review for The Stuff on AllMovie

The best point of comparison for this low-budget spoof is John Carpenter's They Live, another 1980s horror flick that mixed wit and gore with anti-consumerist ideology. On the surface, The Stuff is just an exploitation flick -- a jumble of The Blob, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and Carpenter's remake of The Thing, full of amateurish special effects and hammy performances. But writer/director Larry Cohen actually has a lot on his mind, and it's to his credit that his jabs at everything from Leave It to Beaver-conformity and America's diet obsession to corporate iconography and advertising agency excess are presented so matter-of-factly that you can take 'em or leave 'em. The Stuff isn't exactly subtle, but its sly parody is so unobtrusive, yet pervasive, that viewers can soak it in while still enjoying the film as a no-frills action/adventure flick. The character actors, cult favorites and TV stars past and future who make up the cast, give The Stuff a sort of postmodern zip that only improves with age; even viewers who know nothing about the actors, however, will appreciate Michael Moriarty's tongue-in-cheek gumshoe, Paul Sorvino's over-the-top vet, and the cameo-laden TV-commercial pastiches that lighten the mood. By packing his script with irony and his cast with up-for-it performers, Cohen renders questions of taste and production values refreshingly moot.