It's #ScaryMovieMonth and I've been elbow-deep in '90s horror for reasons, so I thought it might be fun to do a whole marathon celebrating an underrated decade for the genre. I'm right about this!
10 am - The Frighteners (1996, dir. Peter Jackson)
We'll start off with a bang. While I still haven't had my magic screening of The Frighteners in which every single element works, it has more "bang" than most of the horror movies of the decade. Peter Jackson directs his first studio effort like he has something to prove, resulting in an extremely high-energy ghost story in which Michael J. Fox is a con man who can actually see spirits. Jeffrey Combs steals the movie (depending on your taste) as a lunatic FBI agent, but everyone is good in this manic movie that demonstrates early on just how gifted Jackson is at working with digital effects. To think, this was almost a Tales from the Crypt production.
12 pm - Tremors (1990, dir. Ron Underwood)
It's still early so let's keep things fun. I can still remember being a young kid in 1990 and being so sure that on paper Tremors should not work. Instead it works like gangbusters. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward give two of their most likable performances (which is saying a lot) as a pair of small timers who find themselves up against giant subterranean monsters. Director Ron Underwood does such a good job capturing the spirit of a 1950s drive-in movie but updates it all for the '90s. Before some dodgy CG entered in the picture in the back half of the decade, the '90s were a great time for practical effects. Tremors bears that out.
2 pm - Necronomicon: Book of the Dead (1993, dir. Brian Yuzna, Christophe Gans, Shusuke Kuneko)
Ok, now we can get a little more fucked up. This little-seen anthology (it's never even received a US Blu-ray) combines three H.P. Lovecraft stories and gives each to a different director; like any anthology, the results are mixed but more consistent than most. What really makes this one stand out is the incredible effects work from the likes of Screaming Mad George (RIP), John Carl Buechler (RIP), and Christopher Nelson. The imagery these wizards dream up is wild and nightmarish and so, so cool, elevating some stories that are just ok into something truly strange and original. Part of me wanted to program this into the overnight slot so that anyone who falls asleep will wake up to something super fucked up (which is how I was first exposed to the movie when it ran on HBO in the late '90s), but because not enough people have seen it I thought it better to slot it early.
3:45 pm - Habit (1997, dir. Larry Fessenden)
While most of this marathon consists of '90s studio horror, I want to at least spotlight some of the cool indie stuff produced during the decade and Larry Fessenden's New York vampire art film Habit is just about as good as '90s indie horror gets.
A remake of his feature from the early ’80s, it stars Fessenden himself as Sam, a New York hipster who has just lost both his father and his relationship with his girlfriend. He meets a mysterious woman named Anna (Meredith Snaider), to whom he is immediately drawn. As their relationship intensifies, Sam begins to suspect that Anna is more than she seems to be.
Despite its genre trappings, it feels intensely personal, not just because Fessenden himself plays the lead but also because of the specific details he includes both about the protagonist’s life and the ’90s New York “scene” he captures. The movie feels lived in, its relationships feel authentic, and Fessenden makes for an unusual, utterly compelling protagonist. Habit works both as a straight horror movie and as a movie about addiction and self-destruction. It’s territory that has been mined elsewhere in the vampire genre (The Addiction, Thirst), but Fessenden’s take has its own pulse, its own energy. It’s great.
5:45 pm - Body Parts (1991, dir. Eric Red)
There's no way I'm going to program a '90s horror marathon and no include this, one of my very favorite of all '90s horror movies. Jeff Fahey tries his hand at leading man status playing a psychiatrist who has his arm replaced with the arm of a serial killer after a brutal car accident. Before long, the arm has a mind of its own. I love the batshit intensity of Eric Red's movie, the way it gear shifts from a body horror movie into a mad scientist movie without looking back. I wish the Scream Factory Blu-ray had included the original uncut version (some of the footage of which is available to see on YouTube) because it goes even harder. That's the version I'd want to show.
The reason I decided to write this marathon in the first place was so I could rewatch Audition even though I just saw it a few days ago for our podcast. I know it's a weird choice for the Primetime Pizza slot -- it's slow and meditative and eventually a little tough to stomach, especially when we're eating -- but I want to be sure we're all able to give our full attention to what I'm now convinced is director Takashi Miike's masterpiece. This is such a haunting horror movie, one that refuses to leave me in the best way.
9:30 pm - Tales from the Hood (1995, dir. Rusty Cundieff)
After the sadness of Audition, we're going to need a palate cleanser. Tales from the Hood is just that sorbet. Spike Lee produces, Darren Scott writes, and Rusty Cundieff directs a collection of shorts all centered on race and the Black experience in 1990s America. I've been a fan of this one since the 1990s but Adam Riske really deserves the credit for beating the drum as hard as he has.
11 pm - I Still Know What You Did Last Summer (1998, dir. Danny Cannon)
I can't believe we're this late into the marathon and I haven't programmed any slashers yet. I guess that speaks to how the subgenre had fallen off since its heyday in the '80s -- at least until Scream helped revive it in 1996. I'm trying to stay from programming any Screams so instead I'll go with its closest descendent, the I Still Know What You Did Last Summer franchise. I'm programming the follow-up instead of the OG because, well, I think it's better and like it more. It's better directed, has better kills, leans into its own stupid trashiness more, and the tropical locale gives it some amount of novelty. This is also Jeffrey Combs' third appearance in our marathon!
12:45 am - The Washing Machine (1993, dir. Ruggero Deodato)
There was a fair amount of great Italian horror made during the 1990s. This is not one of those. Instead, I've decided to give the late night Italian horror slot to Ruggero Deodato's insane giallo that also serves as the horniest movie the director ever made. Maybe that's not saying much -- we're not talking about Joe D'Amato here -- but this is a fun one for advanced students of Italian horror.
I mentioned on this month's Bordello of Blood commentary that I think Demon Knight belongs in the Top 10 of all '90s horror and I stand by that statement. It's got great effects, a great ensemble, a really clever script that's funny without ever becoming silly or diminishing its own stakes, and great direction from the great Ernest Dickerson. This might be a case in which the Tales from the Crypt branding actually hurts the movie, since it really doesn't feel like the show and might have kept people away. Then again, maybe it got some other people to see it who wouldn't have seen it otherwise, so what do I know?
3:45 am - Cure (1997, dir. Kiyoshi Kurosama).jpeg)
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The first movie in our marathon that I've never seen. Actual J-horror is something of a blind spot for me (seeing so many of the American remakes might have put me off the originals), as is the work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa. This and Pulse are the ones most frequently recommended to me, so I thought it might be cool to include one in the overnight section when we are sleep deprived and the slow-burn creepiness can really work its magic on us.
5:45 am - The Rage: Carrie II (1999, dir. Katt Shea)
These early morning movies need to go down easy, and Katt Shea's extremely '90s sequel/remake to Brian De Palma's classic Carrie should do the job. Emily Bergl stands in for Sissy Spacek as a bullied goth girl out to get revenge for a friend's death; that revenge is worth the cost of admission and far more satisfying than anything you'll see in the new Mike Flanagan Carrie (though bloodlust is not on his mind, to be fair). I wish there was less connective tissue between this and the original, actually, because the presence of Amy Irving's Sue Snell is unwelcome and her fate unworthy of the character. This is a better remake of Carrie than most of the remakes of Carrie.
7:45 am - Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993, dir. Adam Marcus)
The only other slasher in our lineup is barely even a slasher, seeing as Jason barely factors into it and it's more of a body horror movie about an evil spirit that jumps from host to host. One of the most hated in the Friday franchise has always been, for me, one of the most underrated. If we can accept a Halloween movie without Michael Myers, why aren't we able to accept this oddball one-off as well? Especially when it features a sly sense of humor, some really fun practical effects, and a couple of gnarly kills? (The sex tent one remains an all-timer.) Yes, we will definitely be watching the Unrated cut.
9:30 am - From Dusk Til Dawn (1996, dir. Robert Rodriguez)
I'm such a cornball to end with this one, but I've attended 24-hour marathons that close out with From Dusk Til Dawn and trust me when I say that shit plays.
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