Popcorn (1991 film)

Popcorn is a 1991 American slasher film directed by Mark Herrier and written by Alan Ormsby. It stars Jill Schoelen, Tom Villard, Tony Roberts, Dee Wallace, and Derek Rydall. The plot follows a group of college students holding a film festival, where they are then stalked and murdered by a deranged killer inside a movie theater.

Plot
Film student and aspiring screenwriter Maggie Butler has recurring dreams of Sarah, a girl caught in a fire and chased by a man trying to kill her. She records it onto an audiotape with the hopes to make it a film. Suzanne, her mother, receives demonic calls.

Maggie's classmate Toby D'Amato has an idea to perform a horror movie marathon to raise funds for their film department. They begin at the abandoned Dreamland theater, set to be destroyed in three weeks. Despite time-constraints, Toby enlists the help of Dr. Mnesyne, owner of a film memorabilia shop, who lends over some possessions. There are three main films within a film: Mosquito is a 3D film, The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man uses a "Shock-o-Scope" gimmick (electrical "buzzers" in seats), and The Stench uses Odorama.

They find a short cult film called Possessor from his inventory, which partly resembles Maggie's dreams. Lanyard Gates, the director, killed his family while shooting the final scene, also setting the theater on fire. Maggie obsesses over the film and tries to find reasoning for her dreams. She asks her mother about the director and film, but Suzanne uncomfortably dismisses it, urging her to quit the festival. Later, Suzanne receives a call from, presumably, Gates. He advises her to meet at Dreamland and to bring a gun. Suzanne arrives, only to be met with creepy visions and hallucinations. Inside, a figure in the shadows grabs her.

Maggie is working the box office when Mark arrives with a girl named Joy. A suspicious man buys a ticket, calling Maggie “Sarah”, then walks off. Disturbed, Maggie informs Toby of what she saw. He dismisses it. Mark leaves to find Maggie while Davis prepares the giant mosquito for the first film. While operating it above the audience, a mysterious figure controls it, causing it to fly into David, stabbing him with its stinger. Right after, a laboratory is shown where an unknown being is making a copy of his face.

The second film begins. Bud, a wheel-chair bound student, prepares the seat shockers from above. Maggie relistens to her audio tape when it shuts off with a message from Gates. Leaving, she slams a door open on Mark, knocking him down and destroying the recorder. Maggie’s classmate, Tina, approaches Davis on the catwalk backstage. She tries to kiss him before his face melts off: he strangles her with a rope. Mark and Maggie find her shortly thereafter, but the killer manipulates her voice and body in the darkness.

The killer straps Bud into a makeshift electric chair that is set to go off near the films ending. The theater loses power after the electrocution. Maggie enters, finding Bud dead and Gates confronting her. Maggie flees, realizing she is Sarah Gates, Lanyard is her father, and Suzanne is her aunt who saved her long ago. She explains all she remembers to Toby, believing Gates returned for her. In the basement, Toby falls and disappears. With only a flashlight, Maggie shines it about before running into Gates. The power comes back on and Maggie finds herself in the killer's lair, strapped to a chair used to make victims facial masks.

Toby, revealed to be the killer, was badly burned as a child at the Possessor showing with his mother. Toby's mother was a member of Gates' film cult and was also killed. Blaming Maggie and Suzanne responsible, he plans to exact revenge on them by re-enacting the final scene of Possessor onstage, only with the intended ending. He then wheels out Suzanne, whom he has cast full-body, pointing her gun.

Meanwhile, Cheryl and Joanie tend to Mark's injuries as they are met with an upset Joy, who is promptly thrown out after chastising the group. Mark leaves to find Maggie and Toby, who apparently left together. Joanie, realizing she’s behind for her Odorama cue, leaves to join Leon. Leon, in the bathroom, is met by a mirror image of himself. After urinating on him, the doppelganger attacks Leon, locking him in a stall, then dropping a substance that creates a thick smoke. Leon passes out, a explosion ensues, and Leon is killed. Dressed as Leon, Toby returns to the booth with plans to stab Joanie, but spares her when she mentions her unrequited love for Toby. Upset at the subject, Toby storms out to finish setting up the final scene of Possessor.

Mark arrives at Toby's apartment to find that he is being evicted. The walls are plastered with articles of the Possessor incident, including pictures of his facial reconstruction and Maggie with scissors in her eyes. Horrified, Mark rushes back to the theater, climbing through a window (due to the locked front door). The final scene of Possessor is on-stage: Maggie, drugged, is locked in a metal dress, unable to move. Despite her pleas to be saved, the audience believes it is a part of the act. Mark uses his belt on the mosquito track, zip-lining on-stage, causing the mosquito to swing about unlatched. The stinger stabs Toby in the chest, killing him. Mark releases Maggie and Suzanne as the crowd erupts in applause.

Production
Adamant about not directing another horror film after Black Christmas, Bob Clark passed on the offer to helm the film and instead suggested Alan Ormsby, his Deathdream collaborator instead. Popcorn was filmed entirely in Kingston, Jamaica. Ormsby was replaced by Porky's actor Mark Herrier a few weeks into filming. The cast and crew speculated that Ormsby was fired for being too "detailed oriented" in the filming of the marathon films. The original lead Amy O'Neill was replaced by Jill Schoelen at this time as well. Clark, an uncredited producer on the film, also acted as a "hands-on" filmmaker throughout production and served as a second unit director when needed.

Ormsby is credited with directing all three of the main films within a film, while Herrier is credited with filming the present-day portions of the film.

Analysis
According to John Kenneth Muir, the film's succinct title reflects a trend in the horror films of the 1990s. Unlike horror film titles of the previous decades, such as The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), or A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Muir perceives the 1990s to have been characterized by more laconic titles like Popcorn, The Guardian (1990), Hideaway (1995), and Scream (1996). He believes this trend was a result of the studio desire for generic, wide-appeal films.

Furthermore, Muir argues that the film itself is an example of the postmodernist, self-reflective horror films of that period. Popcorn took inspiration from the history of the horror films, from the 1950s onwards, inspiring films like Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994) and In the Mouth of Madness (1995) which used metafiction as one of their themes.

Muir writes that the films-within-a-film in Popcorn serve as an homage to the low-budget horror films of the 1950s and to the gimmicks of William Castle. Mosquito has similarities to the films of Jack Arnold. Nuclear weapons testing has caused desert mosquitoes to grow into giant monsters, in a plot resembling Them! (1954) and The Deadly Mantis (1957). The film includes stock characters and situations, such as a dedicated lady scientist and the military insisting on using a nuclear weapon to annihilate the monster. The gimmick accompanying Mosquito is a life-sized version of the giant mosquito which slides down a rope above the heads of the film audience. This is a tribute to Emergo, the Castle-devised gimmick accompanying House on Haunted Hill (1959). The original gimmick featured a glowing skeleton sliding down a rope. The title of The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man seems to be a homage to The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), while the visual style of this film is similar to the works of William Cameron Menzies. It includes influences from German Expressionism, with "exaggerated shadows and menacing low-angles". The accompanying gimmick, "Shock-o-Scope", seems to be a rename of Percepto, the electric gimmick which accompanied The Tingler (1959). The Stench is fashioned after Japanese films, imported and dubbed for the American market. Its accompanying gimmick is an obvious variation of Smell-O-Vision, the gimmick used in Scent of Mystery (1960). Possessor features extreme close-ups, and functions as a mix between a snuff film and a product of psychedelia. Its protagonist Lanyard Gates has similarities to cult leader Charles Manson.

The frame story of Popcorn is that of a typical slasher film. The killer impersonates his victims through use of masks, and his goal is the performance of a snuff-show in front of a live audience. His motivation lies in a crime of the past which scarred him for life. Maggie serves as the final girl of the film, accompanied by a heroic boyfriend. As to the identity of the killer, the film employs a suitable red herring for misdirection. Muir observes, however, that the film does not use slasher films themselves as part of its self-reflecting depiction of the horror genre. The characters do not appear to be aware of the relevant tropes, nor do they seem aware of their presence in a slasher film-like situation, unlike their counterparts in Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997).

The film includes a scene hinting at supernatural horror, which seems out of place in this film and is never properly explained. Suzanne, Maggie's mother, arrives at Dreamland to confront Lanyard Gates, gun in hand. As if in response, the letters of the movie theater's marquee fall on the ground and in their place appears a new sign: Possessor. No character in this film, including the killer, has the ability to do something like this.

Box office
The film was not a box office success. The film opened in 8th place its debut weekend with a tally of $2,563,365 from just over 1,000 screens. It ended its domestic box office run with $4,205,000.

Home media
Popcorn was initially released on VHS in June 1991. Variety reported in 1993 that home video sales equaled $2,043,179.

Elite Entertainment released a DVD edition of Popcorn in 2001. Special features include theatrical trailers, TV spots and promotional footage. This release is out-of-print and hard to find.

A Region A (US/Canada) Blu-ray/DVD combo was released through Synapse Films on March 7, 2017.

Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 38% based on 21 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10.

John Kenneth Muir identified two distinct films in Popcorn: one is a smart, postmodern film that "self-reflexively gazes back at genre conventions and gimmickry", and the other a rather derivative revival of 1980s slashers that lacks the self-awareness and intelligence of the more postmodern half. Vincent Canby of The New York Times called it "the best spoof of its kind since Alligator." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it an "ingenious and spoofy little shocker" and "A Nifty Tribute to Its Genre". Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a grade of "B", writing, "Though it isn't even trying to scare you, this is a very nifty black-comic horror movie, one of the rare entries in the genre with some genuine wit and affection." Richard Harrington of The Washington Post wrote that it "has several good ideas that, unfortunately, go unrealized." Stephen Hunter of The Baltimore Sun wrote, "Popcorn isn't too clever by half, but only by seven-sixteenths. It's so busy being droll and ironic it forgets to be any good." Chris Hicks of the Deseret News wrote, "On the whole, Popcorn is so amateurish in its development, with pseudo-hip dialogue that drops movie references every few lines, it winds up being neither scary nor funny." Gary Thompson of the Philadelphia Daily News wrote that the film spoofs were inspired, but the rest of the film is much worse.

Reviewing the 2001 DVD release, Adam Tyner of DVD Talk called it "a wildly entertaining movie", and Patrick Naugle of DVD Verdict called it "a fun little flick."