The Stuff

The 80s were a terrible time, and I wouldn't recommend going there. It was a time when everyone wore polo shirts, jeans and Nike shoes. It was a living nightmare. Actually, it looked a lot like now. I wouldn't recommend going there, either. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Stabford, didn't everyone look like Devo in the 80s?". No, they did not. People did not go around wearing yellow jumpsuits all the time. People would have found that fashion choice to be unusual. Just trust me on this.

Anyway, The Stuff starts out with a grizzled old prospector-type guy working at an industrial complex of some sort who finds a white, frothy, viscous marshmallow-fluff type fluid bubbling from the ground and immediately starts eating it because that's what everyone does when they find mysterious fluids on the ground. Nothing unusual there. Someone then decides to put this fluid in containers, call it The Stuff, write a catchy jingle about it, and market it by having models eat it while wearing fur coats and bikinis because that's just fine. Then suddenly, a smarmy guy wearing a leisure suit and cowboy boots appears, and you instantly feel like he might be a villain because of, well, the leisure suit and boots. Seriously, who wears that? It's like you might as well wear a big sign that says "Movie Villain" in big block letters on it. So Smarmy Guy In A Leisure Suit And Cowboy Boots starts investigating the distributor of The Stuff, and he talks to Paul Sorvino who becomes afraid of a regurgitating doberman pincer and hides under a tiny side table because that's fine. I could go on and on about every little point of the film; like how the boom is visible in a reflective lab cabinet, or how the camera is often shaky at best, or how there are way too many leg-warmers, or how everyone wears yellow jumpsuits, but I won't. I will tell you what I learned about The Stuff; that if you're confronted by strangers you should either run for the woods, abandon your business or get immediately in their car, and if Garrett Morris shows up there's going to be some exciting row-boat action.