I once attended a retrospective screening of the original “Friday the 13th” where the audience was sprayed with “blood.”
The theater also arranged for a man in a hockey mask to stalk the aisles every 30 minutes. It was a midnight showing at the legendary Mayan Theater in Denver, and no one seemed to mind that they were being spritzed with water containing red food coloring.
Nor that “Jason” didn’t even appear in the movie we were watching. It was an awesome way to watch an awful movie.
The shenanigans by the managers of the Mayan clearly wanted to evoke the late, great William Castle, who used to jerry-rig selected movie theaters with gimmicks to lure audiences.
Castle famously made movies where the audience was encouraged to scream their heads off (“The Tingler”), dread bed sheets that stood in for ghosts (“13 Ghosts”) and sign pre-screening wavers in case of death during the movie (he did this a lot for many of his titles). The movies themselves were crude but made with affection and unintentionally hilarious C-rate drive-in thrillers.
I miss guys like Castle, though there are still filmmakers who exude that kind of showmanship (John Waters and Lloyd Kaufman are prime examples).
“Popcorn,” a 1991 horror film with an adoring cult following, knows all too well how cool this kind of gonzo night at the movies is. It shares an affection for Castle’s films and is strikingly similar to Joe Dante’s 1993 masterpiece, “Matinee” (that is, if “Matinee” weren’t a coming-of-age high school comedy but a shot-in-Jamaica teen slasher film).
Nineties Scream Queen and genre veteran Jill Schoelen stars as Maggie, a college film student who is plagued by bizarre nightmares. Her film club stages an elaborate fundraiser: they renovate a movie theater, dress it up with jerry-rigged props and interactive gags and oversee (in costume and in character) a B-movie triple feature.
The three movies (fictional works we’re offered glimpses of, titled “Mosquito!,” “Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man” and “The Stench”) play on a night when the monster from Maggie’s dreams appears to be making a reappearance in the theater.
While this is stronger as an ode to ’50s horror than a consistent slasher/whodunit, the villain has a cool mask and a Gaston Leroux-like pathos. Genre pro Dee Wallace Stone, Tony Roberts and especially Ray Walston are very good in small roles, but the movie belongs to the plucky Schoelen and a memorable character turn by Tom Villard.
The film had a rocky beginning: Weeks into the filming of “Popcorn,” Alan Ormsby was replaced as director by “Porky’s” actor Mark Herrier, who does well to inject style when necessary and keeps the pace moving.
Schoelen was a replacement for Amy O’Neill (best known as the eldest daughter in “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”) and extensive reshoots took place. Evidence of a troubled production are in the wobbly tone, which is cheerful and jokey one minute, cold and sadistic the next.
A scene involving Stone, a supernatural marquee and a monster loose in a darkened movie theater, is stylish but nonsensical.
Popcorn (1991) pic.twitter.com/8LaWJuX6bm
— Jeanne Loves Horror (@1carolinagirl) May 22, 2023
There’s also the question of how much money the film club was allotted for the central event. Overseeing the triple feature, utilizing large-scale physical effects and extensively dressing up a movie theater appears to be more expensive than any imaginable college funds could allow. Yet, “Popcorn” appears as concerned with logic as “Mosquito!,” which is somehow fitting.
How’s this for showmanship? We get three B-movies within this B-movie. It manages to always be entertaining and exude a warmth for old-time movie magic, even when it gets dark and violent. The genuinely freaky experimental films we witness and the initial unveiling of the villain (both are by far the scariest things in “Popcorn”) are old-school thrills.
This is a junk food gourmet, not a feast of cinema history, but it can be fun to see cheesy late 20th century film tropes gel with effective recreations of ’50s monster movies, ’60s art cinema, ’70s and ’80s horror tropes and the much older, classic works. This odd synergy of cinema history resonates in a crass but clever line early on, when a film student compares Bergman to “Police Academy 5.”
Like the post-modernist horror films that emerged later in the decade, the characters of “Popcorn” seem vaguely aware that they’re in a horror film. Maggie scoffs at her boyfriend’s sexual advances early on, declaring, “This is the age of safe sex.”
She and the movie follow suit. There is no sex or nudity in “Popcorn.”
Schoelen revealed in a recent Fangoria interview that Bob Clark ghost-produced the film. Clark is the Canadian wunderkind who directed the crucial 1972 “Black Christmas,” the classic “A Christmas Story” (1983) and the surprise smash “Porky’s” (1981).
Clark’s influence seems to be present, as moments suggest a gentler fusion of his teen sex comedy and highly influential horror movie. Alas, there is not a trace of Ralphie or his Red Rider BB Gun.
“Popcorn” is certainly corny, but it’s always fun and reminds genre fans how much fun movies like this (or “Mosquito!”) are, especially if you see them in a movie theater.
