With a movie like Popcorn there is definitely more than meets the eye. Not your average 90's slasher retread, yet at the same time, not exactly your most original movie within a movie...within a movie... within a movie? OK, Let's take it from the top.

Poor Maggie (Jill Schoelen) is suffering from terrible nightmares. She wakes up in a terrible fright, only to save her dreams on a tape recorder and in her sketchpad. As a film student, Maggie is searching for the ultimate screenplay, one that may lie within her dreams. Maggie's mother (Dee Wallace Stone) seems to suspiciously know something she is not telling her daughter.

Maggie and her fellow film students need to raise some bucks for equipment and so forth. Their teacher (Tony Roberts) comes up with a brilliant idea, an all night horrorthon at the Dreamland Theater. Movies, such as Mosquito in 3-D "Projectovision" and The Stench in "Aroma Rama". Things get even more bizarre when Dr. M (Ray Walston) drops off all the props they will need to pull the horrorthon off. They discover an old film canister; the film is called The Possessor, and is oddly similar to Maggie's nightmares. Is she psychic? Or does she have supressed memories of a disturbing past. Does Fellow film student Toby (Tom Villard) have the answer, are you confused yet?

When one sits down with Popcorn, they must check their logic at the door. Popcorn is a fun guilty pleasure, and I hadn't seen it since I was about 18 in the theater. I didn't know what to expect, and I wound up being pleasantly surprised. Don't get me wrong, Popcorn has enough cheese to trap a hundred rats, but it is a lot of fun. With some well-crafted nightmarish scenes, this movie is never dull.

Much like its everywhere and anywhere plot structure, the production of Popcorn seems just as bizarre. The screenplay is listed as written by Todd Hackett, who happens to be a pseudonym for Alan Ormsby. Yup, the same Alan Ormsby from Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things fame. Apparently it was also co directed by Alan, yet he went uncredited. Add to the mix one of the producers, Bob Clark, good buddy of Ormsby (Porkys, Children Shouldn't Play, A Christmas Story, Black Christmas). Wow, you never would have known any of this from the surface. Perhaps Elite should have added these names to their marketing strategy.

Popcorn is presented in a 16X9 1.85:1 ratio. There is some grain present probably caused by the low budget origins of the film. Colors are strong and the night scenes are very stable. Black levels are dead on and there is no artifacting. There were some truly dark scenes that I was concerned about, yet there seemed to be no problems at all. The transfer was quite stunning, for such a low budget film.

The sound is Dolby Mono, or so it seems. The sound isn't even listed on the packaging anywhere. Popcorn really could have benefited from a 5.1 remix, or even a pro logic remix, but alas. The sound is fairly clear, but does suffer a tad at certain moments. All in all, the sound is more than acceptible.

Extras include a theatrical trailer and 7 TV spots...why anyone would want to sit through 7 of these spots is beyond me, but they are there for you. Overall, Popcorn is not a classic, but it's fun. You could do a lot worse than having some friends over, turning the lights low, and enjoying some popcorn, with your er, ummm, Popcorn.