Make Your Halloween A Shudder Slasherstravaganza With ‘Popcorn’ and ‘Intruder’

It’s often said that the slasher movie boom of the 1980s launched at the dawn of the decade by Friday the 13th had more-or-less died out by the back half of the decade. Sure, slasher movies were still getting made, but they were often either sequels to previously successful films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, or they were low-budget affairs being shuffled over to the direct-to-video market. It’s also often said that, while the subgenre never really died, it didn’t really come to life again until 1996, when Scream brought its deconstructive, meta approach to slasher films and launched a new wave of masked killers. 

But horror addicts know that the decade-or-so between the golden age of slashers and the reinvigoration brought on by Scream (and Wes Craven’s 1994 classic New Nightmare, it must be noted) was not without its gems. Even the cheapest, strangest twists on the slasher flick had flourishes of brilliance, and sometimes we got films that pushed all the way into greatness, breaking free of the notion that the subgenre was dormant for 10 years until Ghostface brought some life back to it. 

For proof, just look at two films released on either side of the turn of the decade, both of which hold up as unheralded slasher classics. Intruder, released in 1989, and Popcorn, released in 1991, don’t have much in common beyond the basic slasher tropes, but when taken together, they just might be the best slasher movie double feature you’ve never seen, and they’re both streaming on Shudder right now.

Written and directed by Scott Spiegel, who cut his teeth working with Sam Raimi on the Evil Dead films, Intruder takes a very classical approach to the slasher whodunit with a single bloody location. Like Friday the 13th, it’s the story of a group of young people picked off one-by-one by a mysterious killer who isn’t revealed until the climax, with plenty of red herrings along the way to throw viewers off the killer’s trail. Its great stroke of genius, and the thing that sets it apart from a number of other slashers, is the decision to set all the action in a grocery store, where our roster of prospective victims have been asked to pull an all-nighter by a manager who’s preparing to sell the store and retire. As they all set out to mark down every item in the place for an everything-must-go sale, typical teen and twentysomething shenanigans ensue, we get a sense of various romantic and professional prospects, and we even learn that cashier Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox) has an ex-boyfriend who’s a little too pushy about wanting her back. It’s all very comfortable, familiar stage-setting, and the whole cast (including Sam and Ted Raimi as store employees) is very game for what’s about to go down. 

And what goes down, at least in the modern, less-censored version of Intruder‘s story, is spectacular. Spiegel makes excellent use of his location throughout the film, establishing the geography of the market and the locations of every major player, then killing each of them off through a series of elaborate, often darkly comic death scenes. Some slashers have a single, signature weapon, but the killer in Intruder has everything from a meat market cleaver to a storage room box bailer at their disposal, and uses every tool in the store to dazzling, stomach-churning effect. If you’re a fan of practical gore effects and increasingly creative slasher kills, Intruder has both in spades, and it’s a delight to watch for even seasoned slasher cynics.

Popcorn, from director Mike Harrier in his sole feature effort (though the film’s production was complex and other people contributed to the direction), also makes great use of a single location and lots of inventive kills, but approaches the slasher formula from a completely different place. The story centers on a group of film students, including budding screenwriter Maggie (Jill Schoelen), who decide to put on a horror movie marathon at a derelict local theater to raise money for the film department at their university. The idea is to use old-school film gimmicks a la William Castle to draw in an audience, using memorabilia from old screenings to deliver in-theater effects like seats that buzz during shock-themed sequence and a giant mosquito that zips across the room during a creature feature. 

This, of course, is wonderful fodder for the secret killer who stalks the theater during the marathon, using the effects to provide cover for his elaborate murders right up to the finale, when the audience is so wound up they’re convinced onstage deaths are just part of the show. It’s a wonderful device that we’ve since seen films like Scream 2 put to use, but that’s not the only brilliant part of the narrative. Popcorn takes its somewhat meta approach a step further by weaving in a backstory about a crazed filmmaker who murdered a theater full of people while making an experimental film, then delves into the years-later fallout of that tragedy to great effect. This backstory, coupled with the way the film uses its in-story audience reactions during the actual in-story murders, creates a compelling narrative about what we really want as a horror audience, and how complicit we might be in the violence. But even with that rather heavy subtext in mind, Popcorn is just plain fun, a wild ride full of creative kills and plenty of in-jokes for horror superfans. 

Combined, the films represent some of the best that the slasher genre has to offer, not just in the wake of the early ’80s boom, but in the entire history of the formula. They’re true hidden gems, offering newcomers to horror a chance to see something really fun, and longtime fans a chance to feel excited about a tried-and-true subgenre once again. 

Matthew Jackson is a pop culture writer and nerd-for-hire whose work has appeared at Syfy Wire, Mental Floss, Looper, Playboy, and Uproxx, among others. He lives in Austin, Texas, and he’s always counting the days until Christmas. Find him on Twitter: @awalrusdarkly.