College student Maggie has been having odd dreams as of late, wherein she witnesses a young girl named Sarah caught in a fire, all the while being pursued by a strange man trying to murder her. Despite this nightmare, she records what she can recall on tape, with the hope that it can help her finalize a story that may be turned into a script one day. Meanwhile, at the young lady's university, the film department is having difficulty being appreciated and gaining acceptance. Fellow student Toby brainstorms a way in which they can raise money and awareness for the editing space that they require: rent out the old Dreamland Theater for the evening, and provide an all-night "gimmick" movie marathon to the demanding public. During the night of the event, while everyone works their assigned positions, something more suspicious is building behind the scenes, and Maggie's wild dreams may turn out to more closer to reality than she initially thought.
Confession time: I'm a complete and utter sucker for pictures like 1991's Popcorn, a film that went through two different directors during filming (both oddly enough sharing connections to the Porky's franchise), but still came out in one, competent piece by its release date. There seems to be a certain amount of love that you can sense on screen and off by these kinds of pictures that is such a rare commodity these days. They like to poke fun at the genre, but don't turn off their core audience by still treating them with some respect and mixing in some amusing bits of black comedy. It's something that pictures such as The Cabin In The Woods, Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, and even Wes Craven's Scream got right, John Carpenter's entry in Masters Of Horror ("Cigarette Burns") did similarly well, and others like 2010's Rubber got horribly, horribly wrong.
Popcorn also pays homage to motion pictures that even I forgot had existed back in the days of my own parents' youth. There are three different, yet similar films that our students have chosen to screen at the Dreamland Theater: one is an obvious nod to pictures such as Them! and Night Of The Lepus, one a tribute to "rigged" theater experiences like William Castle's The Tingler, and another that comes complete with "smell-o-scope," which I first learned about from the theatrical and home video releases for John Waters' Polyester. It's nice to see the filmmakers and writers recall the older, more gimmick-related days of horror, and I could see some much older viewers recanting about how this wasn't too far removed from how it really happened. Speaking of gimmicks, I found there to be a hidden meaning behind the title for this feature. Back in the 1980s (and leading into the early 1990s), a large portion of cinema that dealt with dread and fear were being manufactured and released en mass on an almost weekly basis. For people around my age, that may certainly seem like a wet dream, but if you were looking for something more sophisticated or something that would change the game, it was likely going to be lost in the mix of standard "boobs and blood" releases, since that seemed to be what the casual ticket buyer would want out of a horror movie (hence, "popcorn" flicks). As we've seen with the overexposure and over-saturation of assorted subgenres in the other, equally controversial distant cousin of horror cinema called rock and roll, too much of something can actually be a bad thing, and can ultimately turn people away in the long run.
For the most part, Popcorn's acting is surprisingly good, especially when you consider that the cast could have just decided to go with the flow like most other movies from around this time period. Save for small appearances from Dee Wallace Stone (E.T., The Howling, Cujo) and Ray Walston (My Favorite Martian), there aren't too many recognizable faces or performances that stand out, but I feel that lead actress Jill Schoelen deserves some attention for her portrayal of Maggie. There's certainly a very Winona Ryder-esque look and vibe that she has going on, but I came away noticing that she had less of a "pouty" voice and manner than the Beetlejuice star did in her heyday. Mind you, that isn't a diss towards the woman, but once you witness her acting in Alien Resurrection, it will be hard to not notice this. I wish that Schoelen would have received more work after this film's release, because outside of some previous appearances in darker projects such as The Stepfather and 1989's reimagining of The Phantom Of The Opera, she should be more well-remembered for something like Popcorn than for dating Brad Pitt.
Though unfortunately delving into familiar territories during its final act and plot twist (coupled with some attempts at humorous dialogue that would fall flat no matter who was delivering it), the fact that something as charming and entertaining as Popcorn even exists is a treat. The fact that it hasn't seen a proper release outside of a 2001 DVD, which is sadly now out of print and can be obtained for the low price of $60, is a god damn shame. Yes, there WERE plans for a Blu-Ray release from Synapse Films back in 2014, but to my knowledge, outside of its original announcement, it has never been finalized or completed. If you're a movie lover looking for a film about movie lovers, but with a very bloody, and slightly ironic twist that borders on parody, you should absolutely seek this relic out. Currently, the only way in which one can view Popcorn is to either buy or bid on the aforementioned DVD, find an acceptable print on torrent sites or video sites such as Youtube, or to pray to whatever deity you believe in for that Synapse Blu-Ray to see the light of day.
Something that should probably never see the light of day, however, is a disc release of the "Saturday Night At the Movies" song played during the Popcorn's only montage. It's unabashedly cheesy, and clearly meant to be a jab at the ridiculousness of some more well-known titles, so perhaps that can be forgiven. I'm not so sure that I can defend its rap song that plays over the credits though, as it gets dangerously close to entering the weirdest kind of musical territory found in "spoofs" of horror movies (see below).
Tomorrow, 1992 brings about a tale of a beast: the creatures that are often thought to be foolish, crude, and incapable of thinking for themselves. However, there is much to be learned from beasts......
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