Popcorn (1991)

(In French, On Cable TV, January 2021) I’m really not a fan of slasher horror movies, but while Popcorn qualifies as such, there’s a little bit extra on top of it that makes it worthwhile: Its knife-wielding psycho is counterbalanced by a storyline that pays affectionate homage to past horror movies. The plot gets moving once members of a student film group start looking for ways to raise funds, and hit upon the idea of holding a classic horror marathon at a disaffected theatre. Going straight for the William Castle school of gimmicky horrors, they end up booking the fictional-but-re-created Mosquito (complete with giant mosquito puppet flying above the audience), The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man (with electrified seats) and The Stench (with Odorama cards). To be fair (and to prevent anyone from thinking that I liked the film more than I did), Popcorn is not going for metacommentary on the slasher genre: that part is played straight, even director Mark Herrier’s affectionate homage to horror movies of the past (complete with on-target snippets of the fictional films) are clearly meant to poke fun at other areas of the horror genre. But then again—the Scream-led slasher revival was still five years in Popcorn’s future. It’s a curious limitation, and it definitely limits my enjoyment of the results—if we’re poking around the same thematic territory, Popcorn certainly isn’t any funnier or more enjoyable than the slasher-less comedy Matinee. But it is funnier and more interesting than homage-less slashers, so that’s the scale we’re going to go with this time around.