Stars: Michael Moriarity, Andrea Marcovicci, Garrett Morris, Paul Sorvino, Scott Bloom, Danny Aiello

Choice Dialogue:
* COLONAL SPEARS : "The yellow sons of bitches, they took their own lives, commie bastards. You cheated me!"

* DAVID: "No one is as dumb as I appear to be."

Conclusions:
* Whenever you see something oozing out of the ground, be sure and taste it immediatly.
* If you're going to steal a truck, hotwire it even if the keys are in the ignition.
* The insides of tanker trucks are always illuminated so you can easily see what is attacking you.
* The best response to a hostile takeover is martial arts.

Review:
Whatever faults The Stuff may have, lack of ambition is not one of them.

Director Larry Cohen attacks this material with the kind of wild-eyed glee that left the world with Ed Wood's body of work. It's a comic opera to our gluttonous consumerism and a twisted reminder that you are what you eat.

The story couldn't be simpler: A gelatinous white goo comes oozing out of the ground near a petroleum refinery in Alaska. A passerby reaches down and tastes it (who wouldn't?) and to his surprise it tastes pretty good! Before long pink and purple containers of The Stuff are on the shelves of every grocery store in the country. Seems like people can't get enough of The Stuff. They eat it morning, noon and night. It takes over their whole diet. It's so darn good.

Out of this frenzy comes David Rutherford (Michael Moriarity) a corporate spy who is assigned to find out what secret ingredient is making The Stuff so popular. For those who don't know, Michael Moriarity is a very good, classically trained New York actor who has been giving splendid performances in crappy movies for the last three decades. His best performance was in Larry Cohen's other great horror classic Q: The Winged Serpent about a guy who is the only person who knows the whereabouts of the title bird that lives in the top of the Chrysler Building. Here he gives no less than his best when he learns that The Stuff turns your insides out if it doesn't turn you into a deranged zombie first.

Also in on the plot is a wise little kid named Jason who discovers the plot long before anyone else does. His family has been turned into zombies and Jason’s best scenes come when he has to down can after can of shaving cream so his parents won’t know he’s not eating The Stuff and he won't actually have to eat The Stuff.

The third act of the movie is taken over by a militant group who figure they have a solution to the problem. I'm not sure what their plan is but it seems to involve the troops standing at attention on the sidewalks. Leading this brave band of Ten-Huts is Colonel Spears, a deranged commie-hater with a smile in his eyes at the idea of unloading a round of ammunition into some zombie butts. I love this guy, he's the kind of military stock character whose military training has left him really skilled at pointing.

The Stuff is as entertaining as a movie about Killer Yogurt can get. All the stock characters are in place, the cliché playbook is run through with a fine toothed comb and as you might expect the movie is appropriately gooey. The one opportunity that Cohen missed was to have a shot of a group of the Yogurt eating zombies getting out of The Car and getting on The Lift.