Directors: Mark Harrier and Alan Ormsby (uncredited)
Writers: Tod Hackett and Alan Ormsby (uncredited); story by Mitchell Smith
Starring: Jill Shoelen and Tom Villard
Available On Video: Columbia/Tri-Star Home Video (PRICED FOR RENTAL)
Body Count: 7
Review: Maybe it's because I saw it when I was around eleven-years-old, but it seems to me that Popcorn is one truly kick-ass movie, and one that deserves much more credit than it gets.
Jill Shoelen (from Phantom Of the Opera) stars as Maggie, a film student obssessed about turning her nightmares into a screenplay. She becomes involved with a student fund-raising horror movie marathon, where she discovers that her dreams have already been played out in celluloid.
She comes to feel that Lanyard Gates, the director of a 60s cult film named The Possessor, is actually her father, and that he is the scary guy in her dreams. Gates seemingly returns from the grave for the horror-thon, and dispatches all of Maggie's classmates one-by-one, before the root of the plot is finally revealed.
What makes Popcorn work so well are it's clever in-jokes, not-too-bad (for it's time) dialogue, and great movies-within-the-movie. The films showing at the horror festival are all homages to great B-movie classics from the 50s, with titles such as Mosquito, The Stench, and The Amazing Electrified Man. The death scenes are imaginative, there's some great music and visuals, and the cast all does a pretty good job, especially considering most of them are all unknown actors.
Trivia: The plot of Popcorn, once all is revealed, seems very similar to Jill Shoelen's other slasher flick, the Robert Englund version of Phantom Of The Opera--though Popcorn is a much better movie.
Also, fans of the Scream movies should enjoy all of the horror festival scenes in Popcorn, as they are direct influeces on the self-referential style of those films, especially the opening scene of Scream 2.
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