This post is part of the Get Physical series, exploring movie releases on physical media (typically 4K and Blu-ray).
Arrow Video brings director Larry Cohen’s oddball horror satire about a wildly popular food brand that begins to turn on its consumers to 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray with a 2-Disc Limited Edition.
Total Package
I can vividly remember the artwork for the VHS version of The Stuff that sat in my local video store in the 1980s, calling to me every time I passed by. It looked like this:
This release doesn’t use that same cover art. But the newly commissioned artwork by Chris Barnes is just as grabbing (it’s what first caught my eye about this edition). The cover is reversible so you can choose between the new and old artwork—though the “old” artwork here is different than the art above:
On the discs themselves are elements of the new artwork—the three main characters on one disc; an overflowing container of The Stuff with two screaming heads on the other. There’s also an included booklet with two essays and photos from the movie.
Arrow almost never misses on their packaging and The Stuff is no different.
Best Extra
An early, pre-release cut of the film featuring over 30 minutes of additional footage and a different music score. This is a fascinating restoration and it’s remarkable that it even exists 40 years later.
While it doesn’t significantly change the story of the movie, this extended cut does change the flow. In comparison, the theatrical cut has more of a disjointed rhythm (you can feel the choppy editing), whereas this version moves along more naturally. It also adds more background, character, and The Stuff marketing, making the movie feel (dare I say) more epic.
Feature Presentation
The things you consume end up consuming you. This adage is literalized in The Stuff, a movie where a trending treat begins devouring people from the inside out, turning them into mindless killers.
An early jingle tells us “enough is never enough… of The Stuff!” It’s both a catchy slogan for the delicious dessert—which is well branded and advertised in the film (the packaging looks like something you might see at Target and the jingle feels straight off of 80s TV)—and a metaphor for the rampant consumerism taking over America at the time (and ever since).
Being an 80s horror movie, one would assume director Larry Cohen would be primarily interested in showcasing creative ways for The Stuff to kill people. But The Stuff is much more interested in butchering corporate America and our mindless desire to consume than feeding us a feast of gore.
Case in point, in almost any other version of this movie (or movies of its ilk), the cold open would climax with a savage and/or inventive death scene to raise the stakes and suck viewers in. The Stuff opts for a seemingly harmless snack instead.
Which is not to say The Stuff is without its globby attacks, gaping mouths, and exploding heads. The Stuff itself—shown bubbling, oozing, and gushing in various sequences—is a masterful creation. It’s like a massive marshmallow coming to swallow you. The perfect capitalist monster hiding in your grocery cart.
While there are better versions of this movie that could be made—with better dialogue, more polished effects, and sharper satire—the fact that The Stuff isn’t that only adds to its charm and impact. Sometimes the only way to see through the shiny products being shoved down our throats is to get down and dirty.
Quick Takes
Larry Cohen had a prolific and electric career as a director, writer, and producer. He wrote and directed two notable 1970s blaxploitation flicks—Black Cesar and Hell Up in Harlem; created two cult horror franchises—It’s Alive and Maniac Cop; and penned the screenplays for a number of produced films over four decades—including 1987’s Bestseller (with James Woods and Brian Dennehy), 1993’s Guilty as Sin (with Don Johnson and Rebecca DeMornay), and 2002’s Phone Booth (starring Colin Farrell).
The Stuff was the second of four Cohen films featuring actor Michael Moriarty, who appeared with Robert DeNiro in 1973’s Bang the Drum Slowly and won an Emmy for the 1978 TV miniseries Holocaust. The first Cohen-Moriarty joint was 1982’s cult hit Q: The Winged Serpent and the other two were It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive and Return to Salem’s Lot (both in 1987). Moriarty would go on to star in the first four seasons of the long-running series Law & Order before leaving the show after a dustup with Attorney General Janet Reno over whether the government had the right to censor TV violence.
How did they make The Stuff in the movie? When there were mass quantities of it, Cohen reveals it was the foam used to put out fires (which was made from ground-up fish bone and had a pungent odor). After shooting in New York, the actors all jumped in the Hudson River to get the fowl-smelling “stuff” off them. When it was shown in small quantities, they used different stand-ins—including ice cream, custard, yogurt, whipped cream, and shaving cream.
Larry Cohen is the best!
Very similar to Halloween III