I marvel at the things we needed to watch. The little burg where I started as a film critic at my beloved college radio station rarely played art house fare and was even late in the run of higher profile prestige material. When we started our movie review show in the fall of 1990, the screens always had plenty of room for cheapo horror flicks, though. Popcorn is almost entirely forgotten now, but I stand by my laudatory evaluation of the early scene found at the front end of this review. I actually still think of that passage from time to time (conceding that by now I’m sure the particulars of the scene have been significantly reworked in my memory). I don’t don’t stand by this as a piece of writing. This was crafted during the first year of the radio program, and it shows. The repetitive language in the review makes me wince. Fun fact: the episode wherein this review first appeared also featured an interview with Len Carpenter, the superintendent of schools of the Astoria, Oregon school district where Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ivan Reitman shot Kindergarten Cop. I have absolutely no recollection of that segment, but it sure sounds like the sort of piece I loved to put together.

One of the best moments in the new film POPCORN comes very early on as Dee Wallace Stone goes to investigate a dark, empty movie theater. She’s looking for a man she’s sure died fifteen years ago, but who seems to have been calling her recently. As she walks down the theater’s aisle and peers around into the darkness, the filmmakers do an admirable job of making us feel her fear. The audience catches quick glimpses of a mysterious figure moving quietly through the shadows of the movie theater. These looks at the figure are so brief that begins to doubt the person is even there. This is the closest the film ever comes to having the audience jumping at shadows. It’s a shame that the rest of the film couldn’t live up to this very effective, very creepy scene. The film POPCORN is built around a group of Southern California film students who decide that the best way to raise money for the university’s film festival is to hold an all night film festival that features cheesy 1950s horror films. They manage to rent a local movie theater for the festival and with the help of an old time movie magician played by Ray Walston they turn the run-down cinema into a movie palace perfectly suited for late-night screams. As they dig through Walston’s props they discover as short surrealist film called Possessor. The film has a nasty history, being shown only once at a night that also included the murder of the filmmakers’ family and the theater being burning down. The film also has a strange effect on one of the film students who passes out and is soon sure that the filmmaker is stalking the theater, hoping to kill again. Everything comes to a head the night of the film festival as the theater is filled with moviegoers and a mysterious man is methodically killing all of the members of the film group. The film which has been trying its hardest to build a sense of dread quickly degrades into your average slasher flick where cute, carbon-copy college kids all get knocked off one-by-one. The film also has a struggle with its attempts at comic relief. The fake films from the 1950s strive to capture some of the campy, unintentional humor that those types of movie have developed a reputation for. But their attempts pales greatly with actual releases from that time. There’s also a character who is extremely clumsy and his stumbles and bumbles are played for laughs. It’s humorous early on but those jokes become stale before his last stumble. There’s an interest twist to exactly who the killer is and some nifty makeup tricks, but POPCORN requires more than that to make its overwhelming flaws less noticeable. From the ridiculous ways most of the victims get killed to a handful of shaky performances, this POPCORN should have been left on the shelf.

1 and 1/2 stars.