Popcorn. Echelon DVD. Reviewed by Brian Kirst

Fast paced and diverting, Popcorn, recently available on no budget DVD, is one of the early 1990’s horror no-brainers. If you just relax and go with its overzealously demented flow, you can have a lot of fun.

Film student Maggie is being haunted by dreams of death and fire which she uses as fuel for her latest screenplay. Her nervous aunt (horror film legend Dee Wallace Stone) is ready to flee town once Maggie mentions a man named Lanyard Gates in association with an upcoming 50’s horror movie festival. Upon the eve of the event, Maggie’s aunt mysteriously disappears and her friends begin to meet grisly ends at the festival, itself. Between the running times of films such as Mosquito and Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man, Maggie begins to remember her past and figures out how all the murderous mayhem is related to her.

Popcorn has long been singled out for its enjoyable recreations of 1950’s horror and science fiction films during its movies within a movie concept. Mosquito and Electrified Man are particularly charming with their over-the-top dialogue and loving nudges at the films’ conventions. The principle storyline that revolves around these homages, while flawed and containing some glaring plot holes, is committed to exuberantly by both generations of cast members (including well regarded Tony Roberts of Woody Allen fame) and is full of some outrageously enjoyable moments. Todd Hackett’s script features a fairly resourceful, self focused heroine and in one of the film’s most successful jokes, an over confident hero who is accidentally bumbling and frequently abused. The death of the cinema department’s femme fatale, Tina (a sultry Freddie Marie Simpson), is a gooey, face stripping nightmare and the sojourn of Maggie’s aunt to the darkened theater is creatively shot and even jump worthy on occasion.

The cast is cinema gold, too. Jill Schoelen’s cigarette stained voice and exotic features automatically make her stand out as Maggie. (In fact, in a May 1991 Fangoria article titled “The Thinking Man’s Scream Queen” Schoelen recounts how she almost lost the role to a traditional blonde beauty.) Derek Rydall brings a humbled cockiness to hero, Mark, while frequent horror film beauties Kelly Jo Minter and Karen Witter add some vinegar and spice to the proceedings. Tom Villard’s take on Maggie’s co-student, Toby, begins with an enthusiastic sensitivity and then accelerates into wild eyed dementia. Villard, who died of AIDS soon after, proves he could have had quite a horror career with his performance here. In fact, the performances of Villard and My Favorite Martian’s Ray Walston (who engages with a sardonic take on movie house enthusiast Dr. Mnesyne) make this film worthy of checking out alone.

All in all, you can tell the filmmakers, as a whole, were enjoying themselves with this one. That kind of infectiousness is sometimes all you need for an hour or two.