sometimes I like to shit my pants oldschool: 1990-1999 horror film thread

There is something so distinct and irresistible about 90's horror films. Maybe it was because the 90's were such an awful/unmarketable era for the genre (post-80's slasher burnout, pre-00's Cabin Fever revival) that they had to be half-decent to make it to screen. Maybe it's the fact that they mostly seemed to have wacko supernatural tendencies (and thus had a certain level of creativity), and maybe it's just the classic pre-CGI 90's effects. It's such an overlooked period. I mean you can say all you want about the "classics" but at the end of the day nothing does it for me like "Lord of Illusions" and "Wes Craven's New Nightmare". What do you love?

gree hee hee

Didn't horror movie revival happen in 1996 with Scream? It's true that the years before that were pretty much a wasteland though. I can't remember any successful big budget horror movies that would've come between 1990 and 1995.

Oh yeah, New Nightmare was pretty good, in retrospect it looks kinda like a precursor to Scream (and movies that followed Scream) in its postmodern genre awareness.

Yeah, but Scream didn't revive the genre the way Cabin Fever did. I mean, you had I Know What You Did Last Summer and shit but 1996-2002 didn't produce nearly as many films as 2002-2008

Off the top of my head "Cube" is a favourite. I think its misguided to give credit to "Cabin Fever" for the revival though. I think "The Blair Witch Project" in 1999 had a much bigger influence.

But I mean the return to ultraviolent gorefests devoid of any sort of intelligence. Blair Witch and Scream were different. They had an IQ above 100.

"New Nightmare" is hands down the fucking worst Nightmare movie ever and I'm including the unwatchable Part 2 and the unlikeable 2010 reboot

Also, Stevie, I think a lot of the gorefests in the 00's (Hostel, Freddy V Jason) are actually full of intellegence and have way more to say than stupid Blair Witch

Also, also DEAD ALIVE and CEMETARY MAN both came out in the 90s and are probably my fave horror movies of all time

but those are more contempary grindhousey cult ish and not the wack shit that ultimately made it to the mall cineplex like THE PROPHECY or whatev

I don't think I ever saw New Nightmare, I've been confusing it in my head with Freddy's Dead which is fucking terrible.

Cemetary Man rocks.

it's all about the opening scene of Wishmaster (NSFW):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5i_K-Iw33iM&feature=related

re: NN Oh my god, that is such BS. Have you SEEN Part 6 (Freddy's Dead)?? It is beyond incoherent, embarassing, unexciting, etc. Also Pt 2 is greatly watchable if you read it as a boy's struggle with is repressed homosexuality. "New Nightmare" is excellent; what do you hate so much about it?

And you are probably right about "Hostel" and etc. I really loved Saw. My comments are just stemming from how offensively horrible "Cabin Fever" was and how mediocre the bulk of post-CF horror seems to be. But I would be hesitant to say that most of them are full of intelligence. Maybe Blair Witch wasn't the greatest but it seemed to be intelligent enough to be effective on some level.

What other big-budget horror movies exist between 1990 and "Scream"? Also seriously where is the fucking love for "Lord of Illusions"??? It is easily in my top 5 of all time.

Look, there are three reasons to watch Nightmare movies.
1. Puns and ironic repartee from a smart-ass stand-up comic Freddy
2. Creative, hilarious, wacky, special-effects-enhanced ways to die
3. Boobs

Turning it into some dull post-modern exercise (New Nightmare) or worse trying to be an actually "scary" movie (2010 reboot) is MISSING THE POINT afaic

Army of Darkness, Candyman, The Frighteners, People Under the Stairs, Interview With The Vampire are all pre-Scream.

Ravenous
Audition
From Dusk Till Dawn
Misery
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Innocent Blood
John Carpender's Vampires

I don't think I ever saw Candyman. Is it worth watching?

1. Freddy wasn't punny/ironic until the 3rd film, with the "Welcome to prime time, bitch!" line. And even then he was mostly scary with just a hint of wit. As the sequels progressed, he became less terrifying and more of a caricature of his former self. By "Freddy's Dead" he was a fucking clown and it was unwatchable; "New Nightmare" was a return to form.
2. Creative and wacky, yes, but again the hilarity didn't come in until the later films. I'd much rather have fucking terrifying and clever than Freddy that can form coherent sentences than someone mashing an NES controller and vomiting non-liners everywhere.
3. I'm gay.

I loved Candyman at the time, I haven't seen it recently so I'm not sure how it holds up.

Ending is A+ lols.

Cube is more sci-fi than horror, I think. Apart from a couple of gruesome death scenes there isn't much horror in it.

I'm pretty sure Scream and Blair Witch Project are much more responsible for the 00s horror revival than Cabin Fever. I haven't seen CF, but I don't think it was a huge success the way Scream and BWP were, at least not in Europe. IMDb says the worldwide net sales for CF were 30 million dollars, as compared to 161 million for Scream and 248 million for BWP.

Look, there are three reasons to watch Nightmare movies.
1. Puns and ironic repartee from a smart-ass stand-up comic Freddy
2. Creative, hilarious, wacky, special-effects-enhanced ways to die
3. Boobs

This is pretty much true, and that's why "Freddy vs. Jason" was a much better film than anyone expected it to be.

I don't think I ever saw Candyman. Is it worth watching?

oh fuck yes

although keep in mind that this is coming from someone who, as a rule, hates horror movies

xxp. When it comes to box office, can't ignore The Sixth Sense. It made something like $700 worldwide. I'm guessing more than a few horror flicks owe their existence to its success.

okay how are we defining "horror" here, because that is the last thing that comes to mind when I think of "The Sixth Sense"

Well its no slasher flick for sure, but its certainly under the broad definition of horror. As much as say "Poltergeist"

No way, Sixth Sense was a thriller and not at all a horror.

Candyman is fantastic.

I'm not saying Sixth Sense is horror, but its silly to believe its success did not have influence on getting horror films produced. Se7en is not a horror film either, but its an obvious influence on the SAW films.

some weird opinions on this thread.

whiney otm re: Freddy's appeal imho (and Freddy vs. Jason was a lot of well done, campy fun. New Nightmare? never saw it, sounded like a bad idea in general).

Where is the love for Bride of Chucky

John Carpender's Vampires

this movie is TOTAL GARBAGE. except for the one guy who gets literally chopped in half.

Army of Darkness, Candyman, The Frighteners, People Under the Stairs, Interview With The Vampire

more like an action movie, great horror movie, more like a comedy, great horror movie, goth silliness

I remember Dr. Giggles being effective although watching it when I was 13 was likely the main reason. same goes for the IT TV movie.

Ringu was also late 90s & largely responsible for the 'Asian Horror' wave that followed shortly after.
Proper 90s horror is a bit of a blind spot w/ me &, as suggested in the opening post, my memory perceives a lot of it as tail/head ends of the 80s & 00s.

sorry stevie, but new nightmare is GARBAGE and i think cabin fever is actually very very smart, those smarts are just hidden under some very stupid characters

I also liked "The People Under The Stairs"

lol @ "good 90s horror movies" thread existing in a parallel universe where whiney is right about something

people under the stairs is way more straight horror than i remembered, watched it recently w/K as an attempt to warm her up to horror with some wacky stuff and uh whoops

(truth be told i think my memory was mixing in bits of "nothing but trouble" lol)

"new nightmare is GARBAGE"
Is this the one where a guy gets killed headbanging to REM in his car?

having thought abt this i guess id rep for jacob's ladder & in the mouth of madness but its been so long since i watched them

scream is really lol but its not a horror movie imo

the most terrifying movie i saw in the 90's was def "The Reflecting Skin" but it is def not really horror.

surprised event horizon hasnt come up yet

just checked wikipedia, only shitty hellraiser movies came out in the 90s

scream is really lol but its not a horror movie imo

wtf how is Scream not a horror movie

Yeah, even though there's some postmodern commentary on horror movies, there's also a lot of genuine horror in it.

The Scream franchise always felt like an extended Scooby Doo episode with a bunch of kids from Dawson's Creek.

You guys have some crazy standards as to what qualifies a horror movie IMO.

synchro bro, I watched it last night too. It was my first time. I agree with your revised assessment. Pretty good but not great. Something felt a little off about the story's internal equations. As so often happens for me with movies, novels, TV series, I enjoyed the first 2/3 much more than the final act. Way worth watching for the good bits and interesting notions though.

Dang, Virgina Madsen was pretty hot in this (80s hot, not 90s hot. It was only '92).

this past week, i watched two movies i'd seen before but barely remebered: wes craven's the people under the stairs from '91, and clive barker's lord of illusions from '95. so okay, the wes craven flick is at least half decent. not as good as i remembered, but interesting, reasonably well put together and distinctive. liked the way it inverts the texas chainsaw massacre's social politics, with the monster/murder family being not impoverished redneck mutants living out in the boonies, but rich white landlords feeding off their poor black tenants. potentially cool concept, unfortunately driven home with a sledgehammer. and like so many almost-there horror flicks, it falls apart completely in the final act when it shifts from suspense to action. still, not a total loss.

the clive barker movie, however, is absolutely atrocious. one of the worst pieces of shit i've seen in a long, long time. it's sluggish, witless, poorly acted and written, and shot about as capably as the average episode of knight rider. there's a lot of potential camp value in the ridiculous costumes and one-liners, but the surrounding film is such a terrible slog. i mean, i'm no snob - i've repped for some at least borderline cruddy stuff on these threads (Dead Silence anybody?), but it kinda blows my mind that this awful film has fans.

next up: event horizon. i'm only a few minutes in, but it's already 1000% better than either of the 2 previously mentioned.

Candyman was filmed at my alma mater... a worse, more horrifyingly ugly college campus you will never find.

Event Horizon is great.... Sunshine stole so much from it...

ok so this is a total spin in a different direction, but just watched Aftermath (short by Nacho Cerda) and afterwards looked it up on imdb and was totaly blown away by the fact that it was made in 1994. Absolute fish out of water and I'm wondering if there was anything else out like it at the time, because i dont remember any other films like it from then, and if there was some sort of humorless clinical ubergore thing going on its news to me (note: i am not sure what to think about it yet, and im not sure its a horror film per se? certainly doesnt look or feel like a mid 90's film tho)

I just saw Exorcist III and it was such a snooze.

is that the one w/the lady crawling on the ceiling in the hospital? because if so it is completely terrible

Yes! It was supposed to be sooooo good for a sequel and this one famous super-scary scene (which was totally spoiled by already knowing about it). I wrote a bit more about it on ILF

ugggh i fucking hate that movie, got dragged to it on a date when it came out and it was just torturously bad and of course she thought it was the scariest thing ever which led to a silent post movie car ride.

but still, that nurse was pretty LOL and sort of made it worth watching.

ahh, exorcist III isn't that great, but it's got half an hour's worth of brad dourif raving like a champion, and i count it a success just for that.

Event Horizon is great.... Sunshine stole so much from it..

lol Event Horizon is the biggest rip-off out there.

yeah, was gonna say... i loved event horizon at the time, and was happy to find that i loved it just as much when i watched it last week. but storywise, it's just a goofy frankenstein mishmash of alien and hellraiser. on the other hand, as derivative (and silly) as it is, it's extremely effective and looks fantastic from beginning to end. worth watching for the production design alone, especially when it comes to the EH herself. the drive room is beautiful and terrifying and so goddam bizarre. and the bridge, with its mysterious alcoves and tiled columns, like some kind of egyptian tomb/lavatory. normally, i'd dock a movie for being so entirely unoriginal in its storytelling, but i think EH overcomes its obvious debts by being so convincing and creative about all the secondary details. last act is too ridiculous by half, but up to that point, it's nearly great.

until it went all slasher in the final reels, Sunshine seemed to me more like a rip-off of Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations," with a truckload of 2001 thrown in for good measure.

re: Aftermath. nothing quite like it at the time. Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes had already done the autopsy-suite footage trip, and Nekromantik was '86. but nobody had the audacity to combine them before Cerdà.

i like Aftermath, but i LOVE Genesis. and if you do, too, make an effort to see Karim Hussain's exquisite La Dernière Voix. you won't regret it.

was gonna say that aftermath was unique in its moment, but that you could maybe look back to nekromantic. and the japanese "guinea pig" series (esp. the 1st couple). but hj beat me to it, so hj otm. in retrospect, though they were more talked about than seen at the time, these films -- "underground" atrocity exhibitions that were treated as unholy grails by 90s horror fan mags like film threat, cinema sewer, asian cult cinema, rue morgue and so on -- laid the groundwork for a lot of contemporary horror. especially for a definition of horror that has more to do with transgression and endurance than with the formal roots of the genre. survival horror, torture porn, exploitation as horror, etc.

without the legends attached to films like aftermath, salo, thriller and men behind the sun in superfan circles, you probably wouldn't have mainstream audience interest in films like hostel, the devil's rejects, eden lake or martyrs.

I wish someone like you wd write an academic paper on this.

In the middle of Village Of The Damned and it's probably one of the spookiest things I done ever seen yall

Yo guys I just saw Candyman (via Netflix streaming on my iPhone lol don't tell David Lynch) and it was seriously awesome. What a fucking incredible score.

***SPOILERS***

I kind of wish she was just crazy the whole time though. It's sort of how I was reading the film until the very end so now I want to go back and rewatch it.

***END SPOILERS***

ok so i mentioned "the ugly" on the other thread, but for the sake of proper organization or whatever, ill talk about it here. 1997 new zealand silence of the lambsy slasher hybrid, super clinical in the way it rolls out the death scenes but dipped in this odd surreal landscape, lots of clear nods to non-reality and told mostly through flashbacks that sorta bleed into the present. another heavily misanthropic bleak low budgeter, which i kind of liked but was at the same time a little disappointed by because of how it oversells the weirdness signifiers (chucklehead asylum security particularly egregious here). overall it was ok

Watching a batshit Japanese gross-out film called Naked Blood which is completely fucking nuts (prob bcz it is the first real Japanese gore film I've seen). I just watched someone ***SPOILER WARNING*** cut off pieces of and eat her vagina before going for/pulling out/consuming her eyeball.

If you want to click here you can see screencaps of the eye thing

Watching a batshit Japanese gross-out film called Naked Blood which is completely fucking nuts (prob bcz it is the first real Japanese gore film I've seen). I just watched someone ***SPOILER WARNING*** cut off pieces of and eat her vagina before going for/pulling out/consuming her eyeball.

― gucci gucci bertolucci bergman kurosawa (Stevie D(eux)), Sunday, May 29, 2011 11:18 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark

one of my favorite movies ever. concentrating on the grue does it a massive disservice, imo. but yeah, it's pretty gross.

Is it really?? I was under the impression it was sort of just some random/disposable/mediocre throwaway Japanese horror film! Does it have some sort of legendary rep/cult following?

also, this fucking cactus

Does it have some sort of legendary rep/cult following?

dunno. but it really is one of my favorite movies (a cast of thousands). love the super quiet vibe and sharp photography during the intro, the weird relationships that develop, and the uh ... places everything goes before the grand finale. it's surreal and genuinely convincing in that without being at all clear about what it's trying to say/address. plus oddly romantic, a huge plus in my book.

ALSO, THIS FUCKING CACTUS

i mean, it's not the philadelphia story, but...

OK Whoa, that ending. You are pretty OTM abt all of those things. I really need to stop pre-categorizing movies before I've even seen them.

I'm going to watch Tokyo Gore Police next bcz it looks really wacky and maybe avant-gardey. Is this remotely accurate?

i guess it's more wacky than avant-gardey, but it's got its moments. good times!

nowhere near so strange as naked blood tho

For serious, please school me here. I've seen this and Audition, and I'm watching Tetsuo: The Iron Man soon. What are the essentials here? I'm a fan of slick/well done stuff (which is maybe why I didn't adore Naked Blood) but I'm trying to be open minded. List the best/your faves!

you asking specifically about asian/japanese horror? geez, i'm hardly expert. love iron man, though, so that's a good start. sequel's okay, but not a patch. basically i love oddball genre movies and anything that creates a sense of dreamlike otherworldliness, but a lot of the most celebrated/infamous asian horror flicks are too brutally wrenching for my tastes. i appreciate audition for what it is, for instance, but i can't call it a personal favorite, you know? naked blood works for me because sadism doesn't seem to be the primary point, and cuz most of the gore is ridiculous enough to soften the blow. like, it's not trying to convince you that shit's really real. somewhat similar movies i do like:

house: amazing girlschool haunted house flick, "has to be seen to be believed." recently on criterion, so a good print's easy to find.
blind beast: sexual psychothriller about a blind sculptor and the model he imprisons & terrorizes. beautiful & crazy.
thirst: wonderfully unpredictable korean vampire movie from oldboy director chan-wook park. my favorite of his films, fits your "slick/well done" criteria.
branded to kill: not horror at all - an experimental/oddball gangster flick from seijun suzuki. so rad, another all-time favorite.
stacy: ultra-cheap & parodic zombie comedy with a very disturbing subtext. neither slick nor well done, but i found it perversely moving.
save the green planet!: strange korean "comedy" about a messed-up man's attempt to save the earth from aliens. maybe. or maybe not. strange, funny, grisly and rather sad.
uzumaki: an entire town is slowly drawn into a series of disturbing spirals, for reasons unknown. inventive as hell on an obviously limited budget.
kairo: like naked blood, a strange and obviously metaphorical horror film that won't quite explain itself. low-key but excellent.
suicide circle, noriko's dinner table and strange circus: three films by shion sono. suicide circle is the most famous in the states, but noriko's dinner table (a sequel of sort) and strange circus are far better. the latter is extremely transgressive, at least borderline tasteless, so fair warning.
visitor Q: uh, while we're pushing boundaries... takashi miike at his most depraved. i can't say i really enjoy it, but it certainly does leave a mark.
the happiness of the katakuris: miike in a somewhat more friendly mode. a zombie comedy musical about family togetherness (same theme as visitor Q, oddly). the best, see it now!
wild zero: kitchen sink blend of greaser punk musical, sci-fi zombie splatter and queer romance. a mess, but a hell of a ride.
tears of the black tiger: insanely over-the-top thai "western" melodrama, one of the most relentlessly stylized films i've ever seen
a tale of two sisters: another slickly executed korean film, this one a horror mystery about girlhood, ghosts and mysterious identity.
rubber's lover and 964 pinocchio: two cheap, seemingly homemade industrial art films from shozin fukui. fetishy and super abrasive in the tetsuo mode, if not so well developed.

Oh House I've already got on DVD (and T-shirt!). Tale of Two Sisters I was really disappointed by, though.

ah well...

i'd agree that ToTS isn't the greatest thing ever. i liked it well enough, but don't love it ― to tell you the truth, i included it here mostly cuz it's popular, entertaining (imo), and slicker than most of my favorites. of the films i listed, not including house, i'd most recommend thirst, branded to kill, save the green planet!, uzumaki, kairo, noriko's dinner table, and happiness of the katakuris.

i disliked 'strange circus' a lot, thought it was really cheap & exploitative & i guess pretentious in a literal way

strange circus is all those things, and then some. cheap, crass and leeringly exploitative to the point where i felt squicky about watching it ― and insanely pretentious to boot!* but it's also wonderful looking, genuinely dreamlike (at times), visually inventive (dad on TV! the red schoolrooms!), and mysterious/gripping. the big reveal at the end is one of the most memorably bonked pieces of filmmaking i've ever seen. sleazebucket sam fuller shit at full throttle. and i love masumi miyazaki to death.

* fwiw, miike's visitor Q has similar faults, but is funnier and more balls-out.

i guess i like dreamlike, shocking, lush and overripe more than just about anything else in film. a feverish density of imagination in service to whatever, but especially at the intersection of the romantic and the horrific. so brian de palma, david lynch, kenneth anger, guy maddin, valerie and her week of wonders, daughters of darkness, don't look now, repulsion, the hour of the wolf, bride of frankenstein, the night of the hunter, la morte vivante ― that kind of thing. leads me to indulge exploitative trash more than i probably should...

Oh also just to clarify I was more addressing hypergory "how much can you handle" type shit (like "Naked Blood" and "Audition") but this is making me realize I am embarassingly unacquainted w/ Asian horror at all. I still haven't seen Oldboy!!

Me + Abb + Viceroy baout to watch The People Under The Stairs tonight I think.

Also on my to-do list:

Children of the Corns II and III
Village of the Damned
Halloween 6, maybe

God, People Under The Stairs was soooooo baaaaaad and sloppy and inconsistent and just not good in so many ways :(

So many questions!!

Like, for one thing the actual people under the stairs A) are barely explained B) have very little to do with the film. Also it seems like the film is trying REALLY REALLY HARD to have some sort of message re: racial politics but can't decide on which message or how to present any of them. Also there were all these weird sort of comedic bits w/ all the shrill yelling and screaming from the mom but it wasn't, like, *supposed* to be funny or something, but you couldn't really take any of it seriously? And Dad's psycho Jim Carrey shtick was totally awful. And why the fuck were there all of these gaps between the walls w/ no electrical wiring or plumbing? Gah, that bothered me so much!!

rewatched event horizon last night and holy fuck man, i really love that movie

hardware on the other hand didnt hold up nearly as well - theres some great stuff in there, but theres a bunch of mess as well

When a Stranger Calls Back

surprised by this one. outdoes the original by leaps and bounds (whereas the original was overreliant on the first 20 minutes). Made for Showtime in the 90s, it was your typical 90s bloodless psychological horror movie with the eerie, nondescript strings throughout.

A bit like Nightmare on Elm Street 3, in that a character from the original film is there to help the new main character cope with their trauma while simultaneously reliving their own. Carol Kane is back, now a counselor at a college. Charles Durning is also back, as Carol Kane calls him up when local police brush the main character (Julia) aside as being a "hysterical woman".

Very much a feminist piece in examining how dismissively police tend to treat women and their reports of abuse. Also looks at gaslighting and abusive relationships. Even how well-meaning allies can screw up.

Baddie is portrayed by Gene Lythgow, who practically disappeared and did very few movies after this, and only a little television. Gives an incredible performance as a disturbed ventriloquist who has an uncanny ability to become invisible.

entire movie has this atmosphere of dread - nobody, even the extras, seems to be living a happy existence. some really good framing, too. there's one well-staged scene towards the end where Durning is shouting down the street at the baddie in the rain,and comes ever so close to catching him. some brilliant moments of camouflage as well.

I really hated this era of horror. yeah, you can find good stuff in every era, but my criteria is "how likely was I to be able to see a good horror flick in my local theatre", and this era has the lowest hit rate.

idk everything seemed to be too cleaned up and sanitized, like my friend had me over to watch shit like Phantoms or Mimic or The Relic and I had to eventually tell him "I'd rather lick my own ass than watch antoher one of these films"