Popcorn is a 1991 American slasher film directed by Mark Herrier and written by Alan Ormsby. It stars Jill Schoelen, Tom Villard, Tony Roberts, Dee Wallace, and Derek Rydall.
Plot
Film student and aspiring screenwriter Maggie Butler has recurring dreams of a young girl named Sarah who is caught in a fire and chased by a strange man who is trying to kill her. She records what she remembers on an audiotape and plans on making the story into a film. Maggie lives with her mother Suzanne, who has been receiving demonic prank calls. On her way to class, Maggie shuns the advances of her boyfriend Mark, explaining that she can't be distracted from writing her script.
Maggie's classmate Toby D'Amato has an idea to put on an all-night horror movie marathon to raise funds for the university's film department. They set up shop in the defunct Dreamland theater, which is to be razed in three weeks. Professor Davis is concerned about the time constraints, but Toby enlists the help of Dr. Mnesyne, an owner of a film memorabilia shop, with deploying promotional gimmicks. There are three main films within a film: Mosquito is a 3D film, The Attack of the Amazing Electrified Man uses a "Shock-o-Scope" gimmick (electrical "buzzers" in seats), and The Stench uses Odorama.
As they go through Dr. Mnesyne's trunks of equipment, they find a short cult film called Possessor, which greatly resembles Maggie's dreams. Davis informs them Lanyard Gates, the film's director, killed his own family while shooting the final scene before setting the theater on fire, trapping the audience inside. Maggie soon becomes obsessed with Possessor and tries to figure out why she has been dreaming about it. When she asks her mother if she has heard of Gates or Possessor, Suzanne becomes uncomfortable; she urges Maggie to quit the festival and wants them to go away together. After Maggie goes to bed, Suzanne receives another prank call from someone she believes to be Gates. He tells her to meet him at Dreamland so they can talk and advises her to bring a gun.
On the night of the festival, Maggie is working the box office when Mark arrives with another girl, Joy. Later, a man buys a ticket and calls Maggie "Sarah" before he walks away. Unable to find the man in the theater, Maggie goes to the projection booth to tell Toby that she thinks she saw Gates. Meanwhile, Mark has left his date to sneak up on Maggie and Davis prepares the giant mosquito model to fly across the theater that he operates with a remote control. Once the mosquito is released above the audience, a figure in the catwalks above Davis, using another remote control, uses the mosquito to stab Davis in the chest with the stinger. The scene cuts to a laboratory where a figure is seen making a mask of Davis's face.
As the second film starts, Bud, who is a wheelchair-user, prepares the seat shockers from a control panel above the audience. Maggie listens to her audio recordings when the tape is cut off with a message from Gates. As she tries to exit the box office, she opens the door on Mark, knocking him down and unknowingly smashing the recorder in the process. Meanwhile, Maggie's classmate Tina finds Davis on the catwalk and goes up to meet him; it is revealed that they have been having an affair. She is unaware that the killer is posing as the professor and is strangled with rope. Mark and Maggie find her shortly thereafter, but the killer manipulates her voice and body in the darkness to make it look like she is still alive.
The killer straps Bud into a makeshift electric chair that is set to go off when a series of lights comes on. As he is electrocuted, the theater loses power. Maggie finds her way to Bud, only to find him dead and Gates confronting her. As Maggie flees, she realizes that she is Sarah Gates, Lanyard is her father, and Suzanne is her aunt who saved her from being killed so long ago. She runs into Toby and tells him everything she remembers, believing that Gates has returned for her. She and Toby enter the basement and Toby falls, disappearing into the darkness. With only a flashlight, Maggie thinks she sees Davis and Tina, but runs into Gates. The power comes back on and Maggie finds herself in the killer's lair, strapped into the chair he uses to make facial masks of his victims.