The 1990s brought horror from Cronenberg, Romero, Gus Van Sant. So, why haven't you see them?
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00:00Horror cinema went through something of an overhaul in the 1990s.
00:03After the video Nasty Purge of the 80s, horror went more mainstream than ever, and even non-horror
00:08directors were trying their hands at the creepy stuff.
00:11Likewise, horror's old guard began to explore new ideas and new avenues.
00:15While the bulk of the genre's output from the 90s is well-documented, a fair few films
00:19have nonetheless managed to largely remain lost, forgotten, or simply ignored to this
00:24day.
00:25Until now, that is.
00:26With that in mind, I'm Andrew from AllCultureHorror, and here are 10 90s horror movies you probably
00:30haven't seen.
00:3210.
00:33There's Nothing Out There
00:35This oft-overlooked satirical horror sees a group of teenagers go on a trip out to a
00:38house in the woods where there's no human life around for miles.
00:42So far, so very predictable.
00:44But when a frog-like creature from space begins laying seeds to their idyllic getaway, trying
00:52its darndest to mate with a young woman amongst the group, something must be done.
00:56Luckily, one of the characters knows all the ins and outs of horror, directing the group
01:00on the best possible ways to survive.
01:02But as we know, horror characters don't take advice well, and so not everything goes
01:06quite to plan.
01:07It's meta, it's raunchy, and wouldn't you know, pretty much nobody has seen it.
01:11There's Nothing Out There took a match to the tropes of the horror genre a good five
01:15years before Scream even hit the scene.
01:18But with its low budget and B-movie credentials, it failed to generate any real traction on
01:22TV.
01:23Unfortunately.
01:249.
01:25The Sandman
01:26The 90s was a weird time to be a young person, particularly where horror is concerned.
01:30On TV, there were things like Goosebumps and Eerie Indiana, but then there were far stranger
01:35things where the programmers involved clearly didn't have a good gauge on what was age
01:38appropriate.
01:39As such, anything animated was A-OK for general viewing.
01:43Enter Paul Berry's The Sandman, a dialogue-free stop-motion animation about a restless boy
01:49who lives alone in a large house with his mother and the tremendously creepy Sandman.
01:53Yes, as in the one and the same Sandman from stories designed to scare children to sleep.
01:59The Sandman tells a tale in which the titular beast literally steals a little boy's eyes
02:03out of his skull and feeds them to his child.
02:07Influenced by German Expressionism, this visual style here is as haunting as the story.
02:11And yet, like many of the creative works distributed direct-to-TV in the pre-social media days,
02:17The Sandman sadly hasn't enjoyed much of an audience in the years since.
02:208.
02:21Existence
02:22Existence falls at an awkward point in the David Cronenberg canon, finding itself stranded
02:27in the late 90s, a good few years removed from the director's best body horror classics,
02:32but not yet into Cronenberg's highly successful psychological thriller phase.
02:35Thus, the last of the director's body horrors for a good long while sees an uncomfortable
02:39blending of late 90s sci-fi aesthetics with the grossness of the 80s goriest horrors.
02:45A reality-bending feature, Existence takes place between real and virtual worlds, blurring
02:50the lines as game designer Allegra Geller finds herself targeted by assassins within
02:54one of her own VR games.
02:56Dude Laura's along for the ride, though, and the pair traverse a horrific world where
03:00BioPorts connect users to their games via the spine, and players wield such monstrosities
03:06as the Grizzle Gun, made of teeth, bones, and muscle fibres.
03:10While Existence was moderately well-received by critics, it crash-landed at the box office
03:15and this may be part of the reason it's never counted amongst Cronenberg's best,
03:19and it's largely been ignored by casual horror fans.
03:227.
03:23Body Bags Body Bags is quite the unique beast, in that
03:26it has so many familiar names involved in it, yet still managed to largely fly under
03:30the radar.
03:32An anthology film featuring three short stories directed by John Carpenter and Toby Hooper,
03:37this 1993 effort features appearances from Mark Hamill, Stacey Geach, Robert Carradine,
03:41David Warner, Twiggy, Blondies, Debbie Harry, and even fleeting appearances from Wes Craven,
03:46Sam Raimi, and Carpenter and Hooper themselves.
03:49As for the standalone stories of Body Bags, the first focuses on a college student starting
03:53her first shift as a gas station, on the same night a serial killer has escaped.
03:58The second has Stacey Geach's Richard pay the price for his vanity getting the better
04:02of him in the form of a hair transplant, and the third, well that has Mark Hamill as a
04:06promising baseball player who loses an eye, only to have it replaced with the eye of a
04:10deceased murderer.
04:12Body Bags man, it's just a fun, mildly daft, slightly eerie way to spend 90 minutes.
04:16Go and check it out.
04:18Number 6, The Dark Half After a stellar run of low-budget horror
04:22hits through the 70s and 80s, George A. Romero only directed one feature in the 90s, the
04:28unsung adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Half.
04:31Thad Beaumont is the author of a series of violent and bloody pulp thrillers, but when
04:35he decides to kill off his literary pseudonym in a stage ceremony, it leads to a string
04:40of murders matching those in his books.
04:42In something of a modern Jekyll and Hyde, Thad's alter ego George Stark comes to life
04:46and soon proves that he will do anything, including going after Thad's wife and baby,
04:51in order to live on in the real world.
04:53A wild, if mildly overlong ride, The Dark Half fell prey to a poor run at the box office,
04:58and sadly to a growing distaste through the 90s and early 2000s for the kind of horror
05:02that had made both King and Romero big names on the silver screen.
05:06Number 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
05:09No, not the era-defining Sarah Michelle Gellar-starring TV show, but instead, it's the 1992 film
05:14that that series was based on.
05:16Written by Josh Whedon, the original movie has cheerleader Buffy Summers, here played
05:20by Christy Swanson, discover her powers and face the uncomfortable transition from ditzy
05:24blonde to vamp-slaying badass.
05:27Before he'd made a name for himself working on Alien Resurrection and Toy Story and the
05:31like, Whedon was small potatoes at this point.
05:33Thus, when the movie bombed, so few people took notice it wasn't difficult to rework,
05:38rebrand and remodel this whole concept into a piece of solid TV gold, a mere four years
05:43down the line.
05:44Fans of the show and dedicated completionists may still give the movie the occasional airing,
05:49but by everyone else's measure, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the movie, is long been dead
05:53and buried.
05:54Number 4, Very Bad Things
05:56Black comedy horror Very Bad Things front loads an alternately dark and humorous piece
06:01of 90s cinema with all star casting, with Jon Favreau, Daniel Stern, Jeremy Pivian and
06:06others forming a cast led by Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz.
06:10Favreau's Kyle Fisher holds a raucous bachelor party in Las Vegas with his best buddies,
06:16but when they accidentally kill a stripper and the security guard finds the body, groomed
06:20man to be Robert kills the guard and leads the disposal of the corpses.
06:24Back at home, however, Kyle and the boys begin to crack, and to ensure word doesn't get
06:28Robert begins killing the others, but murder is never as simple as it seems, and soon everyone
06:34and their wives wrap up in some, well, very bad things.
06:37The film is kind of as swing as a black comedy horror or American Psycho in Vegas, and yet
06:42it lacks the style, humor or social commentary of either.
06:45Moreover, despite its star power, Very Bad Things didn't make much of a splash at the
06:49time of release and has largely been forgotten in the days since.
06:53Number 3, Psycho
06:55Of course, you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a 1960 classic that set the template
06:59and high bar for all prestigious horror filmmaking to come, but we're not here to talk about
07:03that one, nope.
07:04Instead, it's Gus Van Sant's experimental, shot-for-shot remake of the same film, a horror
07:09from the 90s that pretty much everyone has heard about, but let's be honest, very few
07:13of you have probably actually seen it.
07:15The film follows, beat for beat, shot for shot, the same story as the original Psycho,
07:19with Marion Crane robbing her employer through to the final twist reveal.
07:23Vince Vaughn steps somewhat uncomfortably into the shoes of split personality psycho
07:26killer Norman Bates, saying original actor Anthony Perkins' lines, but not quite matching
07:31Perkins' intensity or complexity.
07:34The late 90s were nothing if not fun, experimental years for filmmaking, where everything from
07:38small indies to big-budget blockbusters were working wonders with technology and characters.
07:43Yeah, while Gus Van Sant's Psycho is undeniably an interesting adventure into the curiosities
07:47of what makes good cinema work, it is hard to make a case for sitting down to watch it
07:51when, you know, Alfred Hitchcock's movie is right there.
07:552.
07:56Lord of Illusions
07:57We're all familiar with Clive Barker's work one way or another, whether that's
08:01in print or on the screen, whether through the hive of Cabrini Green or the interdimensional
08:05doors to the Cenobite Slayer.
08:07However, while Barker has written the material many films have been based on, or written
08:11the films directly, his directing credits are few and far between.
08:15Horror fans may be forgiven then for overlooking one of his lesser works, that being Lord of
08:19Illusions.
08:20Arriving the same year as Candyman sequel Farewell to the Flesh, Barker wrote the original
08:25short story, wrote the screenplay, produced and directed, all sadly to no avail.
08:31Lord of Illusions follows private detective Harry Lemore, who meets mysterious stage performer
08:35Philip Swann, whose illusions involve a world of mystery and horror revolving around the
08:39resurrection of a dark sorcerer.
08:41The film's tone is an uneasy balance between horror and supernatural fantasy that frequently
08:46feels like a particularly hardcore episode of, say, Angel.
08:50Although this balance is never mastered, Lord of Illusions still deserves to be seen.
08:54Number 1, The Addiction
08:56In the 90s, neo-noir aficionado Abel Ferrara was best known for his big, moody, stardrewing
09:02pieces like King of New York and Bad Lieutenant, working frequently with Christopher Walken
09:06and Harvey Keitel, but that didn't mean he was against making something low budget
09:09and low key.
09:10Indeed, although The Addiction is Ferrara's eleventh film, it's not just the budget
09:15but the style, energy and strong thematic sensibilities of his earlier work.
09:19Set very much at ground level in black and white, the film takes place in New York City,
09:23where the streets and alleys bleed into the universities and high-rises.
09:27After being dragged into the shadows and bitten by a vicious stranger, philosophy post-grad
09:31Kathleen Conklin is infected with a deep and abiding addiction for, amongst other things,
09:36human blood.
09:37Her change comes on quickly, and she struggles to reconcile her doctoral dissertation and
09:41the reality of her lived experience while sinking into a primal, drug-fuelled underworld.
09:46A short, sharp reimagining of the vampire legend for the Grunge generation, The Addiction
09:50is an essential part of the horror cinema canon, and yet it remains wildly unknown.
09:55That it only opened in 14 movie theatres, didn't hit VHS until three years later,
09:59and didn't get a DVD release during the 2000s in North America might have a lot to
10:03do with this, but while a recent 4K restoration has given a small boost to the film's presence,
10:08The Addiction still remains a largely undiscovered horror gem.
10:11So that's our ten 90s horror movies you probably haven't seen.
10:15Be sure to like, subscribe, comment, share, turn those notification bells on, and come
10:17and give us a follow on X at WhatCultureHorror.
10:20Right there, you can find myself at culturedleftpag, but most importantly, just be sure to have
10:24the best possible day.
10:25Whether you're doing something, or whether you're doing absolutely nothing, I hope
10:27it goes well for you.
10:28And if things aren't going so well, I really do hope they turn around as soon as possible.
10:31I've been Andrew Pollard from WhatCultureHorror, and I'll catch you down the road.