by Saintmort Guilty Pleasures: Popcorn

Last week I discussed 80’s slasher movies specifically with My Bloody Valentine. Popcorn is one of the films of the late 80’s/early 90’s that are frequently looked at as the nail in the coffin to the slasher genre until Scream in 1996. What’s ironic is that Popcorn isn’t a bad movie at all… in fact it’s satirical look at slasher films almost makes it Scream before there was a Scream (although you could also categorize Student Bodies and There’s Nothing Out There in that category).

Popcorn follows a group of film students who’s program is looking like it’ll be closed down unless they find some funding. One of the students (Toby) proposes hosting an all night horror show screening various horror films with different gimmicks (3D, Oderama and Shock-o-Vision). Meanwhile another student Maggie finds herself haunted by a strange image of a man every night, the character is the inspiration for her current screenplay.

While setting up for the festival they find an old lost film called Possessor. The strange avan garde film involves a man (ironically the one from Maggie’s dreams) yelling Possessor, the film suddenly cuts. Their teacher explains to them that the film is made by the cult leader/film maker Lanyard Gates. After the screening of Possessor he killed his family on stage and set the theater on fire killing all who inhabited it.

While clearly shook up by the event the students move forward with their film festival. It proves to be a huge success and they pack the theater with attendees. However behind the scenes a strange killer is slashing up each student (using the gimmicks to his advantage a few times). A nice twist to this particular film is that our killer makes masks of each one of his victims faces to allow him to move unnoticed from one victim to the next. Ridiculous? Yes. Kinda awesome? Hell Yeah.

Finally we’re down to Maggie and Toby. It’s revealed that Toby is the actual killer (duh) and Maggie and he are siblings. Furthermore their father is non-other than Lanyard Gates, both survived the Possessor screening however while Maggie was unscarred Toby is actually badly burnt up under the mask he’s been wearing. He decides to complete his father’s vision. However a gimmick malfunction kills him before the audience (who cheers at his death not realizing it’s not part of the show — kind of like Scream 2).

My favorite aspect of this movie is the film festival itself. Director Mark Herrier and writer Alan Omsby did an excellent job of writing cheesy films that properly represent their time period. My favorite being the ultimate campy 3-D fright flick Mosquito.

Despite all it’s short comings the film is a good fun time. There’s some awkwardness (since the movie was shot in Jamaica all the kids listen to Jamaican music), and some jokes fall flat but in general the film is genuinely one of the better slasher films (so long as you shut your mind off on the ridiculousness of the whole ‘mask’ thing).

If I could be involved in remaking any horror movie it’d be this one. I would however do it much like Chillerama. I’d get 3 other directors to film the short films screened at the festival and then another director to film the wrap around story.

If you’ve never seen this underground little slasher classic you’re in luck. A special edition DVD has been announced (although no clue when it’ll be out) with a retrospective documentary and commentaries.