‘Popcorn’ (1991) – Mark Herrier.

The 90s saw a tentative rise of hybridized post-modern horror, and the one especially refined example that boldly stood out like an elephantine 'Mosquito' stinger was able director Mark Herrier's luridly imaginative, stylishly sanguineous, menacingly melt-faced, monster-mashing, B-horror loving 'Popcorn', which affectionately parodied the hysterical lunacy of deliciously creaky-creepy Drive-in creature features with a pleasingly deranged, psychedelicized update of the teenaged blood rage of an audience pleasing, nerve-flayingly modern, neon-fright slasher!

As a likeable group of film students boisterously busy themselves dressing up a rundown cinema for an enterprising old-school William Castle-esque horrorthon, budding screenwriter (Jill Schoelen) nightmarishly discovers that her disturbingly vivid dreams become dangerously intertwined with 'The Possessor', an infamous, artsy-fartsy, pseudo Kenneth Anger short film with a tragic, murderous history that is fated to repeat itself during the raucous, sold-out, gimmick laden monster fest!

Due in no small part to the quality acting of Dee Wallace Stone, Bruce Glover and and a memorably vivid turn by Tom Villard, some gorgeously 'eye-popping' practical effects by Mat falls, and grisly gallows humour, 'Popcorn' is far more than just another forgotten splatter celluloid curio from the last days of Mom & Pop's video store. The film's boundless charm undimmed over time, if anything, Herrier's evergreen screamer is given additional burnish by the proliferation of insipid, jump scare-less horrors of today, as the triumphantly terror-toasted 'Popcorn' certainly hasn't lost any of its scintillatingly strange savour, Mark Herrier's face-rippingly fabulous fear-fest's deliciously ripe recipe of hyperbolically vengeful villain and the terrified teens that so bloodily succumb to his meticulously contrived death-spree is no less moreish in 2022 than in 1991!

'Here it B-movie ALWAYS Shock O'Clock!'

'Better out than INSANE!'

'I got no beef with them big bugs, it's the little ones I can't deal with!

'I said you suck, dude!! Not you suck my dude's brain!!!! Gaaaah!!!'

'Preachin' to the perverted!'

'It feels weird now, but you'll soon get used to the wooden stumps, dude!'

'The future so fright I gotta' wear shades!'

'Beastly Boys!'

'Talk to the hand, 'aint got no lips!' 

'I got one of my eager-cleaver migraines!'

'I'm givin' you all the Lon Chaney Jr. I got, baby!

'Don't point them pointy boobies at me unless y'all mean ta' use em!'

'Me and Elon go waaaaaay back, dude!'

'Die-in Cinema!'

'Semi-Detachable ears are far more practical than they look, dawg!'

'Tonight we go behind the screams of Khloe Kardashian unmasked!'

'No booklet!!!!????'

'A fine rear aspect!'