Popcorn (1991)

 

Director: Mark Herrier (with Alan Ormsby)

Screenplay: Mitchell Smith and Alan Ormsby

Cast: Jill Schoelen as Maggie; Tom Villard as Toby; Dee Wallace as Suzanne; Derek Rydall as Mark; Malcolm Danare as Bud; Kelly Jo Minter as Cheryl; Ivette Soler as Joanie; Elliott Hurst as Leon; Freddie Marie Simpson as Tina; Tony Roberts as Mr. Davis; Ray Walston as Dr. Mnesyne; Barry Jenner as Lt. Bradley; Cindy Breakspeare as Gloria Gates

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #206

 

Is there an inherent gene for obnoxiousness?

I first encountered Popcorn as part of a series of "b-movies" my mother enjoyed and collected, usually disaster films and the scale of a "d-movie" in quality, the sillier the better. This was part of a double sided DVD, a gift from my uncle, with Leprechaun 5: Leprechaun in Da Hood (2000), a film we will quietly brush under the carpet again unless I decide to hurt myself by watching it again. Popcorn thankfully transcended into a personal favourite. A large part of this is that, very late into the eighties slasher boom, actually appearing into the nineties here, this entry in the horror sub-genre is set around a special one night horror movie marathon at a cinema about to close, reflective of cinema in itself just in the sense of having fun with its past. Namely, this horror all-nighter set up by a film class reviving old b-movies with their elaborate gimmicks, only for an ominous slant to be involved with a mysterious figure known as Lanyard Gats. A crazed experimental filmmaker in the sixties, his response to negative reviews was a public performance of one called Possessor whose finale, a live stage performance, was killing his wife and trying to kill his daughter, only for him to be stopped a cinema to be burnt down. Inherently as a cineaste and someone with a taste for film culture, this stands out even for someone with a divided relationship with slasher films, this unlike many trying to rip off Friday the 13th with a premise that is very distinct. In knowledge of its background, that the original director Alan Ormsby was replaced with Mark Herrier midway through, it only shows a couple of signs of being messy in its creation. It also has the curious touch that, meant to be set in the United States, the production ended up being shot in Jamaica, which is never referred to baring a version of Saturday Night At The Movies by a reggae band, and an actual reggae band in the film.

You could have excised the slasher narrative and just had the horror all-nighter as a narrative, with patrons in over the top costumes (giant heads, wigs, second heads etc) and particularly a celebration of cinema in all forms. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the idea of this type of cinema going, even if exaggerated here, was sadly something I had rarely experienced, and even without packed crows, this idea of the ideal dream palace of cinema has been undermined by how much of a conveyor belt cinema production and distribution is within my neck of the woods. Even as someone who finds multiplexes fascinating buildings, like dreamscapes going through their corridors between cinema screens, the comments against multiplexes here bite more decades later as the product shown on the screens with exceptions did not hold as much fascination of the environments they were shown in themselves and the idea of cinema going as a ritual.

There is also something nice in a slasher film, from its own horror sub-genre boom, making affectionate parodies of the older horror movie sub-genres that existed before it, the films-within-the-film as much why Popcorn always stood out for me, referencing the films from the fifties and sixties including the legendary figure of William Castle, a director and producer as famous as a showman behind gimmicks to sell his films as he was the films. Mosquito! is a low budget monster film from the nuclear fifties era of giant bug films, where the giant prop mosquito that is pulled above the audience likely refers to William Castle's House on Haunted Hill (1959) where a plastic skeleton was pulled by wires in theatres. It is probably too gruesome for its time period, with a man's head sucked empty by a radioactive mosquito, but finding the right balance between earnestness and showing a corniness of the era, it sets up these parodies very well. Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man offers a parody of many films made in the late fifties and the early sixties of men changed by science, like Indestructible Man (1956) with Lou Chaney Jr., in which a death row inmate (played by Bruce Glover) is a test subject of an experimental blood form before he eats the electric chair, referring to William Castle's The Tingler (1959) where the seats are wired to shock punters. If there is a disappointment to Popcorn, only one for me, it is that we barely see The Stench, a parody of a sixties Japanese genre film, less Toho but a smaller company cashing in on a Toho film, with Japanese actors obviously dubbed into English and the added gimmick of taking Odorama further, not scratch and sniff cards but odour pellets blown through into the theatre.

The film is a lovely tribute to the older era of films, with posters of the likes of The Deadly Mantis (1957) and even The Tingler itself¹ among the rich production design of the main cinema location, even referencing in the film a lot about cinema, be it an early argument in the film of how the Police Academy films have more philosophical weight over Ingmar Bergman's work, or how another of William Castle's gimmicks is references, when he had have patrons sign a waiver in case they died of fright during a film. It helps as much that the slasher film narrative is also interest and very peculiar, set up around a cursed experimental film from the sixties known as Possessor, meant as a parody of sixties avant-garde cinema with the first shot a close of an eye ("must be a private eye flick"), but is connected to the kind of occult stories of that era too including Euro-horror movies. The peculiar nature is as much writing confusion, where it does bring in supernatural content which could not be explained with science, like the cinema's marquee spitting its letters at a person, only to be entirely around a grounded but also memorable figure, but that is something I can thankfully get past. Particularly as the film has, in its centre, a tragic killer scarred physically to the point of insanity, one who can create fake faces and disguise themselves which adds an even odder and inventive nature to the film alongside all the kill scenes being based around death-by-movie-gimmick.

No character in the cast is a dull, bland figure either, everyone like lead Maggie (Jill Schoelen) interesting, or in the case of her potential love interest Mark (Derek Rydall), playing up the clichés in an amusing way, in his case making him the most put upon figure in such a role, who is among all the things he suffers through punched, hit with a door, locked out of the cinema, attacked by a dog off-screen and ending up with split trousers, among other agonies whilst still being sympathetic. Then there is Toby, who is at a certain point completely memorable because of his actor Tom Villard's performance. [Major Spoiler] At some point he is revealed to be the killer, psychologically broken and having to rebuild his face every morning, trying to restage the original Possessor screening, to which Villard takes the performance up in terms of exaggeration but also pathos [Spoilers End]. Tragically, it would not be long, in 1994 after this when Villard would pass, a tragedy as here you see someone who could have made a great name for himself in genre films through the nineties.

As much of this review is admitting Popcorn is a film as a youth I feel in love with, those films we see as a kid or a young teen we get fixated upon. Thankfully, to show a bit of ego and being a bit of a hipster, mine is a bit more obscure and idiosyncratic, but Popcorn has grown so much regardless of this. As much of this was from being a fun tribute to the horror genre which, when given the slasher storytelling tropes, excised all the dull ones or renovated them with better ideas, becoming something significantly more memorable than many I have see. It is a film, having frequently watched over the years, which won my heart.

 

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1) Also Frankenstein 1970 (1958) and The Incredible Melting Man (1977).