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What’s up Sorry State fiends and ghouls?
Wow, October 1st already? I must say, this is my favorite time of the year. Seems just as of the last couple days, all of a sudden there’s a bit of a chill in the air. Around my neighborhood, I’m already seeing people adorn their lawns with cheesy decorations, whether I casually encounter skeleton legs sticking out of someone’s garden, people pumping up their collection of giant monster inflatables, or something as simple as just a couple pumpkins plopped out in the grass. As corny as I know it can be, I always try to make a concerted effort to get excited about “spooky season,” as it were. I haven’t been feeling as energetic or motivated about… well, really anything lately. But hopefully some fun Halloween-related activities will reveal themselves in the next couple weeks and I’ll force myself to have rad and eventful October.
The major thing I get excited about once October comes around is binging a bunch of horror movies. Just down the street from me, one of our local movie theaters the Alamo Drafthouse here in Raleigh often hosts a bunch of cool specialty screenings of October-appropriate flicks. There are certain things I don’t like about how Alamo conducts business, like how you’re required to reserve your seat in advance, they’re strict about making too much noise during the movie, blah blah… But I’m sure I’ll try to catch a few movies at the theater over the course of this month. But beyond going out and seeing movies in theaters, I love building excitement and making an excuse to reach for a bunch of my VHS tapes. Because the first day of the month falls on our usual newsletter day, I potentially have 5 opportunities to talk about movies as my staff pick rather than records. Aren’t you excited, Sorry State readers? Mwahahahaha.
The other night, basically functioning as my early dose building anticipation for spooky season, I revisited the movie Popcorn. Since I was just talking about wanting to go see movies at the Alamo, I thought Popcorn would be a cool choice because a majority of the movie is set inside a movie theater! For those unfamiliar, this movie was originally released in 1991, and is basically a slasher, but with a really creative backdrop for the killer. The tone of the movie rides a fine line between actual scares, but also dark humor and clever pop culture references. There’s some serious laugh-out-loud moments.
The plot of Popcorn surrounds a group of film students who decide to rent out an old theater and host a triple-feature horror film festival. Now hold up—let me see if I can verbalize this in a way that makes sense… what I think is so awesome about Popcorn is that the 3 movies shown at the theater (the movies inside the movie) at first glance appear like they could be old black & white 50s horror classics. In actuality, all 3 films are completely fictional and created specifically for Popcorn. They’re basically parodies, clever spoofs of actual films that seem familiar, but are basically riffs on the genre. This is also several years before Scream, which was famous for referencing horror clichés within the movie. I think it’s brilliant that the filmmakers actually had to go out and film and create fully realized concepts for fictional movies that seem convincing while functioning as background for the actual plot.
Another big aspect so cleverly utilized in Popcorn, which is also referential to classic horror movies, is the use of in-theater gimmicks to sell the movie to the audience. This was a big pop culture moment for late 50s/early 60s horror. For example, the first movie of the triple-feature is Mosquito, which is a riff on giant insect movies from the 1950s, and this movie is shown in 3D, so you see all the audience members wearing 3D glasses. Also, the film students rig a giant animatronic mosquito to fly across the audience inside the theater whenever the mosquito on screen attacks. The second movie is called Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man. The audience doesn’t realize that their seats are rigged with a “buzzer” that shocks them when someone gets electrocuted on screen, which is a reference to a 50s movie called The Tingler. Then finally, the third fictional film is called The Stench, which they (for no reason) decide to make into a dubbed movie, fashioned after imported Japanese films like Godzilla or whatever. Its accompanying gimmick, pouring repulsive gas into the audience, is an obvious variation of Smell-O-Vision, the gimmick used in a 1960s movie called Scent of Mystery.
I wanted to get all that information written down, just because I think it’s interesting, but I really don’t wanna spoil the movie if you haven’t seen it. Just know that the killer utilizes the screams of the audience in the theater environment and all the accompanying “gimmicks” from each film to achieve some rather creative kills while the “audience” within theater remains completely unaware or assumes it’s part of the show. There’s some other weird film-related side plot that I won’t get into. But yeah, I fucking love this movie. Quick side note: what’s pretty funny is that Popcorn came out in 1991. But I guess before this, there was never actually a giant killer mosquito movie? Then in 1994, a movie called Mosquito was released… which, you must assume that someone saw Popcorn and thought, “Damn, that’s actually not a bad idea!” Hahaha.
Anyway, prepare for future blabbing about movies over the next several weeks. Tonight, I’m going to see The Shrouds, which is the new David Cronenberg movie. I’m stoked.
‘Til next week,
-Jeff