Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Movie review - "The Stuff" (1985) ***

Lively Larry Cohen horror-satire which has a strong central idea - a yoghurt/ice cream-style dessert becomes a national craze, and destroys the people who eat it. Cohen plays this for comedy and satire more than horror - there's some groovy effects and exploding heads but a lack of genuine tension and spookiness, which is a shame because I think you could've had both but anyway...

It is a very Larry Cohen movie. You've got Michael Moriarty in the lead as an industrial saboteur (a different type of hero but I loved the fresh take on the investigator), playing up with a Southern accent and doing bits of business. Paul Sorvino steals the film in the third act as a rich militaristic colonel with his own private army who helps Moriarty - I love the bit where his troops all need to take cabs.

Andrea Marcovicci is a lively heroine, and Garrett Morris is fun as a cookie tycoon. Scott Bloom isn't much as the kid who gets involved - kind of like the kid in Salem's Lot. All sorts of interesting people pop up in the cast like Danny Aiello.

It's an uneven movie - bits feel cut out of it (eg Mortiarty and Marcovicci's romance), scenes don't quite build the way they should, I found myself constantly going "hang on, what about X?". But it's a very likeable movie which has something to say.

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