After the horror film peaked in the 80s, with auteurs like John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, and Wes Craven releasing iconic, culture-shifting films, the industry initially struggled to pivot in the following decade. Especially given that J-horror began to explode, which led to a few American remakes in the early-2000s. After a renewed sense of ingenuity from Craven with his sublime Scream, the 90s saw a revitalization of the slasher and the taking-apart of genre conventions.
However, before and after that happened, a slew of great, unheralded horror films were released that are not necessarily part of the horror canon. Specifically from filmmakers of color, as mentioned in Robin Coleman’s book Horror Noire: A History of Black American Horror from the 1890s to Present, the 90s proved to be a prosperous period for Black protagonists and filmmakers to unleash their version of horror on the world. They were reflecting on their societal conditions while relishing in the genre to illicit their vision. The 90s have a handful of underrated horror gems, and these are but a few.
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10 Maniac Cop 2
Live Entertainment/Lionsgate
Arguably the best film of William Lustig’s Maniac series, Maniac Cop 2 is a dread-induced, lo-fi slasher and buddy cop procedural through the muck and grime of the New York streets. Following the otherworldly killer cop that takes to fits of vigilantism, but also wild fits of mass murder — in one wild cop shootout that feels beyond the budget of the film’s aesthetic — Lustig paints the streets as one giant prison. With Robert Davi perfectly cast as the scumbag cop tracking the killer down, Maniac Cop 2 sees the supernatural killer team up with a serial killer in a wonderfully sleazy horror film.
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9 Naked Lunch
Alliance Releasing
As two sinister minds across mediums, director David Cronenberg and famed novelist William S. Burroughs was the perfect marriage. Naked Lunch is a drug-fueled, schizophrenic noir that blends elements of body horror with its thematic suggestions of art as politics. Starring Peter Weller as the Burroughs surrogate, he addresses his life, his intuitions, and a barely legible mystery at the center of his drug addictions to put his sexuality front and center. It’s a confusing film, but one of Cronenberg’s more rewarding when you stick it out.
8 Event Horizon
Paramount Pictures
Before he became a cornerstone of making video game movie schlock, Paul W.S. Anderson made his version of space terror, like if Andrei Tarkovsky grew up on death metal. Event Horizon is a grisly horror film that takes its victims through the depths of space, hoping they can save themselves and humanity. Starring Laurence Fishburne and Sam Neill, the two lead a crew in the year 2047 to recover a ship named “Event Horizon” that suddenly disappeared into orbit. What then overcomes the ship is demonic possessions, mutilations, and sheer terror designed with beautiful analog technology. Anderson’s film is abstract in its design of paranoia, but extremely concrete in the way it suggests people losing their minds in deep space. A true spectacle to behold.
7 Vampires
Sony Pictures Releasing
Carpenter’s classic brand of horror gets the western treatment in a fun, junky, and gory rag-tag team-up of mortals versus vampires. Seeing James Woods as the band leader, whose squad is recruited by the church to fend off the night-stalkers that walked the earth for centuries, Carpenter envisions a modern-day group as low-level rockstars, getting drunk in motels with sex workers waiting for the next gig. With an overt sense of gore and violence, the set pieces terrify as an all-powerful vampire looks to reign supreme, decapitating anyone in his path. With a wonderfully inspired casting of Sheryl Lee as the femme fatale, her intense facial expressions were perfect as she gets turned with a single bite. Vampires is an understated gem from Carpenter’s iconic filmography.
6 People Under the Stairs
Universal Pictures
A gem of the haunted house horror sub-genre, Craven takes two Twin Peaks alums — Everett McGill and Wendy Robie — and turns them into greedy sadistic landlords from hell. Starring Ving Rhames and the young Brandon Adams, the two form an unlikely bond as they attempt to steal gold from the landlords. The film packs a hilariously gory punch as Adams gets rapped in the house and is forced to navigate what Craven turns into a terrifying puzzle. While indicting the disposition of landlords who seek endless wealth and ignore the economic disparity of the people they take advantage of, People Under the Stairs takes the “kill your landlords” message literally, while taking the bodies of the landlord’s victims and turning them into zombies.
5 Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight
Tales From The Crypt: Demon Knight — inspired by the HBO anthology horror series of the same name — is Ernest Dickerson’s wild vision for the horror-comedy pathos. While Dickerson uses his photographic sensibilities, having worked behind the lens on Spike Lee’s early works, to infuse the film with a wonderfully vivid, neon, and bloody B-movie aesthetic to heighten the theatrics. Confining the battle of good vs evil to a small town motel, while a who’s who of low-rent con caricatures get enlisted to fight for their lives. The film stars underrated actors across the board. But, none more so than Billy Zane, whose equity as a charming, handsome leading man makes his over-the-top actions as the literal devil from hell, seducing those with a weak will under his spell one of the best performances of his career. Also with Jada Pinkett Smith breaking ground as one of the first Black women heroes of a film like this, Dickerson’s Tales From The Crypt broke norms and remains underrated.
4 Def By Temptation
Shapiro-Glickenhaus Entertainment
A horror film embedded and layered with themes that boil down to identity crisis, sexuality, and belief in religious powers, Def By Temptation is a Blacksploitation horror film with a hip-hop riff. Directed, written, and produced by former child actor James Bond III, who also stars in the film, the film creates an atmosphere of erotic unease as a succubus (Cynthia Bond) is seducing and murdering dishonest men at a local New York bar. Bond III captures the grime of early-90s street life and the brotherly bond between Black men as they become tempted to cross one another. Def By Temptation creates horrific visions of murder and betrayal all captured in a beautifully lit, lo-fi aesthetic that was shot by the impeccable Ernest Dickerson.
3 The Exorcist III
20th Century Studios Distribution
Directed by the writer of the original novel that inspired the immediate sensation of The Exorcist, the first sequel to the hit film is considered a failure, but the third entry stands out above the others. While without the cultural resonance of the first, William Peter Blatty’s foray into the world of demonic possession is a haunting psychodrama of murderous obsession. The film stars the legendary George C. Scott as Lt. William Kinderman, a man who must battle the literal ghosts haunting his world and the horrors of his past. The emotional core melds beautifully with the terrifyingly cold corridors of hospitals and churches. The Exorcist III stands as not only an underrated film but one of the great horror sequels ever made.
2 Tales From The Hood
Savoy Pictures
One of the best anthology films ever made and a supreme work of self-reflexive art, especially akin to the 90s era, Tales From The Hood is an exemplary piece of using horror to convey social messages. While never losing its footing as a piece of entertainment, Rusty Cundieff takes visceral images from the hood and the specific terrors that Black people go through and turned those problems into a genre film. The plot lines are terrifying, heightened, and cold. The filmmaker’s conceit comes from a truth that makes the anxiety all the more palpable. Tales From The Hood also features a scene-stealing, frame-eating performance from the late and incredibly underrated Clarence Williams III as the film’s chief narrator.
1 New Nightmare
New Line Cinema
Craven’s return to his beloved dream stalker creation, New Nightmare was Craven deliciously biting into the soul-sucking nature of the filmmaking industry with satirical glee and nasty horror violence. Showing the film as meshed with reality for a meta-textual commentary on art replicating life, Craven’s film shows the action becoming part of the nightmare they created. Sharpening tools he would later go on to use in the Scream franchise, New Nightmare evoked fantastical kills and a passionate narrative as Heather Langenkamp struggles to derive the difference between her realities.
