Larry Cohen movies seem like they’re set on planet Earth. The sky is blue. Grass is green. Everybody’s got two eyes and ten fingers… but then things happen and the characters interact and everything instantly gets weird. Nobody behaves like a normal person. Strange relationships form. Eventually, you’re not even sure what genre of movie you’re watching. Before you know it, you’re hooked on following a brash private eye, a slick lady advertising executive and a 12-year-old kid as they fight to solve the mystery of The Stuff, a new mass-produced, big-selling ice cream/marshmallow-type desert (ingredients unknown). It moves on its own like The Blob when it thinks no one’s looking and it turns its consumers into crazed violent Stepford cases when it’s not killing them outright. This is a horror movie, a detective movie and a satire of high fructose corn syrup marketing that holds up over thirty years later. In the lead role, crazy-eyed Michael Moriarty is down with whatever weird shit that Cohen has in mind. He previously played the ultimate mouthy New Yorker for Cohen in Q: The Winged Serpent. Here, Moriarty is a southern good ol’ boy, smart, dominant and wielding a campy accent that reeks of Louisiana bayou country—and he’s terrific. Let’s also mention the small roles played by the likes of Paul Sorvino and Danny Aiello. And get a load of Garrett Morris as a former junk food mogul now on the skids. He’s a little uncomfortable here, but so is his character, so it’s fine. Morris gets the film’s best special effects scene when his whole face opens wider than West Texas due to The Stuff.