Popcorn - Ben Elton

Ben Elton is one of my all-time favorites and he does not disappoint with this one. He somehow gets into the way we live life and makes a telling comment on it through these characters and their motives.

Bruce Delamitri, director of movies about killers, had just won and Oscar. He heads home with a Playboy model who is aspiring to be an actress. At the other end Wayne and Scout, two of the exact kind of people who feature in Bruce's movies take his movies literally and go about killing people randomly in a mall and elsewhere earning themselves the sobriquet - the mall murderers. With the police hot on their heels they head to their destination - the Delamitri residence and hold him and several others hostage. Wayne has a grand plan - he asks Bruce to tell the American people that he created these two monsters with his films and that by patronising his films, the public has also created them. Bruce turns it into a debate and this real life hostage situation cum debate cum more killings ends in a huge climax where most people die. But it leaves you thinking.

Gory and effective. Edge of the seat stuff.