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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.
00:04After 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.
00:26Keep in mind, I'm Andrew from WhatCultureHorror, and here are 10 90s horror movies you probably
00:30haven't seen.
00:3110.
00:32There's Nothing Out There
00:35This oft-overlooked satirical horror sees a group of teenagers go on a trip out to a house in
00:39the woods where there's no human life around for miles.
00:42So far, so very predictable, but when a frog-like creature from space, yes, frog-like creature
00:48from space, begins laying seeds to their idyllic getaway, trying its darndest to mate with the
00:53young women 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 quite
01:07to plan.
01:08It's meta, it's raunchy, and wouldn't you know, pretty much nobody has seen it.
01:12There's Nothing Out There took a match to the tropes of the horror genre a good 5 years
01:15before Scream even hit the scene.
01:18But with its low-budget and b-movie credentials, it failed to generate any real traction, unfortunately.
01:239.
01:24The Sandman
01:25The 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-appropriate.
01:39As such, anything animated was A-OK for general viewing.
01:43After 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.
02:06Influenced by German Expressionism, this visual style here is as haunting as the story, and yet,
02:12like 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 a 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 blending
02:40of 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 one of
02:55her own VR games.
02:56Jude Law is along for the ride though, and the pair traverse a horrific world where bio ports
03:01connect users to their games via the spine, and players wield such monstrosities as the
03:06grizzle 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
03:24Body Bags is quite the unique beast in that it has so many familiar names involved in it,
03:29yet still managed to largely fly under the radar.
03:31An anthology film featuring three short stories directed by John Carpenter and Toby Hooper,
03:37this 1993 effort features appearances from Mark Hamill, Stacey Keach, 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 Keach's Richard pay the price for his vanity getting the better of him
04:02in the form of a hair transplant.
04:04And the third, well that has Mark Hamill as a promising baseball player who loses an eye,
04:08only to have it replaced with the eye of a deceased murderer.
04:11Body Bags man, it's just a fun, mildly daft, slightly eerie way to spend 90 minutes.
04:16Go and check it out.
04:186.
04:19The Dark Half
04:20After a stellar run of low-budget horror hits through the 70s and 80s,
04:24George A. Romero only directing one feature in the 90s, the unsung adaptation of Stephen King's
04:30The Dark Half.
04:30Thad Beaumont is the author of a series of violent and bloody pulp thrillers,
04:34but when he decides to kill off his literary pseudonym in a stage ceremony,
04:39it leads to a string of murders matching those in his books.
04:42In something of a modern Jackal and Hyde, Thad's alter ego George Stark comes to life and soon
04:47proves that he will do anything, including going after Thad's wife and baby, in order to live on in
04:51the real world. A wild, if mildly overlong ride, the Dark Half fell prey to a poor run at the box
04:57office, and 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.
05:055.
05:07Buffy the Vampire Slayer
05:08No, not the era-defining Sarah Michelle Gellar starring TV show, but instead it's the 1992 film
05:14that that series was based on. Written by Josh Whedon, the original movie has cheerleader Buffy Summers,
05:19here played by Christy Swanson, discovered her powers and faced the uncomfortable transition
05:24from ditzy blonde to vamp-slaying badass. Before he'd made a name for himself working on Alien
05:29Resurrection and Toy Story and the like, Whedon was small potatoes at this point. Thus, when the
05:34movie bombed, so few people took notice it wasn't difficult to rework, rebrand and remodel this whole
05:39concept into a piece of solid TV gold a mere four years down the line. Fans of the show and dedicated
05:46completionist may still give the movie the occasional airing, but by everyone else's measure,
05:50Buffy the Vampire Slayer the movie is long being dead and buried.
05:544.
05:55Very 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 Pivion and others
06:07forming a cast led by Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz. Favreau's Kyle Fisher holds a raucous bachelor
06:13party in Las Vegas with his best buddies, but when they accidentally kill a stripper and the security
06:18guard finds the body, groomsmen-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 out,
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. The film is kind of a swingers as a black
06:39comedy horror, or American Psycho in Vegas, and yet it lacks the style, humor, or social commentary
06:44of either. Moreover, despite its star power, Very Bad Things didn't make much of a splash
06:49at the time of release, and has largely been forgotten in the days since.
06:523.
06:54Psycho
06:55Of course, you've seen Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, a 1960 classic that set the template and high bar for
07:00all prestigious horror filmmaking to come, but we're not here to talk about that one, nope. Instead,
07:04it's Gus Van Sant's experimental, shot for shot remake of the same film, a horror from the 90s that
07:10pretty much everyone has heard about, but let's be honest, very few of you have probably actually
07:14seen it. The 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. Vince Vaughn steps
07:24somewhat uncomfortably into the shoes of split personality Psycho killer Norman Bates,
07:28say in original actor Anthony Perkins' lines, but not quite matching Perkins' intensity or complexity.
07:33The late 90s were nothing if not fun, experimental years for filmmaking, where everything from small
07:38indies to big budget blockbusters for working wonders were technology and characters. Yeah,
07:43while Gus Van Sant's Psycho is undeniably an interesting adventure into the curiosities of
07:47what makes good cinema work, it is hard to make a case for sitting down to watch it when,
07:52you 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 in print or on the screen,
08:02whether through the hive of Cabrini Green or the interdimensional doors to the Cenobite's lair.
08:07However, while Barker has written the material many films have been based on,
08:11or written the films directly, his directing credits are few and far between.
08:14Horror fans may be forgiven then for overlooking one of his lesser works,
08:18that being Lord of Illusions.
08:20Arriving the same year as Candyman's sequel Farewell to the Flesh, Barker wrote the original
08:25short story, wrote the screenplay, produced and directed, all sadly to no avail.
08:30Lord of Illusions follows private detective Harry Dumont, who meets mysterious stage performer
08:35Philip Swan, 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,
08:46that frequently feels like a particularly hardcore episode of, say, Angel.
08:50But although this balance is never mastered, Lord of Illusions still deserves to be seen.
08:541.
08:54The Addiction
08:56In the 90s, neo-noir aficionado Abel Ferrara was best known for his big,
09:01moody, stardom pieces like King of New York and Bad Lieutenant, working frequently with Christopher
09:06Walken and Harvey Keitel, but that didn't mean he was against making something low-budget and 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.
09:19Shot very much at ground level in black and white, the film takes place in New York City,
09:23where the streets and the alleys bleed into the universities and the high-rises.
09:27After being dragged into the shadows and bitten by a vicious stranger,
09:30philosophy postgrad Kathleen Conklin is infected with a deep and abiding addiction for,
09:35amongst other things, human blood. Her change comes on quickly, and she struggles to reconcile
09:39her doctoral dissertation and the reality of her lived experience, while sinking into a primal,
09:45drug-fueled underworld. A short, sharp reimagining of the vampire legend for the grunge generation,
09:50The Addiction is an essential part of the horror cinema canon, and yet it reminds 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, yeah, that might have a lot to do
10:03with 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 10 90s horror movies you probably haven't seen. Be sure to like, subscribe, comment,
10:16share, turn those notification bells on, and come and give us a follow on X at WhatCultureHorror.
10:20Right there, you can find myself at Coach's Left Peg, but most importantly, just be sure to have
10:23the best possible day. Whether you're doing something, or whether you're doing absolutely
10:27nothing, I hope it goes well for you. And if things aren't going so well, I really do hope
10:30they turn around as soon as possible. I've been Andrew Parr from WhatCultureHorror, and I'll catch you down the road.
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