The Stuff (1985) is the 80s attempt to criticize the junk food industry and the bad eating habits developed by Americans (yes, even back then).
A yummy cream that looks a lot like marshmallow and might or might not be refrigerated (it can be seen stored outside a refrigerator in some scenes but also inside. It seems the direction couldn’t make up his mind if this stuff would be presented as a refrigerated dessert or not. After all, the “Stuff” just oozes out of the ground, almost like a white petroleum. The parallel is interesting.
The stuff could be confused with cocaine, especially in the 80’s, given how addictive and stuff-crazed people seem to get about it in the movie. Except of course for our puritan protagonist, a conspiracy theorist schizo.
Aesthetically and inescapably 80’s, beige is everywhere. I forgot how fridges used to be beige.
If you discount the 80s crappy special effects, silly plot and the discount Alex Jones militia leader, its pretty good!
It has everything a 80s movie is supposed to have with the addition that is a pretty bad one. Coming from a time where there was no (less) hidden agendas in movies, it can be refreshing for some and utterly confusing for others. Maybe not confusing, but “lacking content”. The post 2000’s audience seems to have grown so accustomed with agendas, multiple plot lines and confusing scenarios that a simple movie like bread and butter might come across as high schoolish, but that’s the beauty in it.
No, its not a blockbuster and it is not a classic that will sell toys to sugar-addicted children but we might say its a classic in its own lane. It doesn’t want to become a meme, be tweeted, revered and have its figurines collected by autistic man-child types like Star Wars has, but that’s a good thing. Let me enjoy my thing alone and don’t bother me.
