I as soon as attended a retrospective screening of the unique “Friday the thirteenth” the place the viewers was sprayed with “blood.”
The theater additionally organized for a person in a hockey masks to stalk the aisles each half-hour. It was a midnight displaying on the legendary Mayan Theater in Denver, and nobody appeared to thoughts that they have been being spritzed with water containing crimson meals coloring.
Nor that “Jason” didn’t even seem within the film we have been watching. It was an superior approach to watch an terrible film.
The shenanigans by the managers of the Mayan clearly needed to evoke the late, nice William Fortress, who used to jerry-rig chosen film theaters with gimmicks to lure audiences.
Fortress famously made motion pictures the place the viewers was inspired to scream their heads off (“The Tingler”), dread mattress sheets that stood in for ghosts (“13 Ghosts”) and signal pre-screening wavers in case of loss of life through the film (he did this quite a bit for a lot of of his titles). The films themselves have been crude however made with affection and unintentionally hilarious C-rate drive-in thrillers.
I miss guys like Fortress, although there are nonetheless filmmakers who exude that form of showmanship (John Waters and Lloyd Kaufman are prime examples).
“Popcorn,” a 1991 horror movie with an adoring cult following, is aware of all too nicely how cool this type of gonzo night time on the motion pictures is. It shares an affection for Fortress’s movies and is strikingly much like Joe Dante’s 1993 masterpiece, “Matinee” (that’s, if “Matinee” weren’t a coming-of-age highschool comedy however a shot-in-Jamaica teen slasher movie).
Nineties Scream Queen and style veteran Jill Schoelen stars as Maggie, a university movie scholar who’s stricken by weird nightmares. Her movie membership phases an elaborate fundraiser: they renovate a movie show, gown it up with jerry-rigged props and interactive gags and oversee (in costume and in character) a B-movie triple characteristic.
The three motion pictures (fictional works we’re supplied glimpses of, titled “Mosquito!,” “Assault of the Wonderful Electrified Man” and “The Stench”) play on an evening when the monster from Maggie’s desires seems to be making a reappearance within the theater.
Whereas that is stronger as an ode to ’50s horror than a constant slasher/whodunit, the villain has a cool masks and a Gaston Leroux-like pathos. Style professional Dee Wallace Stone, Tony Roberts and particularly Ray Walston are superb in small roles, however the film belongs to the plucky Schoelen and a memorable character flip by Tom Villard.
The movie had a rocky starting: Weeks into the filming of “Popcorn,” Alan Ormsby was changed as director by “Porky’s” actor Mark Herrier, who does nicely to inject model when mandatory and retains the tempo transferring.
Schoelen was a alternative for Amy O’Neill (greatest often called the eldest daughter in “Honey, I Shrunk the Youngsters”) and in depth reshoots occurred. Proof of a troubled manufacturing are within the wobbly tone, which is cheerful and jokey one minute, chilly and sadistic the subsequent.
A scene involving Stone, a supernatural marquee and a monster free in a darkened movie show, is fashionable however nonsensical.
Popcorn (1991) pic.twitter.com/8LaWJuX6bm
— Jeanne Loves Horror (@1carolinagirl) Might 22, 2023
There’s additionally the query of how a lot cash the movie membership was allotted for the central occasion. Overseeing the triple characteristic, using large-scale bodily results and extensively dressing up a movie show seems to be costlier than any conceivable school funds might permit. But, “Popcorn” seems as involved with logic as “Mosquito!,” which is one way or the other becoming.
How’s this for showmanship? We get three B-movies inside this B-movie. It manages to at all times be entertaining and exude a heat for old-time film magic, even when it will get darkish and violent. The genuinely freaky experimental movies we witness and the preliminary unveiling of the villain (each are by far the scariest issues in “Popcorn”) are old-school thrills.
This can be a junk meals gourmand, not a feast of cinema historical past, however it may be enjoyable to see tacky late twentieth century movie tropes gel with efficient recreations of ’50s monster motion pictures, ’60s artwork cinema, ’70s and ’80s horror tropes and the a lot older, basic works. This odd synergy of cinema historical past resonates in a crass however intelligent line early on, when a movie scholar compares Bergman to “Police Academy 5.”
Just like the post-modernist horror movies that emerged later within the decade, the characters of “Popcorn” appear vaguely conscious that they’re in a horror movie. Maggie scoffs at her boyfriend’s sexual advances early on, declaring, “That is the age of secure intercourse.”
She and the film observe go well with. There isn’t a intercourse or nudity in “Popcorn.”
Schoelen revealed in a current Fangoria interview that Bob Clark ghost-produced the movie. Clark is the Canadian wunderkind who directed the essential 1972 “Black Christmas,” the basic “A Christmas Story” (1983) and the shock smash “Porky’s” (1981).
Clark’s affect appears to be current, as moments recommend a gentler fusion of his teen intercourse comedy and extremely influential horror film. Alas, there’s not a hint of Ralphie or his Crimson Rider BB Gun.
“Popcorn” is actually corny, but it surely’s at all times enjoyable and reminds style followers how a lot enjoyable motion pictures like this (or “Mosquito!”) are, particularly in the event you see them in a movie show.