Chewers' 100 Scariest Films of the 90's

2.

dir. Jonathan Demme, 1991

 

It puts the lotion in the basket!

 

Iconic.

 

Hopkins. Foster. Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill. We all know this one by heart.

 

By the 90s, we began to see the nightmare icons of the previous decade sink into parody, cheaply produced sequels, & overall irrelevancy. Couple that with a generation of audiences who simply didn't scare easy anymore, a reversal occurred where the decade's most potent figures of terror began to appear in guises of somewhat non-threatening familiarity. When we first lay eyes on Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs, he isn't hacking up teenagers while the soundtrack stabs at our ears in the attempt to make us jump out our seats, he stands motionless - behind glass & in plain sight - eyes focused & smiling. And we piss ourselves.

 

In 1991, Demme's Oscar sweeper became the "how-to-manual" for horror in the post-Reagan era & this began the decade where we began to look in the direction of our neighbors & ask the question, "Do they keep women in a hole in their basement so they can wear their skin?". Yep. These were the years of Dahmer & OJ. And Silence Of The Lambs prepared us for them.

 

Edited by Art Decade - 10/12/11 at 3:51pm

3. In The Mouth Of Madness (1994) dir. John Carpenter

 

Is this one of the best Carpenter movies? Probably not. Is it one of his scariest? Definitely!

4. Ringu (1998, Hideo Nakata)

I'm no great horror buff so I don't know where the Japanese original sits in the canon. It was the first Far Eastern horror I had seen since the Chinese vampire-ghost-Kung Fu wave I seem to remember from Channel 4 late night programming in the early 90s. First time I saw Ringu, I was completely engrossed. By the time Sadako crawled out of the well and through the TV screen, I was petrified. Capturing a nice intersect between banality and nightmare, it stayed with me for weeks.

5. Ghostwatch (1992, Lesley Manning)

The best practical joke the BBC ever pulled, Ghostwatch perfectly emulated the over-the-top light documentaries of its time, fronted by heavyweight TV presenters like Michael Parkinson, then blindsided the audience by springing an atmospheric, chlling ghost story. Mountains of complaints followed, as well as one claim of a boy committing suicide due to the piece, and the BBC have done their best to pretend it never happened ever since.

6. Jacob's Ladder (1990) dir. Adrian Lyne

 

I used to sneak gradual peaks at my dad's VHS tape of this.  I saw the film too young to remember most of the film, but I was completely scarred by sequences like this:

 

 

Maybe it was seeing this too early that put me off of horror for a long time...

 

 

 

6. Audition (1999, Takashi Miike)

 

 

The best kind of horror: makes you care about the victim and then subjects him to horrible, horrible, shit.  The second half undoes any and all lightness during the first half and builds to a punishing and almost unbearable climax.

Audition was the film that taught me to be wary of getting too caught up in hype.  How I WISH I WISH I WISH I could've seen this without having any idea of what I was in for.  Unfortunately, everything about the film was talked up to me by a friend who saw it at a film festival.  By the time I saw the film, I was crawling through the first half waiting for the insanity to begin. 

I mean, damn.

7. Nightbreed (1990) dir. Clive Barker (based on his novel Cabal)

 

 

"Everything is true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live!" 

 

 

 

 

Great story, excellent creature design, great score, and a fun cast....................including David fucking Cronenberg as the villain!  What's not to like? 

 

 

Here's hoping Clive someday makes good on his promise to write Cabal 2.

 

Edited by S.D. Bob Plissken - 10/12/11 at 5:43pm

8.  The Blair Witch Project  (1999)  dir. Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick

 

 

 

The only other really iconic 90's horror film next to Scream, which is funny, because they are polar opposites.  Straight, no-frills terror without a single "wink wink" at the audience.   A lot of folks accused this film of being repetitive and/or boring which I dispute.  The very nature of the dread in this film comes from the slow inevitably of these three characters' demises.    The final 10 minutes of this film are still the best representation of a nightmare brought on the screen this side of David Lynch.  

 

 

9. Candyman (1992, Bernard Rose)

Candyman, Candyman, Candyman...nope, still can't do it. A few jumps scares aside, what I love about this film is the sexual and race politics informing what would otherwise have been a fairly routine stalker movie. Tony Todd also brings gravel voiced charisma and depth, and illuminates the pathos of the wronged slave.I only just found out from Wikipedia that this was a Clive Barker short story first - like I said, I'm no horror connoisseur - and that makes a lot retrospectively clearer.

10. The Frighteners (1996)

 

I'm sure some other Peter Jackson horror movies will be popping up on this list soon, but right now we are focusing on this gem. While everyone wets themselves over Jackson's work on The Lord of the Rings films, this is my favorite movie from him. It starts off like a goofy comedy with Michael J. Fox and some ghosts, but it slowly starts getting weirder and darker as it goes along. Equal parts funny and creepy, I wish this was more successful when first released in the summer of 96. The MVP award for this flick has to go to Jeffrey Combs as Special Agent Milton Dammers.

 

"Sheriff Perry! You are violating my territorial bubble!"

11. Lord of Illusions (1995) dir. Clive Barker

 

 

I love this one more and more every time I watch it.  I don't know why, but it really seems to strike a chord with me.  Great cast too!  As far as I am concerned, all of the five main films that Barker was heavily involved with are great (Hellraiser 1&2, Nightbreed, Candyman, and this).

 

 

 

 

 

"Taste the darkness, D'Amour.  It's waiting for you!"

 

 

12. Tremors.

The perfect B movie with a wonderfully cast pair of leads. The horror for this film is the utter futility the characters feel as they slowly realize that there's no safe place. Hell, a graboid slowly levels a grocery store. A fantastic mix of tension and humor, the movie earns every shudder (as a kid, I was very freaked out by the head under the hat) and every laugh.

 

1996 d. Robert Rodriguez

 

Bad people doing bad things get worse things done to them.  The single most horrifying aspect of this film...Tarantino's acting.

Vampires, Cheech Marin, Cheech Marin, and just for laughs, Cheech Marin.  Oh, and some chica named Salma.

"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are!"
 

13.

dir. Rob Reiner, 1990

 

Trust me...

 

Please NO!

 

..it's for the best.

A perfect Stephen King adaptation if there ever was one. From a screenplay by Butch Cassidy/Princess Bride writer William Goldman, Reiner delivers this terrifyingly meticulous & claustrophobic horror masterpiece starring a then-unknown Kathy Bates in the iconic role that won her the Best Actress Oscar in 1991. Under the "care" of Bates' psycho Annie Wilkes, we wince & grind our teeth with every pain & failure of escape suffered by James Caan's injured writer. And when it's all over, we leave the film with that singular, scarring image burned into our brains: when "hammer met foot". Gahhh!

Edited by Art Decade - 10/12/11 at 6:28pm

14.  The Sixth Sense (1999)

 

 

Ever wonder how M. Night Shyalaman got that huge ego?   Maybe you would have one too if you wrote and directed one of the best ghost stories ever put to film.   So many scary scenes in here.   The girl under the sheet vomiting, the boy being locked in a box where ghosts torment him, the contents of a certain video tape?   Even without the very well done twist ending, we'd still be talking about this film today.   It's essential viewing if you like 70's style moody horror films that get under your skin.

This kinda doesn't count so I won't put it on the list, but Pet Sematary.

 

I was living in the Philippines at the time and it came out there in July 1990. To this day it was the single most terrifying experience I had I a theater. My dad took us to see it (we were taken to see pretty everything and just told to "cover our eyes" during all the sex stuff) and I just couldn't take it when the bike messenger dude came back as the ghost as a guide to the place where the ground is sour. Rewatching it today the film does go overboard with the theatrics, but it still packs a mean punch with a great ending. Plus extra points for the creepiest kid in all cinema.

The best Stephen King adaptation.  Yeah, I said it!

 

15. EXORCIST III (1990) dir. William Peter Blatty

 

EXORCIST III has one of my favorite scares in horror (you all know the one) and is pretty much an all around great movie, even in spite of noticeable studio meddling. George C. Scott gives an awesome performance, world-weary but still full of humanity, cranky but somehow still warm. It's a bit hammy at times but in the best possible way. He has great rapport with Ed Flanders, and really the whole supporting cast is solid. Scare-wise, In addition to the infamous moment in the hallway you've got an old woman doing things that send shivers down your spine (she should battle the old lady from IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS) and excellent use of description and implication to create a serial killer story that is really disturbing without resorting to graphic gore. Brad Douriff is, not surprisingly, perfect as that killer. Confession: this is my favorite EXORCIST film. I understand the importance and impact of the original and respect it as a work of art but it just doesn't scare me at all, whereas this just clicks with me. But even if you wouldn't go that far you have to admit it's really good and a worthy sequel.

Boy, that really wasn't a good decade for horror films. (Not a comment on what's been posted so far, I was just looking at a list of '90s horror. Lots and lots of crap.)

 

Anyway, I nominate:

 

16. Lost Highway (1997, d. David Lynch)

 

Yeah, I always bring up Lynch. That's because he delivers. Without even intending to make horror films, he still comes up with images and scenes people shudder about years later.

 

I give you:

 

Exorcist III shits the bed epically in the last reel (not Blatty's fault), but before that it's an exceptionally well-made adaptation of a book that (A) is very nearly adaptation-proof and (B) is only ever extremely tenuously an Exorcist story; they should've just called the flick Legion.

 

It's too bad Blatty basically said "fuck it" and bagged directing after the studio fuckery here, because The Ninth Configuration is one of my desert-island movies, and whatever's wrong with Exorcist III, the direction (except the ending) isn't it.

 

Also I feel old because more time has elapsed between this film's release and now than had elapsed between the original Exorcist and this film.

Our count is off by one.  Anyway, the road so far....

 

1. Scream (1996) dir. Wes Craven

2. The Silence of the Lambs (1991) dir. Jonathan Demme

3. In the Mouth of Madness (1994) dir. John Carpenter

4. Ringu (1998) dir. Hideo Nakata

5. Ghostwatch (1992) dir. Lesley Manning

6. Jacob's Ladder (1990) dir. Adrian Lyne

7. Audition (1999) dir. Takashi Miike

8. Nightbreed (1990) dir. Clive Barker

9. The Blair Witch Project (1999) dir. Eduardo Sanchez & Daniel Myrick

10. Candyman (1992) dir. Bernard Rose

11. The Frighteners (1996) dir. Peter Jackson

12. Lord of Illusions (1995) dir. Clive Barker

13. Tremors (1990) dir. Ron Underwood

14. Misery (1990) dir. Rob Reiner

15. The Sixth Sense (1999) dir. M. Night Shyamalan

16. The Exorcist III (1990) dir. William Peter Blatty

17. Lost Highway (1996) dir. David Lynch

 

I disagree. It definitely takes a noticeable step down but it doesn't detract from the film that much.

 

18. Seven (1995) dir. David Fincher

 

 

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!?!?!?!?!?!

I'll back you up and agree to its inclusion.  While it certainly didn't stick the landing, it (alongside Scream, Blair Witch, and the Sixth Sense) is ABSOLUTELY one of the most iconic horror properties of the 90s.

Yup, the X Files definitely belong here.   Some great genre tv there.

20.

dir. Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990

 

Pennywise.

 

The end.

Had "IT" in my back pocket.   Great choice.   Since TV is fair game and the 90's sucked in general, I give you....

 

21.  Buffy The Vampire Slayer TV Series

 

 

The OTHER essential geek TV series of the 90's often shaming its big screen (including the movie version years earlier) bretheren and bringing some awesome TV season after season.   Two of its best seasons (2 and 3) aired in the 90's so its inclusion on this list (if we're letting The X Files in) is a no brainer.

I have a bad feeling about this. 

 

100 might be a little optimistic, but for now I submit:

 

22. Mimic (1997) d. Guillermo del Toro

 

I remember seeing this in the theater and at the exact second the creature jumps out and gets the two boys my pager (it was the 90's remember) went off (it was on vibrate). Scared the crap outta me.

 

The thread title really should be changed to "50 Scariest Movies" for now. "100" just ain't gonna happen.

We'll be down to Ernest Scared Stupid by then.  

 

Yes it will.  I know quite a few that haven't been mentioned yet.  Like this one....

 

23. The Night Flier (1997) dir. Mark Pavia

 

 

 

An unjustly forgotten gem chock full of atmosphere!

 

 

 

If I have to post them all myself, I'll do it.

Come on guys, we can dig deep and come up with 100. The 90s were a weak decade for horror but let's not get too hyperbolic. Plus this is the 100 Scariest, not 100 Best Horror. The 70s and 80s threads had documentaries, kids movies, etc. There's still plenty to draw from.

 

24. RAVENOUS (1999) dir. Antonia Bird

 

I'm a little surprised there aren't more western/frontier horror movies. This underappreciated gem shows it's a combination that can work really well. It has just the right amount of dark humor, weirdness, and anachronistic quirks to give it a really unique flavor without stepping on the suspense and creepiness, which build relentlessly in a few major sequences. It also strikes a sweet balance between real world horrors like war, wilderness survival, and (given the setting/time period) cannibalism, and a supernatural undercurrent.

25. Mr. Frost (1990)

 

Jeff Goldblum is great as a self-confessed serial killer who is sent to an asylum and refuses to speak. When he meets a new doctor, played by Kathy Baker, he breaks his silence and tells her he is indeed Satan himself. He may just be telling the truth...

 

26.  Mute Witness (1994) dir. Anthony Waller

 

 

I love this movie and it is incredibly depressing that the director's next effort was An American Werewolf In Paris.  Oh well, at least he got this one right before entering director jail!

 

 

27. Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) dir. Jeff Burr

 

First post here, I'm sorry I wasn't able to dive in on these lists earlier but I've really enjoyed reading them!

 

Anyway, I'm a bit of an apologist for this film.  I definitely think it belongs.

 

Early Viggo and some Ken Foree.  The exchange between Foree's character and the character of Alfredo is pretty hilarious.

Some gruesome scenes as well make for a worthwhile add in my opinion.

"Is it soup yet?"

 

I used to hate Chainsaw III, but it has really grown on me over the years.

 

Anyway, welcome!

28.

dir. Martin Scorsese, 1991

 

Maybe I'm the big bad wolf...

 

The explosively violent intensity of DeNiro sustained over 2 hours of white knuckle terror. Hide your daughters.

29 . Tesis (1996) dir. Alejandro Amenabar

 

 

 

Amenabar's debut effort and a great one at that!

I have a bad feeling about what the bottom 20 are going to look like but if we can fill up a 90's action list, we can do horror.   Anyway, the 90's weren't totally bad.   After all, it had this gem....

 

30. Army of Darkness

 

 

 Not really scary at all but damn if it isn't insanely quotable.

 

As far as this list goes, we'll get to 100.   It's the 100 Funniest Movies of the 90's list that's going to be a real bitch to fill.

Never seen TESIS, need to rectify that.

 

31. CURE (1997) dir. Kiyoshi Kurosawa

 

Kurosawa's greatest achievement has to wait or the 00s list, but CURE is a totally deserving silver medalist. Another unique 90s serial killer film that is creepy in the subtlest, quietest way and all the more effective for it. The film creates a scenario in which normal people commit random acts of violence, often on friends and loved ones, with seemingly no motive. That concept of evil and violence silently creeping into the mundane, everyday world and striking randomly is terrifying.

32. Anaconda (1997)

 

Because having John Voight wink at you after being regurgitated by a snake is nightmare fuel....

 

Taking a slight left-turn . . .

 

33.  SAFE (1995)  dir. Todd Haynes

 

 

Todd Haynes seriously disturbing psychodrama is a tour de force for both Julianne Moore and my own hypochondria.  Moore is a well-off housewife who suddenly discovers she is violently allergic to . . . well, everything.    Despite seeing multiple doctors, she isn't given any answers other than a vaguely-defined "multiple chemical allergy syndrome."  She finally has to no recourse than to join a "safe" commune for other allergy sufferers.  Is she legitimately sick or is it all in her head?   Or both?  The movie offers no definitive answers and really gets under your skin.  

 

 

 

34.

dir. Volker Schlöndorff, 1990

Based on the classic Margaret Atwood novel

 

We pledge allegiance to the Bible. The Old Testament shall be our sole and only Constitution.

 

 

Terrifying. In the near future, war has turned the USA (presumably) into a fundamentalist, Bachmann-esque dystopia & pollution has left 99.9% of all women sterile, Natasha Richardson stars as a fertile woman who is kidnapped by the regime after they kill her husband & child. Soon, she is forced into slavery as a concubine, eventually serving as the "Handmaid" to a government higher-up played by Robert Duvall. Over the course of the film, we follow Richardson as she suffers under the constant threat of hanging, ritually beaten, & raped in the name of Christ & country.

 

A Handmaid's Tale is a dire warning & horrifying vision of a country where separation of church & state is a distant memory & misogyny is the rule of law. Today, when politicians talk about repealing Roe v. Wade or instilling Old Testament dogma into state & federal law, I always think back to this film & think, "Fuck YOU".

Edited by Art Decade - 10/13/11 at 11:06am

I won't watch this movie unless buns are present.

 

 

Wait a minute...is that the Ana Torrent who was the little girl in Spirit of the Beehive? Wow, I need to see this one.

I'm not getting the negativity. The 90s wasn't as special as the 70s or 80s, but lots of good stuff was released during this decade.

 

36. Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)

 

It was only a matter of time before the Tales from the Crypt tv show had a big screen spin-off. When you have people like Joel Silver and Walter Hill behind the scenes on the series, it was bound to happen. What surprised me was the direction this one took. It isn't a anthology movie and, outside of the beginning and end of the movie, the Crypt Keeper is barely in this one. Instead, we get a movie that feels like what would happen if Sam Raimi and John Carpenter met for drinks, proceeded to get hammered, and they started trading story ideas while their designated driver kept notes of the conversation. Between Ernest Dickerson's direction and a game cast, this is one nasty horror/action movie. Plus, it has Dick Miller. How can you hate a movie with Dick Miller?

Edited by JPL - 10/13/11 at 10:38am