett Morris as "Chocolate Chip" Charlie W. Hobbs, Paul Sorvino as Colonel Malcolm Grommett Spears, Scott Bloom as Jason and Danny Aiello as Vickers among 33 credited cast members. On IMDb it holds 5.9 out of 10 from around 21,000 votes, while on TMDB it sits at 6 out of 10 from 546 votes. A critics' rating of 6.2 out of 10 from 19 reviews places it broadly in line with audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- According to director and screenwriter Larry Cohen, in some scenes where the characters are chased by the “delicious slime,” they filmed foam containing ground fish bones. The stench was so bad that, immediately after filming, the actors rushed to the river to bathe and try to wash off the disgusting smell.
- The scene in the motel room, where the “delicious slime” crawls out of the mattress and pillows and attacks people, was filmed in a special room that could be turned upside down. It was the same room used in Wes Craven's horror film 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' (1984) when the character played by Johnny Depp is sucked into the bed, and then a fountain of blood begins to erupt from it.
- The filmmakers originally intended the film to be a satirical science fiction comedy. Therefore, they were unhappy that the advertising campaign promoted the picture as horror, thus, in their opinion, misleading people about the nature of the work.
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