Cinema
The Stuff ('15', selected cinemas)
On the junk heap
Peter Ackroyd
In the interminable 'interval' which takes up so much of the programme in the modern cinema, there are always adver- tisements for the most unspeakable forms of junk food: the vivacious models either bite into hot dogs 'on sale in the foyer' or cavort around tubs of ice cream. It would not be a surprise to see them tucking into piles of bright chemicals, blue, red and rose carmethian. And although the food in this film is white and sticky (there are, always sexual innuendoes in 'horror films), the message is the same. As one reviewer of The Stuff put it, 'One Nation Under Goo'. The plot uses the conventions. This white comestible has bubbled out of the earth, and under the brand name of 'The Stuff' is marketed all over America: `Enough is never enough' becomes the slogan for advertisements which, in the film, look almost as professional as the real thing. The credulous Americans who be- come addicted to this cheap food are known as `Stuffies' and they are the first to suffer as the material 'fills' them in a quite unexpected way. The food bites back. It takes over their bodies; it rolls out of their mouths like liquid steel, and generallY gives everyone a hard time. As one of the characters says, 'Are you eating the food or is the food eating you?' Only the intervention of a deranged Colonel can save America. . . .
The comic possibilities are exploited to the hilt, of course, but The Stuff is essen tially still part of that low-budget 'horror tradition which has produced some of the worst films of the last 40 years. But the director here, Larry Cohen, has mingled that rather dubious heritage with the equally dubious but more self-conscious legacy of the early Warhol films. So the effects are these: a mixture of comedy and horror, a certain blandness or even blank- ness towards the material, a coarseness of execution combined with a `campness' of intent. The Stuff is not an 'underground' film, but it is the next best thing. Most people know by now, of course, that 'horror' films are established upon a Certain anger or disgust at the nature of human appetite; they become a vicarious revenge upon human needs. Under normal circumstances this fury is directed primari- ly at adolescent sexuality, as various nubile Young things are chopped to pieces. It was an inventive stroke, however, to apply this modern version of revenge tragedy to ordinary human greed. As a result it becomes in part a satire on the American 'way of life', but not a Particularly vicious one. If one can be half-in-love with death, one can at least be quite fond of consumer society — and the film-makers here seem to take a prurient delight in the things they are criticising. Underneath the welter of 'special effects', there are some gleeful evocations of the commercial patter, the strident imagery, and the general over-brightness of a com- mercial civilisation. There was a time when the fantasies of the cinema proclaimed that Americans were afraid of aliens adopting human shape (this in the Fifties, at the time of McCarthy), or of their own neighbours being forced to become aliens themselves (this in the Sixties, at the time of the anti-war movement). Now it seems that communists and liberals are no longer a problem: the real dangers are those which the Americans manufacture for them- selves. A serious analyst might even see The Stuff as a timely variant on the theme of 'You are what you eat' — implying that the American diet of junk food has mater- ially affected their character and their Perception of reality. This is such a difficult Point to convey, of course, that a film of this kind — oblique, joky, slightly tacky may be the only means of doing so. But the absurdity of the plot has its own rewards; the script is often very funny and, in any case, any looming portentousness is Immediately deflated by the general in- souciance of everyone concerned. The actors in particular seemed to be having a good time. Some of them were so 'laid back' that they became horizontal, but the finest performance was undoubtedly that of Michael Moriarty as an FBI agent. He isgo far. Perhaps he has gone far, and is now coming back again. It is hard to tell. The Stuff is not a great film; it would be hard to claim that it is even a good film. Perhaps it is not anything very much certainly there are times when it seems that the director was just making it up as he went along. But it is fun. And for those who are addicted to the cheaper kind of `horror' film, there is even a full repertoire of horrible effects.
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