Scary Movie Month, Day 18

Popcorn

The tagline for this is "Buy A Bag, Go Home In A Box". I just love that.

In all honesty, not only is Popcorn not a great movie, it's not even a particularly good one. That being said, I have a deep affection for it and I think it's a lot of fun. The tone is all over the place and many of the performances are fairly lousy, but it's a movie that tries to be different and I'd always rather see a movie strive for a goal it can't quite reach than one that's content to just be more of the same.

The story concerns a group of high school students (median age around 30) who put on an all-night horror movie marathon at a local theater. Naturally, this leads to them being systematically murdered by a crazed lunatic, because of course they are. Said lunatic can manufacture masks on the spot that allow him to look like people he's just killed so that he can blend in, because of course he can. He can also sound just like them, (say it with me now) because of course he can. There's also some nonsense about a filmmaker who murdered his family when his film was screened years before, and our lead character (Jill Schoelen, always foxy) may or may not be his daughter. It's needlessly convoluted, but it's almost charming in its aimlessness and as I said before it's nice to see it try to be something fresh.

There are a few particularly fun performances by dependable genre vets Tony Roberts, Ray Walston, and Dee Wallace Stone, but the kids at the center of the movie are mostly flat & unmemorable. Tom Villard is a lively, eccentric exception. It's a shame he died so young (at 40, three years after the release of Popcorn), he's fun to watch and makes lots of interesting choices that make even his clunky expository dialogue come to life. I'd love to have had a chance to see what his career might have become.

I don't know that I could truly recommend the movie, but if you manage to find yourself on its crazed wavelength there's a lot to like. The movies-within-the-movie (those being shown at the all-night horror show) are affectionate spoofs of William Castle style gimmicky horror movies. Matinee did it better, but there are clever touches here too. Popcorn is a movie that wears its influences on it's sleeve and tries to do them proud. It may not always succeed, but it puts forth a sincere effort and sometimes that's enough.