The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 3-9
The Stuff (1985)
Directed by Larry Cohen
The Stuff is healthy, delicious, and available at your local grocery. Also, it came from outer space. Cohen’s horror comedy isn’t the first film to unleash an alien invasion on Reagan’s America, but it certainly is the first to depict extraterrestrials as a mind-controlling dairy product. Playing like a cross between John Carpenter’s The Thing and a Tim and Eric sketch, The Stuff follows an industrial spy’s investigation of an addictive and deadly dessert. The horror elements elicit more yuks than yucks; the film’s humor flip-flops between intentionally surreal laughs and unintentional camp. Despite shoestring budget and slapdash special effects, Cohen manages to create a biting satire of American consumerism and its insatiable appetite. A.J. Serrano (May 7, 6pm at the Quad’s “Larry Cohen’s New York”)