Century Films, 1991
starring: Jill Schoelen, Tom Villar, Dee Wallace-Stone and Matt Falls
directed by: Mark Herrier

Century Films, 1991
starring: Jill Schoelen, Tom Villar, Dee Wallace-Stone and Matt Falls
directed by: Mark Herrier

the plot: Maggie (Schoelen) is a budding young film student plagued by bizarre dreams of a smoky movie theater and a ritual sacrifice. Though troubling, she uses the dreams as inspiration for her own screenplay, much to the consternation of her mother (Wallace-Stone). However, Maggie’s script—and all the projects started by her fellow students—is in jeopardy after the university announces a huge cut to the film program. Maggie, her classmate Toby (Villard) and the rest of the film department rent out an old movie house and screen a series of cheesy horror flicks as part of a fundraiser. While setting up for the screenings, the students stumble upon an old print of a fright flick directed by Lanyard Gates (Falls), a psychotic auteur who ended his last film, “The Possessor,” by murdering his family. The images in Gates’ macabre movie match those from Maggie’s dreams and she worries that Gates may have some connection to her missing father. The night of the fundraiser, a man who looks remarkably like Gates appears in the audience, and Maggie fears the diabolical director may be stalking her. When the movies begin, the film students disappear one by one, and it’s up to Maggie to stop Gates and solve the riddles of her past.

why it’s good: A love letter to the cheesy, gimmick-driven movies of the 1950s and ’60s mixed with a bad ’80s slasher-flick hangover, “Popcorn” may straddle horror genre lines, but it is firmly grounded in its love for all things cinematic. Of course, “love” should not be equated with “proficiency,” as “Popcorn” looks cheap as all get-out, and the main film is only slightly better than the old-style movie parodies around which the flick is built. “Popcorn” is, at the very least, inventive, and the parodies all incorporate some kind of neat gimmick: A 3-D giant insect flick has a huge light-up mosquito that flies into the audience during the last reel; a movie about a killer smell uses “Aroma-vision” to gross out the audience; and the seats in the theater are rigged to give the crowd a small zap of electricity during a movie about an electrified killer. Even though the more typical slasher movie elements aren’t all that exciting (except for the death-by-giant-mosquito bit), they’re at least fun, and the cast and crew’s affection for movie-going in general—and the experience of going to see a horror movie in particular—really comes through. “Popcorn” is also a precursor to Wes Craven’s “Scream,” which came out just five years later. The screenplay, by writer Alan Ormsby (who wrote the Bob Clark-helmed Vietnam zombie movie “Deathdream”), is heavy with meta commentary about filmmaking and movie clichés, though it’s not as flashy or ironic as Craven’s ode to Freddy, Jason and the rest of the slashers. “Popcorn” couldn’t really be ironic if it tried, though. Its earnestness and cheap, endearing touches (including a mid-film appearance by a random reggae band, due to the film’s production taking place entirely in Jamaica) make it one of those movies that is impossible to hate.

why you should own it: “Popcorn” is available for cheap on DVD, but there are no extras, and the picture quality isn’t that great. It’s a great companion piece to “Scream,” but probably doesn’t deserve a permanent place in your library.