The Stuff
Eric S Brown
One thing The Stuff didn’t have was a great soundtrack. Its supposedly catchy song about the highly addictive, alien substance is simply horrid. Nonetheless, the Stuff is considered to be a cult classic horror film of the 1980s. The movie begins with a group of railroad workers who discover a sweet, white substance seeping up out of the ground. That substance is the alien life that will become known as The Stuff. It is soon sold in stores across the world. As peoople eat the Stuff, it’s also eating them from the inside out but even more frightening, it is controlling their minds. An industrial saboteur by the name of Mo Rutherford sets out to discover the secret of why the Stuff has taken over such a market so quickly. He soon finds an ally in a young boy named Jason who has seen the Stuff move on its own and knows that it is evil. Together, they have to find a way to stop the Stuff before it takes over the entire world and consumes the human race.
The Stuff is perhaps best described as Invasion of the Bodysnatchers meets H.P. Lovecraft’s The Color Out of Space. However, The Stuff is not totally a straight horror film, despite being gory for its time and its disturbing theme. Michael Moriaty adds a lot of dry and witty humor to the Stuff with his dead pan performance as Mo Rutherford. There are even those who would argue The Stuff isn’t really a horror film at all but rather a satirical comedy.While The Stuff wasn’t and will never be an award winning film, it remains a cult classic to this day.
