Popcorn(1991)

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Popcorn(1991)

Drivel disguised as suspense in first half

Warning: Spoilers in this review. (Yeah right, like anyone's really going to go rent this)

This movie is what I like to call the "window dressing" type--the trailers and premise are actually really good, but sitting through the end product is like sitting through Dennis Farina doing a hemmerhoid commercial. Popcorn (Mark Herrier's directorial debut and finale, co-directed with Alan Ormsby, both of whom starred in Porky's II) features aspiring young film student Maggie (Jill Schoelen) who has recurring dreams about a guy dressed in robes who puts his head on a table and conducts bizarre, occult-like murders in front of her. Maggie is trying to capture her dream into a script, in dreams of becoming a star director, which doesn't leave a lot of time for nonplused boyfriend Mark (Derek Rydall). Meanwhile, Maggie's film class is putting together a film festival of old horror turkeys in order to raise funds for the department. When enlisting the help of a film archivist (played by Ray Walston, of all people), the class uncovers an old film titled "The Possessor," which has footage right out of Maggie's dream. Naturally this freaks her out, but not so much that she can't push it aside and work on her script and with the class.

Meanwhile, Maggie's mother (Dee Wallace Stone) has gotten a threatening phone call from someone claiming to be The Possessor, and when she goes to the theater to investigate, she is attacked and captured. The class, by this point, has fixed up the theater to show three movies, each complete with a 50's-style special effect (shocking chairs, giant mosquito and aroma-vision). However, Maggie spots someone claiming to be The Possessor sneak into the theater, and when she "goes off to investigate" in the proud tradition of horror flicks (it's behavior like this that gives white girls a bad reputation within the genre), that's when people start getting knocked off left and right, all smack dab in the middle of a theater full of rowdy high schoolers out to cheer and throw popcorn at the screen. Sounds like my Homecoming date.

The deaths are pretty artsy, which is hardly surprising considering the pseudo avant-garde feel the filmmakers were going for. The sponsoring teacher is impaled by the gimmick mosquito, while the wheelchair-bound electrician is strapped to his wheelchair and hooked right into his system. At this point, there's plenty of suspense regarding The Possessor--who is he? Why does Maggie know so much about him? How is he getting into her dreams, and how is it he can disguise himself as pretty much anyone he kills? If there's only one killer (as the climax inevitably reveals), how can we explain all those mysterious second people lurking around in the background? Other more relevant questions are, of course, why don't half the film students realize the other half is gone until the last five minutes of the movie, and why are some of them so dumb as to mistake a badly-puppetted corpse as a real live human being? But if we subjected all horror movies to such inquiries, we probably wouldn't have a hope in hell of ever getting scared again.

Popcorn is a perfect example of where the horror movie went wrong. Somewhere in the mid-1980s, directors figured out that scaring people was tough work, but grossing them out was easy, and using long, still, drawn-out shots to instill suspense was even easier. Witness the grotesqueness of teeny bopper Tina (Freddie Simpson) as she thinks she's making out with her teacher--pull back to reveal her teacher's face stuck to hers and sliding off his skull! Neato! Gross! And scary too, until whatever's underneath the teacher starts gibbering and leering like, oh, I don't know, Freddie Krueger maybe? Also, blending horror and humor has never really worked out for me, and having the lead killer mutter innuendos like "It's a half hour until midnight--looks like I've got some time to kill. Hee hee!" effectively deflates any unease we may yet be holding on to at this point. It's also interesting to note that Ormsby fails exactly where Wes Craven does in Scream by making an overhormonal teenager with issues into a mass murderer, even if he's not the standard pretty white kid with problems (seen in 1998's Urban Legends). To say the least, this batch of Popcorn was overcooked, and high in fat.

-Long