"The Stuff, produced and directed by Larry Cohen ( A LARCO production) in 1985, is the story of a highly addictive, yogurt like dessert product that is mined somewhere in Georgia, miraculously passing FDA inspection, and heavily marketed to the American Public, until it basically takes over mind and body and kills a good portion of them outright. That's pretty much the plot in a nutshell.
It stars a slew of B-movie favorites: Micheal Moriarty, Andrea Marcovicci, Danny Aiello, Paul Sorvino, Garret Morris, and a little cameo from Abe Vigota and Clara Peller.
Wow, this movie has some of the worst camera work I have ever seen. Larry seems to like dollies, because he seems to use one in every shot. And just about every scene where there are two people sitting down a having a coversation, the camera seems to be mounted just too low, If I have to see Micheal Moriarty's crotch one more time I'm going to lose it.
I think about this movie from time to time because I worked on it..... David Allen and his business partner Dennis Gordon used to rent adjoining shop space next to my Dad's cabinet shop in the early 80's (David Allen was a stop-motion animator who worked on such things as the Aunt Jemima talking syrup bottle, Pillsbury Doughboy, the film Laserblast, Gumby, etc,etc.)
They eventually grew out of the space, and moved a few blocks away.(still in Burbank.)I had a little part time job with them cleaning up, organizing tools, help take down sets, etc,etc. ( I was still in high school at the time.)
This movie was my first "cool" job, and I got to work on one of my first live filmshoots, also a blast.
But I wasn't exactly working with the cast and mingling around the craft services table.. I worked with special effects guys..... so my "live shoots" consisted of basically shots of fire that would be matted over shots of the "stuff" later...... this was old school baby, before your old ding-dang computers came along . Soaking blankets in gasoline, lighting them on fire, and dragging them over a bust of Andrea Marcovicci , so they can edit it all together in post -production. That shot almost killed me when the guy across from dropped his end of the blanket a little too soon, and I was engulfed in flames for a few seconds. After all that the scene was cut out of the final fim. Thanks Larry.
I forgot I had taken these, and I found them again tonight, this is a shot of the Andrea head being shot on a tilt-table in preparation for the "goo" This isn't the whole "fire" thing, that came later.
Anyway, I did get to work on some of the miniatures on the film, which really don't look too bad. Dennis Gordon was a pretty amazing model maker and a amazing sculptor, and he has some nice work in this movie.
This is Dennis Gordon setting up one of the miniature sets.(inside the radio station)
Anyway, back to Larry.... one of the reasons his films are the way they are, is that he doesn't believe in storyboards, or a shot list, hell, apparently he doesn't follow his own scripts half the time. That may be fine in some situations, but for a special effects movie, it's completely insane. I do remember that was one of the things that drove Dave Allen (and mostly everyone else) nuts.
(I know that when he made "Q", he basically went to Jim Danforth after all the live action was shot and basically said "stick a big bird in there." so of course all the lighting was off in most of the shots, and the thing looked like crap.)
But, it was basically a non-union, low budget film set for the drive-in audiences in the south and Midwest. It was on-time and on-budget (about 1.7 million) They weren't exactly shooting for a Oscar here.
These are the Bloom brothers, the creepy looking blue-eyed hellspawn that are in the film.Mom and dad have the same blue eyes, not that there is anything wrong with blue eyes, but with the lighting in these scenes, they all look like theyre about to shoot lasers out of theyre sockets and go attack Godzilla. Just my opinion.
Here's Andrea Marcovicci with the many heads of Garret Morris. I remember i'd be at the studio late at night, and I would turn the corner and all these heads would be staring at you. Would creep the shit out of you. Anyway, they had to shoot this scene with Andrea there.(obviously) So we (basically me) were all aflutter when a real live actress would show up. Gosh!
The hand that is holding onto Andrea is real, It's Dennis Gordon's hand made up to match Garret's skin.
And finally here's a picture of David Allen in his studio about that time. He lost his battle with cancer in 1999, and honestly I wish I had the opportunity to know him better. He's was an interesting guy.
