Kernels

"Popcorn'' is surprisingly good for an inexpensively mad horror film.It is also surprisingly easy on the gore. Yes, there are killings, but these are pre-''Friday the 13th'' killings. By comparison, they are almost humane.''Popcorn'' begins at a film school where the students make pompous remarks about people like Ingmar Bergman. One of them has a grand idea. Why not stage a Horrorthon at a local, dormant movie house? The others think this a great idea and hop to it.Where they get the money to refurbish the place, put in a popcorn machine and procure all the equipment necessary to running a movie house, is never explained, but this is, after all, a horror film.

Here is the method for homemade cheese popcorn that is much like the product sold at popcorn shops or comes in bags as snack food. The recipe takes about five minutes to make.Cheese Popcorn1/4 cup cooking oil1/2 cup popcorn kernels4-6 tablespoons powdered process cheese, see note belowDHeat the oil in a large kettle. When it is hot, but not smoking, add several kernels of popcorn. When the first kernel pops or spins around the pan, add the remaining kernels. Cover the pan loosely. Shaking the pan constantly, cook over medium-high heat until all the kernels have popped.

CRISIS? What Persian Gulf crisis?Out in the great American heartland, Saddam Hussein gets the big shrug.After rolling for 11 days, 2,000 miles across the most hauntingly beautiful chunk of the West -- the Great Plains, mountains and salt flats between Chicago and San Francisco -- that's this gypsy's impression of the West's mood.Unworried.Placid.More absorbed in quotidian stuff of daily lives -- lack of rain, gas prices, or how the high school team would do Friday night -- than prospects of a shooting war."