Certainly many of you remember this ditty.
Like that nagging kernel of the titular treat that you can’t quite get out of your back tooth, the poster for this early 1990s horror film has really stuck in my craw. The film remains unseen by me, so it only exists in terms of the images supplied by its prime-time TV promos (I seem to recall a young girl screaming “Oh, no!” in the face of an angry demon, only to have the demon retort in a monstrous roar, “Oh, yes!”) and on this helluva memorable one-sheet. There’s the grotesquely fleshy—and oddly serene—paper mask of a female victim; the bold skeletal vision of death grinning behind it, its neck craning out from an accurately oversized man’s suit; and, of course, the pièce de resistance, a tagline so unforgettable in its simultaneous luridness and stupidity that I have at least two friends who still quote it to this day (neither of whom, I believe, has ever seen the movie either): Buy a bag. . . Go home in a box. Though probably brainstormed up in some dusty Los Angeles shoebox distribution office late at night by two underfed interns, it’s nevertheless become the stuff of legend, so indelible that I completely forgot that in the top left corner of the frame there’s an entire narrative about the origins of the film’s killer. Is he really called “The Possessor”?! How disappointing. I always hoped that the film’s airy title applied not only to the delicious movie snack but also to the moniker of the murderer himself, and that at one point someone warns, “If you say ‘Popcorn’ five times while in line at the concession stand, he pops out of the soda machine!” or “Popcorn killed my papa!” or “I’ll get you, Popcorn… in a Jiffy!”
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
