{"id":18141,"date":"2025-11-09T21:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-11-10T02:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18141"},"modified":"2025-11-08T17:20:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T22:20:58","slug":"the-stuff-1985-larry-cohen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18141","title":{"rendered":"The Stuff (1985, Larry Cohen)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Not much backstory &#8211; 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&#8217;s sudden popularity.  Obviously primo Cohen, though the first time I watched I wasn&#8217;t yet a Moriarty-head and didn&#8217;t groove on its wavelength.<\/p>\n<p><em>When your family has all enjoyed the dessert product and wants you to have some too:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/stuff1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Moriarty accrues teammates along the way: marketing exec Andrea Marcovicci (<em>The Hand<\/em>), some kid who fled his zombified family, and M&#8217;s old friend Chocolate Chip Charlie (Garrett Morris of <em>Cooley High<\/em>).  Feels at times like they&#8217;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 &#8220;the casualties were in the thousands.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><em>The team in an unguarded moment, right before Chocolate Chip gets melted:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/stuff4.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Moriarty and the girl find the stuff mines &#8211; fortunately he brought along timed explosives.  They go to see a crazy recluse racist colonel worried about commie infiltration &#8211; he&#8217;d send in the army to blast stuffies with machine guns.  Stuff addicts become empty vessels who crack apart when punched &#8211; the effects range from cheap and hilarious to nightmarish (some beautiful shots of antigravity flaming stuff).<\/p>\n<p><em>Nightmare on Stuff Street:<\/em><br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/stuff2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image25\/stuff3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not much backstory &#8211; 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&#8217;s sudden popularity. Obviously primo Cohen, though the first time I watched I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[357,712,1822,61],"class_list":["post-18141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1980s","tag-aliens","tag-consumerism","tag-larry-cohen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18154,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18141\/revisions\/18154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}