Synapse Films Wants You to Buy a Bag So Popcorn Can Go Home in a Blu-ray Box

Steve Barton   |  

Jan 27, 2014

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“Buy a Bag, Go Home in a Box.” You have no idea how thrilled I am to report that one of my absolute favorite horror movies of the Nineties, Popcorn, will get a fully-loaded special edition Blu-ray sometime around Halloween this year courtesy of Synapse Films.

For the uninitiated, Popcorn is a love letter to the golden age of b-movies in the guise of a fun slasher flick about film students putting on an all-night bad movie horror film festival; a master-of-disguise maniac begins killing them off during the show via twisted takes on old school movie theater gimmicks.

The true highlights are the fake movies-within-the-movie lovingly paying homage to the b-movies of the Fifties and Sixties: The Amazing Electrified Man, The Stench, and Mosquito!

As much as I’ve had a major soft spot for Popcorn since seeing it in theaters opening weekend, I clearly don’t love it nearly as much as Horrorhound Magazine’s Kristy Jett. She’s been campaigning online since 2011 to get a special edition release and even worked on a retrospective documentary about the film. Her work finally paid off as Synapse Films announced Friday that later this year we can expect a special edition Blu-ray/DVD release boasting a brand-new 2K restoration of Popcorn, fully loaded with an assortment of extras, including that retrospective.

Full specs and a hard release date are yet to be announced. Here’s the official announcement:

Popcorn, the 1991 cult classic starring Jill Schoelen (The Stepfather, Cutting Class), Malcolm Danare (Christine, Heaven Help Us), Dee Wallace (E.T. the Extra-terrestrial, The Frighteners, The Lords of Salem) and Tom Villard (One Crazy Summer, My Girl) is coming to Special Edition Blu-ray and DVD from Synapse Films, Inc., in 2014!

This release will give fans a brand-new 2K restoration of the film, taken directly from original vault materials. Supplementary materials from Michael Felsher’s Red Shirt Pictures will round out the exciting package. While the line-up of bonus materials has not yet been finalized, it will feature a retrospective documentary on the making of and legacy of Popcorn along with more extra features currently in the planning stages.

“We are thrilled to be working closely with Kristy Jett and Red Shirt Pictures to bring Popcorn out properly. We now have some amazing materials, including the original camera negative and 35mm Interpositive materials to go through, to make sure this release is the best it can be. We just got a palette of amazing stuff we have to sort through for extras, including never before seen behind-the-scenes photos, documents, vintage interview tapes and even an alternate, never used original movie poster design that I found in the bottom of a random box,” says Donald May, Jr., President of Synapse Films.

Getting Popcorn to this point started very simply with a dedicated fan, Kristy Jett of HorrorHound Magazine, launching a Facebook page with the sole purpose of gaining momentum to encourage a distributor to re-release Popcorn. A year in, she gained the support and guidance of Michael Felsher and within the next year she had secured advocacy from Don May, Jr. and Jerry Chandler of Synapse Films. In late 2013, Synapse Films was able to finally secure the rights to the film, to bring it out properly for the fans.

“Make no mistake, this would not have happened without the support and efforts of Don May, Jr., and Jerry Chandler of Synapse. Other companies inquired over the years, but Don and Jerry fought alongside me for the past two years. Without them or Michael Felsher, we would not be here.”

Any movie where a monster mosquito prop gets turned into a lethal weapon has more than earned its special edition status.