Not much backstory – we go from the stuff being discovered in a hole in the ground to its mass marketing within four minutes, then get to business following Moriarty, an industrial spy working for an ice cream company threatened by the stuff’s sudden popularity. Obviously primo Cohen, though the first time I watched I wasn’t yet a Moriarty-head and didn’t groove on its wavelength.
When your family has all enjoyed the dessert product and wants you to have some too:
Moriarty accrues teammates along the way: marketing exec Andrea Marcovicci (The Hand), some kid who fled his zombified family, and M’s old friend Chocolate Chip Charlie (Garrett Morris of Cooley High). Feels at times like they’re the only survivors of a stuff-pocalypse, but when the tide finally turns against the sentient brain-eating alien dessert product and our heroes force its distributors to eat stuff, there are enough unaffected people to revolt and reclaim humanity and the TV news tells us “the casualties were in the thousands.”
The team in an unguarded moment, right before Chocolate Chip gets melted:
Moriarty and the girl find the stuff mines – fortunately he brought along timed explosives. They go to see a crazy recluse racist colonel worried about commie infiltration – he’d send in the army to blast stuffies with machine guns. Stuff addicts become empty vessels who crack apart when punched – the effects range from cheap and hilarious to nightmarish (some beautiful shots of antigravity flaming stuff).
Nightmare on Stuff Street:
