Welcome to Weird Movie Wednesday, where I talk about my favorite oddball horror films. I love horror movies that are so bad that you laugh more than you jump. The more awful fake blood, incoherent story lines and cheesey one-liners the better! So, let me stop chit chatting away and let's jump right into one of my favorite movies of all time...Popcorn.
*If you have never seen this movie and wish to not have it spoiled for yourself, then skip to the end. Don't worry I will put a little note for you so you can still read why this is one of the best movies ever!!!*
Popcorn is a 1991 classic starring Jill Schoelen, Tom Villard, and horror icon Dee Wallace. The movie is about film student Maggie (Schoelen) and her life as a college student, every horrifying twist and turn of it. Maggie is suffering with a recurring nightmare about a young girl named Sarah running from a man through bellowing smoke. Maggie, like any good artist, turns her night terrors into art as she tries to write her dreams into a script. Her mother Suzanne (Wallace) is worried about the dreams. This isn't the first time they've occurred and she knows it won't be the last. Maggie, however, is unfazed and just wants to carry on with her schooling like any other young adult with a dream.Maggie's film student peers are like any other group of theater kids. You've got the obvious movie freaks, the aspiring writers and director's of the American cinema, the enthusiastic learners and, of course, the class bimbo. No horror movie would be complete without one. Anyway, the University is barley trickling any funding to the theater department, so they decide to raise a little money with an all night horror-a-thon. The idea was movie geek, Toby's (Villard). He's got the hook up and I mean everything. He's booked the theater, the movies, costumes, and even the creepy movie mentor who is going to help this gaggle of theater students put on the most successful horror-thon ever!
Everything seems to be going well as the students set up the theater until they find a mysterious reel of film. They decide to watch it, as anyone else would do, and what they see is not to unfamiliar to our main girl Maggie. When the film begins she notices that what she is seeing is nothing other than her recurring nightmare. She learns that the film belongs to Lanyard Gates, a man who went crazy after one of his other short films was poorly reviewed. In an act of revenge, he kills his wife onstage and attempts to kill his daughter. Gates fails, however, when the theater catches fire. The girl escaped and the mad movie maker perished in the flames. With all this whirling in her head, Maggie tells her mother of her discoveries and how she feels like something is going on here, like some sort of puzzle is coming together in her mind. Maggie's mother is worried and offers to fly her and her daughter away from this situation. Shocked, Maggie convinces her mother that she must deal with the issue head on and the conversation ends there. Meanwhile, Suzanne receives threatening phone calls from a eerie voiced stranger who tells her to meet her at the theater where Maggie's event is going to be. Suzanne complies and this is the last we see of her until the end.
The night of the horror-thon goes off without a hitch, that is, until students start going missing one by one. Eventually we learn the truth and the connection about Maggie and the mysterious movie. It turns out that the little girl that Maggie has been dreaming about was herself and the mad movie maker was her father. Her mother was not her mother at all, but her aunt. Maggie's mother was the woman who was murdered in the movie and if it hadn't been for her aunt she too would have suffered the same fate. How do we know all this? Had her father somehow survived the fire that destroyed the theater? No. It was Toby all along. He was there that night Maggie's father killed her mother. He was there when Suzanne caught fire to the theater. He survived...almost in one piece. Toby was horribly disfigured by the flames. He had to glue his face on every morning to feel any sort of normalcy and not scare anyone who might catch glimpse of his face. He suffered and he needed revenge. In a great scooby doo like sense of trickery, Toby dressed as his classmates with convincing accuracy and killed them off one by one. His goal was to recreate the film made by Maggie's father and, this time, he intended on finishing it. He doesn't however and the movie ends happily ever after.*I'm done spoiling the movie to any of you who opted to skip ahead!!!*
Popcorn has been one of my favorite movies ever. It takes me to a happy place in my childhood, coming home on the 4th of July after having just seen the fire works and popping in this tape (yes I said tape). This was one of the few horror movies that I could watch without my mom. It is completely kid friendly for any of you who have young horror fans at home. Now, this is one of the best movies ever to me because of it's perfect blend of cheesey horror humor and it's genuine attempts to scare the audience. Don't get me wrong, it is funny in multiple scenes, but I wont deny that there are a scene or two that give me the willies. To me that's what makes this movie so great. Plus, it is always nice to laugh at the awful fashion sense that was the 1990's. And if you're not into that then we can't hang.
Time for my fave scene of the whole movie. This was a tough call for me because I love everything about this movie but I will choose one for you. My fave scene is the montage of the kids setting up the theater for the horror-thon. It is all set to a remake of Saturday Night At The Movies by The Drifters. Very little spooks have happened at this point, but it is fun to see the kids having fun setting up the gimmicky smoke and mirrors that they plan to use to scare their future audience.
We have officially come to the end of this very long post. There's just so much to love about this film that it has to be this long. If you have seen this movie tell me how you liked it. Did you think it was funny? Did you hate it altogether or do you love it just as much as me? Tell me how you feel in the comment section below or on my Instagram page @cameronmothershed Feel free to like this post while you're there. Stay Spooky and Stay Tuned for next weeks Weird Movie Wednesday!!!
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