What’s Eating You?: Culinary Horror of The 1980s

June 25, 2021 ● Cal Moores

The eighties gave birth to some of the most quintessential horror movies of all time, films that have remained in the public consciousness for decades since their release, are endlessly quotable, became images of pop culture and have transcended the genre itself. Most of these movies contain a serial killer, a ghost, a witch or some other supernatural entity that the studios deemed suitable to scare the life out of innocent video store rental-era children.

However, certain films feature none of the aforementioned ways of meeting one's demise, they aimed for something a little more tasty. The eighties taught us that smoking was bad for your health, that politicians shouldn’t be trusted and that we should watch what we eat. Quite literally. 

The Stuff was released in 1985 by the now legendary independent director Larry Cohen and is quite possibly the most on the nose movie about the effects of consumerism ever created; this movie even includes fake commercials for the titular Stuff which wouldn’t look out of place on any ad-break during Miami Vice. The Stuff follows a private detective who is hired to investigate a strange new dessert hitting supermarket shelves, deemed to be extremely addictive and completely delicious The Stuff soon takes over the average American shopper and becomes a staple in everybody’s fridge. That’s until it takes over your body, melts through your skin and starts a rampage in your tiny suburban (completely caucasian) town. I mention the extreme whitewashing on display here as the only character in the movie who isn’t white is called ‘Chocolate Chip’ Charlie (Garrett Morris) and that bothers me on many levels.

The Stuff features some fantastic body melting scenes that almost compare with 1993’s Body Melt, but obviously not because Body Melt is a certifiable classic in the body melting subgenre. The creature effects on the sentient dessert product on display here are utterly terrible and extremely low budget and were basically made from hundreds of cans of shaving foam being shoddily animated to give the desired effect of movement. Like I mentioned, The Stuff features some surprisingly good metaphors regarding the effects of mass consumerism in a modern world, effectively transforming us into mindless zombies who are simply filled with The Stuff that we have been told to purchase. The consumerism dialogue isn’t as in your face (or as well done) as John Carpenter’s 1988 masterpiece They Live, but for a movie made on a shoestring budget and featuring no major actors, it does a rather good job of being a snapshot into the mid-80’s Wall Street aesthetic of buying everything that a conglomerate tells you to; without any thought as to why. The same goes for my opinion of The Stuff in general, why? 

Street Trash hit select independent theatres in 1987 and is yet another take on something unassuming that makes its victims melt from within. The story here focuses on the homeless community in New York City, as they discover a local shop that sells bottles of cheap booze for as little as $1, known simply as Viper. The downside is that once consumed, the alcohol makes the victim transform into a pile of neon blue gloop, leaving them as nothing more than a puddle on the ground whilst a rather overzealous cop attempts to work out what is causing the mass meltings occurring in the city. In all honesty, I’m not a huge fan of Street Trash. It’s overly long for the amount of content present and there aren’t enough actual body meltings to justify its excessive runtime. The majority of the movie is filled with pointless separate plotlines focusing on the different members of the homeless community as they go about their daily lives. It all just feels rather pointless and simply makes you long to see some practical effects, but at least when something exciting does happen it usually tends to pay off in a huge display of gelatinous melting colourful flesh (which is actually rather impressive given the nonexistent budget).

In 1988 a movie was released that means an awful lot to me, it’s shockingly bad, terribly acted and has one of the worst scripts ever written and I love everything about it. Killer Klowns from Outer Space has become one of the most instantly recognisable horror b-movies of the 1980s. Whether you’ve seen the film or not it’s almost guaranteed that you would’ve seen the fantastic Klown costumes made for the film, standing 7ft tall and being genuinely quite creepy for such a cheesy picture, these colourful blood-stained suits of rubber are prime examples of using practical effects knowhow to stretch the obvious minuscule budget that the movie had to great success.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space does exactly what it says on the tin. A gang of hideous Klowns (unsure why they’re spelling clowns like this, but I’ll do the same anyway) land in their big top flying saucer in yet another small suburban American town. Their main goal? To transform the townspeople into giant balls of cotton candy which they’ll feast on using rather large straws. The Klowns also have popcorn firing rifles and explosive cream pies at their disposal in order to capture as many mildly racist white folk as possible. I’m not sure what it is with horror b-movies of the ’80s, but there’s just something that makes me uneasy about the mild forms of racism and misogyny on show. Regardless, Killer Klowns from Outer Space is an undeniable horror classic and still, for some reason more of a hidden gem than one that’s become wildly popular, I think it deserves another look, even if it’s just to appreciate the scarily good craftsmanship that went into the terrifying Klowns. 

Since the eighties, there hasn’t been a great deal of movies that have focused on food as the main antagonist (probably for good reason). But there’s a very quaint charm that all these pictures radiate, it’s the way that back in the 1980's you could make a film about pretty much anything and have it successfully greenlit by studio execs. It’s the way a film about murderous intergalactic cotton candy eating Klowns can still remain popular thirty years later. Filmmakers of today simply just don’t have the same amount of freedom they had back then and for better or worse, the excess of the 1980s provided us with some horrifically entertaining pieces of horror cinema. Skip over most killer food movies, but if you’ve got 80 minutes to spare watch Killer Klowns from Outer Space, I bet you’ll never eat cotton candy again. I know I haven’t.

Cal Moores ● Writer

Twitter: @cal_moores

Instagram: @cal.moores

Cal Moores is a Manchester based music photographer and sporadic film writer. Having a passion for films ranging from 80’s slashers to 70’s American New Wave. Never ask him what his favourite horror movie is, he’ll undoubtedly blurt out Psycho III and instantly regret it.