Entertainment Swindon

The 1990s were a decade of transition, experimentation, and innovation in horror cinema. Slasher movies were on their way out and more inteligent horror stories with depth and stories were finding their way onto the big screen. Entertainment Swindon have put together the ultimate 90s Horror Film Guide to keep you company on the sofa this Hallowed season…

Unfortunately for the 90s, its a decade followed the 80s, one of the greatest decades of horror movies. As well, the 1990s had a somewhat bad reputation of horror movies that wasnt fully deserved, as there were some milestone movies that influenced the genre even to this very day.

Movies such as The Blair Witch Project, that was ground breaking in many ways. A movie that used the internet as a primary source of promoting the movie, which if you asked the average person, they genuinly thought they were going to watch a true story showing real footage from a camera recovered in the wood. If it wasnt for The Blair Witch Project, we would not have movies such as the Paranormal franchise.

The 90s saw a departure from the slasher movies, with fun and experimentation. From gory horror comedies, to sci-fi action. The 1990s also had its fair share of innovation with franchises and trends that carried on beyond the end of the decade. To illustrate how great the 90s really was. So here we go, here is Entertainment Swindon’s Top Horror Movies of the 90s:

No1 – The Silence of the Lambs (1991):

In 1992, The Silence of the Lambs did something unimaginable! A horror movie for horror that won an Academy Award for Best Picture. The film, directed by Jonathan Demme, also snagged a Best Actor Oscar for Anthony Hopkins and a Best Actress award for Jodie Foster. Three Academy Awards!

Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Foster as FBI Academy student Clarice Starling, develop a strange friendship based on their roles as outsiders. Lecter a depraved serial killer, and Starling, an FBI cadet who faces endless misogyny from her male cohorts. Together they search for a serial killer known as “Buffalo Bill” whose M.O. is that he skins his victims alive. ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ is in our opinion, the best horror movie of the decade, and one of the best ever. A mix of horror and thriller, with plenty of moments to give you a jump. Not your typical horror, especially coming off the back of the decade of slasher movies, but a movie with a great script, great actors, iconic unforgettable scenes and storyline.

No2 – Scream (1996):

Scream would end up 30years later continue to spawn movies and a tv series continuing the biggest horror franchise since Friday the 13th and Halloween.

In the early 1990s, the American slasher movie was dying an undignified death. Sequels to franchises that were born in the 1980s were decreasing in quality, and new slasher movies tended to rely on gimmicky killers and comedic plots to grab the public’s waning attention. Then ‘Scream’ came along and made the aging slasher formula feel fresh and exciting, with a great plot and keeping you guessing who ghost face is.

Scream is a postmodern, self-referential homage to the horror movie genre that plays on the fact that its audience knows the “rules” of slasher films. Rather than being a parody of the slasher genre though, Scream honours the format while creating a new, modern interpretation of it. The influence of Scream was felt across the entirety of horror for years, even today. This is the huge reason why it is one of the best horror movie from the 90s. It could have easily been placed No1, it was a very tough choice, but the chemistry between Hopkins & Foster in Silence of The Lambs, pipped it to the top spot. That, plus the fact that it’s a highly entertaining movie by one of the masters of horror, Wes Craven.

No3 – Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992):

For me, one of the best Dracula movies ever made. Director Francis Ford Coppola’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is a stunning example of gothic horror that is mostly faithful to the original novel.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula tells the story of Count Dracula (Gary Oldman) as he searches for Mina (Winona Ryder) who he believes is the reincarnation of his long-dead wife. The cast is perfect! Including Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker, and Tom Waits as Renfield.

As good as the acting is though, the most memorable aspect of the movie has to be its incredible visual gothic style which won Academy Awards for makeup and costume design.

No4 – Misery (1990):

This movie has to be placed in the top 5! This was an age before the internet was at everyones fingertips, an age before mobile phone obsession, an age where humans gathered round at work and chatted about what they did at the weekend and the movie they saw at the cinema. Misery was on everyone lips! Words of shock and You have to go watch this movie! It was a movie where everyone watching felt the pain, cringing up in their seat as a sledgehammer is smashed into Novelist Paul Sheldon’s ankles to stop him from escaping the deranged superfan Annie Wilkes. Today, you don’t have to explain what you saw, you just have to say “That Scene” and there isn’t a person you speak to that doesn’t know what you are referencing.

The movie is about famed novelist Paul Sheldon who is taken in by his superfan, Annie Wilkes, after a chance rescue when he gets into a car accident during a blizzard. After he attempts to escape her remote cabin, she hobbles him with a sledgehammer to the ankles. The power of Misery lies in the performance of Kathy Bates who gracefully blends dark humour and terrifying madness into Annie Wilkes while still making her feel as if someone like her could actually exist in the real world. This is what really makes this movie once of the scary movies you will what, you really watch, feeling there really could be a deranged superfan out there in real life that makes this movie jump out of fiction and feel like a real life story.

No5 – Se7en (1995):

“Whats in the box!” The line that anyone who’s watched this movie will never forget. Morgan Freeman stars as a cynical veteran detective teamed who is teamed up with a hotheaded new partner played by Brad Pitt. The two of them hunt for a serial killer who they quickly realise is selecting his victims for committing the Seven Deadly Sins—envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, and wrath.

The film is essentially a crime thriller, but director David Fincher’s unrelentingly dark tone and suitably horrific unforgettable finale helps edge it over into the horror genre.  Se7en also contains some of the best scares seen in any mainstream movie from the 1990s.

No6 – The Blair Witch Project (1999):

I will not apologise for putting The Blair Witch Project this high up in our top Horror Movies of the 90s. This movie is not only one of the most influential movies of the 90s, it’s one of the most influential movies of the horror genre that still today influences horror movie makers today.

I remember walking out of the cinema in Greenbridge with a group of friends thinking what an awesome movie! Wow! So clever! Not one of my friends agreed, they thought they had just wasted their evening and money of a crap movie made by a couple of students. For me, I thought it was genius!

The Blair Witch Project was catapulted to the forefront of mainstream horror in 1999 thanks to its unique style, clever marketing, and word of mouth. The movie is follows three film students who get hopelessly lost in the forests of Maryland while attempting to document a local legend, the titular Blair Witch.

The film popularised the “found footage” style, and its innovative online marketing played up the idea that the movie was supposedly pieced together from actual footage of three missing people. A buzz was created, and the film became a surprise hit. While The Blair Witch Project could earn its spot on this list based on innovative genius alone, the movie is great just by itself. The style makes the movie feel real, tension is built slowly, and the finale is restrained enough to feel believable without going overboard like many future found footage movies would go on to do.

No7 – Stephen King’s It (1990):

Some will say, this is not a movie… Well, OK, I understand your argument, but I disagree, this was a movie made for TV broken up into two parts.

Stephen King, himself wasn’t actually keen or interested in the idea of attempting horror on TV. But luckily for us, ABC pushed and decided to go ahead with adapting ‘It’ to the small screen in a two part film, which went on to be one of the most iconic Stephen King movies and in fact one of the most iconic scary horrors ever.

The two-part movie adapts the story of a group of misfits, known as the ‘Losers Club’, who come together as kids and later as adults to fight against a mysterious supernatural presence killing children in their hometown. The limits of what could be shown on television forced filmmakers to scale back some of the more gruesome aspects of Stephen King’s novel, thereby increasing the story’s focus on character development, making it one of the best psychological horrors ever made.

While the limited budget caused some of the more elaborate special effects to miss their mark, this TV movie really worked, especially due to Tim Curry’s iconic & terrifying portrayal of Pennywise the Dancing Clown scarred legions of kids and adults alike.

No8 – The Sixth Sense (1999):

A boy who communicates with spirits seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.

Not only one of the best horror movies ever made, but one of the best movies ever made!

This extremely clever script brought alive by Bruce Willis & Hayley Joel Osment written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan follows child psychologist Malcolm Crowe played by Willis and his patient Cole Sear played by the young Hayley Joel Osment who are working through the boys issues, particularly the issue of seeing ghosts everywhere.

If you lived through the 90s, you’ll remember Osment’s famous line “I see dead people.” Osment was robbed at the Academy Awards, his performance was the single best child performance of all time.

Everyday life interjected with brief moments of disturbing supernatural images makes The Sixth Sense one of the most memorable movies of the 90s, and its finale is widely regarded as one of the best twist endings of all time. For those who know, I don’t need to explain, so for those who have shockingly never seen this movie, I will button my lips and just let you see for yourself. Anyone thats says they worked out the ending before the final scene is a liar. This movie is a flawless piece of perfection.

No9 – Interview With a Vampire:

The basic plot of Interview with the Vampire involves a decades-old vampire, Louis (Brad Pitt), telling his life story to a reporter. Louis’s story focuses on his time with Lestat (Tom Cruise), the vampire who sired him, and Claudia (Kirsten Dunst), a ten-year-old girl also sired by Lestat. The film was a hit thanks not only to the elegant portrayal of vampires from its leads, but also thanks to its strong emphasis on gothic horror and its different take on how vampires immortality was and still is portrayed as something sexy and glamourous.

Although the journalist interviewing Louis is intent on being turned, Interview With a Vampire doesnt follow the usual glamourisation of vampires, instead it focuses on the doom of immortality, showing vampirism as an endless sadness, much like how the 1922 Nosferatu did, which makes it the great movie it is.

The movie stays true to the vision of Anne Rice’s novel, a film that shows what it might be like to live the life of a vampire. In the opening scenes, set in San Francisco, the 200-year-old vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac submits to an interview by a journalist played by Christian Slater, just as any terrorist or serial killer might do today with an exclusive Sky News interview we see today. His story begins in the late 1700s, in New Orleans, that peculiar city where even today all things seem possible, and where, after losing his wife and daughter, he threw himself into a life of grief and debauchery. His path crossed that of the vampire Lestat, who transformed him into a vampire, and ever since he has wandered the world’s great cities, feeding on the blood of his victims.

No10 – Army of Darkness (1993):

Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up because Sam Raimi’s 1992 cult splatstick classic is a must watch this Halloween!!!

This direct sequel to Evil Dead 2 finds, wisecracking department-store clerk Ash Williams played by Bruce Campbell, who finds himself transported by the Necronomicon (Book of the Dead) back to medieval times.

What the world needed was a hero, what they got was him! Ash is left to heroically fight back against a new (or rather, old) Deadite scourge, but Ash is only interested in getting back home. Bruce Campbell in peak anti-hero form in ‘Army of Darkness’, making the movie one of the most fun and ultimate quotable horror comedies of all time.

This movie is pure unadulterated freakishly fun and explosive film from start to finish, full of laughs, action, thrills and gore.

No11 – From Dusk Till Dawn:

The is no list than a list with a Quintin Tarantino movie on it! From Dusk Till Dawn, one of the greatest genre mash-ups of all time.

The movie starts out as a stylish crime thriller, most certainly not a horror, in fact the start would be more the style of Desperado (1995) directed and written by Robert Rodriguez before the main characters, brothers Richard (Quentin Tarantino) and Seth Gecko (George Clooney) end up kidnapping Jacob Fuller, a widowed preacher played by Harvey Keitel and his two children Kate (Juliette Lewis) and Scott (Ernest Liu), before stopping at a titty bar in the middle of nowhere on the Mexico/US border.

Everything seems all fine, until the whole bar turns into vampires. From here on in, the movie turns into a gorefest tribute to classic horror and exploitation films in an incredibly fun way with plenty of laughs, gore, nudity, and violence in this pulpy movie that has gone on to be a cult classic.

No12 – The Crow (1994):

This would sadly be Brandon Lee’s last movie appearance, Lee died from a wound on set, caused by a firearm malfunction. On 31st March 1993, the lead tip from a bullet from a previous scene had stayed in the barrel of a handgun and ruptured a major blood vessel when a blank was shot at Lee.

In the scripted moment not seen in the finished movie, Eric played by Lee is shot by ruffian Funboy (Michael Massee), as cameras rolled, Lee was shot in the abdomen with the lead tip of the bullet left in the barrel.

Brandon Lee, son of legendary cinematic martial artist Bruce Lee, stars as Eric Draven, a young musician who is murdered along with his fiancé on Devil’s Night, the night before Halloween. Eric rises from the dead one year later and goes on a determined campaign of vengeance not for himself, but for the love of his life. Though it is more of a vigilante film, ‘The Crow’ has enough darkness and gothic influences to qualify as a horror film as well.

No13 – Candyman (1992):

I remember seeing this movie for the very first time, and boy did it get me in serious trouble! Sat around the TV, the family on leave from the army, we pop in the rented movie Candyman, me being me I jump up and call Candyman in the living room mirror five times making my sister scream and my dad go Hulk nuts lol!!!

Based on a Clive Barker short story and adapted to take place in early 90s Chicago, ‘Candyman’ is about an urban legend, a man with a hook for a hand who appears if you say his name five times in front of a mirror.

Genre-film icon Tony Todd plays the titular Candyman, bringing a smart and scary horror villain to the screen in a time when many horror villains were kind of goofy.  Candyman is an intelligent horror film that touches on timeless social issues while delivering visceral thrills, and that is a big reason why it is so fondly remembered by myself and horror fans decades after its release.

No14 – The Devil’s Advocate (1997):

A film that deserved cult classic from the start, not only did it star the legendary Al Pacino that excels in this great script brought to the screen alongside the brilliant Keanu Reeves who stars as Kevin Lomax, a brilliant lawyer from Florida who wins cases, he never loses.

Offered a high-paid job as at a Manhattan law firm led by John Milton, Lomax accepts, but quickly begins to fall towards temptation while his wife Mary Ann (Charlize Theron) starts having disturbing visions. There’s something wrong in John Milton’s law firm, and it all starts with Milton himself.

The premise of a lawyer actually being evil sounds like one big cliche surrounding all defence lawyers, but ‘The Devil’s Advocate’ is a highly entertaining supernatural horror movie that builds and builds towards the big finale where Milton reveals his true self and vision for Lomax in a memorable finish.

No15 – Event Horizon (1997):

The year is 2047, a crew is sent to investigate the re-appearance of the Event Horizon, as spaceship that was thought to have been lost beyond our solar system seven years ago.

Re-appearing in orbit around Neptune, the Event Horizon is a ghost ship that holds a dark secret which the rescue team should have left uncovered. Director W.S. Anderson (of the Resident Evil franchise) puts together an outstanding cinematic psychological horror in space that over the years has become a cult classic and one that cant be left off the list of top horror movies from the 90s.

No16 – The Ninth Gate (1999):

Director Roman Polanski directs with Johnny Depp starring in this story about a rare book dealer called Dean Corso (Johnny Depp). Tasked by Boris Balkan (Frank Langella) to locate the last two remaining copies of The Nine Gates of the Shadow Kingdom, a satanic manuscript published in Venice in 1666, by Aristide Torchia, who legend has it, adapted the engravings from the work of Satan himself.

As Corso searches for the books, he finds himself drawn into a dark world of Satanism and murder to the point he even encounters the devil. The movie is an oppressive film noir. If you are a fan of intrigue in your horror movies, then this is very much a movie you should watch.

Roman Polanski’s “The Ninth Gate,” a satanic thriller, opens with a spectacularly good title sequence and goes downhill from there–but slowly, so that all through the first hour there is reason for hope, and only gradually do we realize the movie isn’t going to pay off. It has good things in it, and I kept hoping Polanski would take the plot by the neck and shake life into it, but no. After the last scene, I underlined on my note pad: What? The film stars Johnny Depp in a strong if ultimately unaimed performance as Dean Corso, a rare-book dealer whose ethics are optional. He’s hired by Boris Balkan (Frank Langella), a millionaire collector who owns a copy of The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of the Shadows, published in Venice in 1666 by one Aristide Torchia–who, legend has it, adapted the engravings from the work of Satan himself. Two other copies of the book survive, and Balkan wants Depp to track them down and compare the engravings.

No17 – I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997):

The slasher genre movie was back! ‘Scream’ made a huge splash in 1996, and I Know What You Did Last Summer was arguably the most prominent movie to ride the wave of renewed interest in teen horror.

If you loved Scream, and let’s face it, who didn’t love Scream?! You will definitely love this movie! Plenty of plot twists and scares, not as good as Scream, but still worth a watch on the sofa with popcorn at the ready.

Written by Kevin Williamson (who also wrote Scream), the movie is about four friends who cover up their accidental killing of a stranger just before they all go their separate ways after graduating high school. One year later, someone knows what they did and is out for revenge. 

I Know What You Did Last Summer is classic 90s teen horror, complete with popular TV stars from the time, including Jennifer Love Hewitt (Party of Five) and Sarah Michelle Gellar (Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

No18 – Sleepy Hollow (1999):

Loosely based on “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” by Washington Irving, Sleepy Hollow stars Johnny Depp as Ichabod Crane, a police constable who is sent to the secluded upstate village of Sleepy Hollow to investigate the recent decapitation murders of three locals.

Now, first off I will say how can you not love this movie?! I am a huge Tim Burton fan, ever since watching one of the best ever Batman movies of all time, ‘Batman’ starring Michael Keaton, the Gotham backdrop to the Batman story was just invented for Tim Burton to get his hands on it! And Sleepy Hollow is also a perfect story for Tim Burton, no one else could ever have made the film as good as Burton did!

Though the film takes plenty of liberties with the original story, director Tim Burton created a nicely gothic horror movie with an extremely strong visual design.

Burton’s gift for the bizarre and eccentric special effects and backdrops, along with the amazing performance by Johnny Depp made this movie the best looking horror since Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’! I don’t care that it practically tossed the Washington Irving book away, I’ve never read it and never will, Burtons creation was perfect!

No19 – Halloween H20 (1998):

The body-count is reasonable, considering we’re dealing with a classic horror killer. Each of the deaths feels natural, in as much as murder can feel natural. We’ve been given enough development for the secondary characters to care about their safety.

Halloween H20 is a movie of its time, the 90s was a decade of movies such as I Know What You Did Last Summer, which was a great movie and why we put it on our list, but H20 just didn’t have the grit of the first two Halloween movies, like most sequels, you are often left disappointed. That said, it still is a good movie, with a good healthy bodycount, you just have to stop comparing it to its original and watch it for the movie it is and enjoy it.

The movie follows on from Halloween II, forgetting all other Halloween movies that came before, ignoring Halloween 4, 5 and 6, and of course Halloween 3 which to be honest has nothing to do with the Michael Myers story anyway. H20 fast forwards two decades after the events of Halloween II where Laurie Strode has survived the 1978 massacre. Now living in Northern California under an assumed name, she works as a headmistress at a private school.

But it’s not far enough to escape the kitchen knife wielding Michael Myers. Bringing back Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis was the best thing they could do, to reignite the franchise.

Nostalgia and easter eggs are in abundance throughout the movie which is another reason I personally love this edition to the franchise. In the scene where we see Ms. Tate calling on a student in her class. Molly, played by Michelle Williams, gives an answer which ends with the phrase, “…it was his fate.” This mirrors Laurie’s answer about Fate being an immovable force in the original ‘Halloween’ movie.

There’s a great Easter Egg paying reference to Psycho where the character Norma (Played by Psycho star Janet Leigh) walks to her car, as a piece of music from Psycho is played. As she approaches her car, we see a car just like the one she drives in Psycho, even down to the same number plate! Thats not the only reference to Psycho, but theres too many to go on about here. Another scene with Ms Tate when she’s on the phone watching the school buses leave the school, she say “Mrs. Cheney, can I call you back?,” referencing Lon Chaney, an actor famous for an array of movie monsters.

Other Easter Eggs include the Mr Sandman song played in the first two Halloween films, plays in the opening scene with Marion, and later comes on the radio in Laurie’s car, prompting her to switch it off. A couple other great Easter Eggs to look out for is the scene on Marion’s front porch where one of the decorations is a cenobite from the movie Hellraiser, and one of the officers investigating Marion’s death is named Fitzsimmons, the same as the police chief in Friday the 13^th Part III.

The ending of H20 where we see Laurie & Michael come face to face, as they reach out to each other, the music slows and in a moment of clarity, Laurie swings the axe and ends the threat of Michael Myers. A good strong ending, one that could wrap up the franchise in a neat way. However in the next sequel we find out Michael is still alive, and Laurie in fact killed an innocent man in Michaels mask.

No20 – Arachnophobia (1990):

In this horror-comedy—one reviewer referred to it as a “thrillomedy”

With recent reports on the news that rat size spiders have been reintroduced back into the UK, this is a movie you will want to want with the lights on!

The movie tells the story of a killer spider form South America that travels to the United States in a coffin and begins breeding and terrorising the citizens of a small American town. Jeff Daniels stars as a bright young doctor afflicted with such a fear of spiders that it literally paralyses him, and John Goodman gives a typical fantastic performance as a wisecracking, no-nonsense exterminator. 

Arachnophobia is certainly not for the squeamish! Its silly, its comedic, but if you are someone that is scared of spiders, then this movie will be the scariest movie ever made and will make you look under your bed, have you on edge every waking moment of your life for weeks after watching this movie, and as for sleeping, you will pull back the bed sheets before you even feel safe to get in bed, you’ll be sleeping with the light on with one eye open. But if you can handle seeing lots and lots of real spiders, then it’s an incredibly fun movie.

No21 – Leprechaun (1993):

I was planning to stop at the top 20, but I felt that I couldn’t finish the Top Horror Movies of the 90s without including Leprechaun. A great movie? ahhhh, yes, no… It’s ridiculous comedy and absurd kills just make it a must watch and must need to put it on the list!

‘It’s Out! It’s out of the crate!’

Leprechaun might not be the most well-made movie on this list, but it earns its place on the list thanks to its blending of ridiculous comedy, absurd kills, and, most importantly, Warwick Davis. The movie features Jennifer Aniston in her first lead role in a feature film, but Warwick Davis is the true star as a gleefully evil leprechaun who is as funny as he is menacing. Davis can get downright frightening in this movie, which is no small feat considering how goofy the premise is.

City girl Tory (Aniston) moves into an old house out in the country with her father, but unknown to either of them, there is a leprechaun trapped in a box in the basement. When the four-leaf clover trapping the leprechaun is brushed aside, the diminutive killer sets out on a murderous rampage to find his missing gold.  Leprechaun is a standout horror comedy that led to a long-running franchise as well as inspiring other fairy tale horror movies including Rumpelstiltskin (1995) and Pinocchio’s Revenge (1996).

So what do you guys think? Agree? Disagree? Got some suggestions you would like to share? We would love to read your comments!