The 1990s saw slasher movies drop in popularity, and a new genre of horror hit the mainstream. This was the era of self-referential horror movies, with Scream leading the way. But with those movies tearing up the box office and Japanese ghost stories rising in popularity, there were also several great horror films that slipped past mainstream audiences.
The decade marked the end of the slasher craze, but replacing those movies were psychological horror movies, offbeat monster tales, and a few great foreign horror movies that became popular in American cult horror circles. However, most of the movies never rose above cult fame and many are obscure movies to modern-day audiences that deserve a revival.
The Dark Half (1993)
When fans look back at Stephen King horror movies, there are many genuine classics, from The Shining to Misery. However, King had a good adaptation that hit in 1993 that no one ever talks about. He wrote The Dark Half in 1989 after his secret pseudonym of Richard Bachman became public knowledge.
The story is about an author who learns he has a parasitic twin who wants to replace him. Night of the Living Dead director, George Romero, helmed the movie and it stars Oscar-winner Timothy Hutton and cult-favorite Michael Rooker. Hutton turned in a great performance as both the hero Thad and the evil Stark and the movie was a great look at the dark mind of an author.
The Addiction (1995)
Abel Ferrara had a great career as a cult underground independent filmmaker, with movies like Bad Lieutenant and King of New York as his more popular releases. In 1993, he turned his eyes to horror and released a vampire movie that was unlike any other in that decade. The Addiction is about a philosophy student who is bitten by a vampire and begins to develop an addiction to human blood.
Christopher Walken stars as Peina, a vampire who claims he has almost conquered his addiction. The movie is great because it rose above other vampire movies of its era. It is a philosophical look at what it means to have an addiction to blood and makes the vampire more than a monster.
Ravenous (1999)
Ravenous is a disturbing horror movie and is only for those with an appreciation for dark themes. Loosely based on a true story about the cannibalistic Donner Party and the Alfred Packer incidents, Guy Pearce stars in the movie about a group of men stranded, freezing to death, and starving, who then resort to cannibalism.
While the movie is dark and disturbing, it is also strikingly funny at moments and is one of the best black comedies of the decade for the horror genre. The movie walks the line between Western and horror, but the biting satire helps it rise above and the gore is something most horror fans will adore.
Nightbreed (1990)
Clive Barker is best known to movie fans for writing the story that Hellraiser was based on. In 1990, another Barker story called Cabal was turned into the horror movie, Nightbreed, and like Hellraiser, it was directed by Barker himself. The movie turns the horror genre on its head and presents humans as the bad guys and the monsters as the victims.
Nighgtbreed has monsters living in peace out of human contact, but when people learn of them, they seek them out to destroy them. The movie is a great look at the world of monsters living in fear of humans, and the Grand Guignol effects helped it achieve its cult status.
Cemetery Man (1995)
Cemetery Man is the American name for the Italian horror masterpiece, Dellamorte Dellamore. Released in 1994, this was one of Rupert Everett's early roles, as he starred as a cemetery caretaker whose job is to kill zombies that rise from their graves and keep them from escaping the gates.
The movie remained a great look at the life of this man before turning into something very different when he accidentally kills a woman he thinks is a zombie and then doesn't want to kill again when she rises. As a twisted horrific love story with a huge kill count, this is a movie that zombie fans need to rediscover to see something very different from the tired genre.
Audition (1999)
Takashi Miike made his name by directing brutal and unrelenting Japanese thrillers with Ichi the Killer as one of his most popular movies. However, there could be an argument that his 1999 movie, Audition, was his true masterpiece. The movie is about a man who holds a fake casting call to try to meet women after his wife dies.
The movie is a disturbing Japanese horror movie because, while the man was dishonest, he never deserved what happened when he met who he thought was the perfect girl. While later movies like Saw and Hostel found themselves compared to this more obscure horror movie, the heart and shocks in Audition make it stand above those that followed it.
Cube (1997)
When Vincenzo Natali directed Cube in 1997, it seemed he would have a place in the horror genre for years to come. And while he has released interesting movies since, he never quite matched the level of excellence in this debut film.
Similar to the more recent Escape Room movies, Cube put a group of strangers into a strange structure full of cubed rooms with booby traps and challenged them to escape or die trying. This movie deserves a revival because it has been copied many times since, but has always remained the best-directed of this subgenre.
Dead Alive (1993)
For horror fans who love wild, gory, and crazy movies, it doesn't get any more bizarre than Dead Alive. This is also an obscure movie that Peter Jackson fans need to see, and before he made the Lord of the Rings movies, he was directing these crazed horror splatter comedies.
Dead Alive was Jackson's third movie and was previously titled Braindead. It features a lonely man whose mother was bit by a rat creature and turned into a zombie. This is a great splatter horror-comedy in the vein of early Sam Raimi movies, and while it was a box office bomb at the time, it has a cult following, thanks to its over-the-top gore.
Man Bites Dog (1992)
Released in 1992, Man Bites Dog is a Belgian mockumentary where a convincing film crew follows a serial killer and documents his actions. There was a similar mockumentary a decade later called Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon with a slasher killer, but that movie was tongue-in-cheek.
Man Bites Dog was a black comedy but was extremely dark, with the movie receiving an NC-17 rating at the time. This is an independent horror movie that all fans of the genre should seek out, shot by student filmmakers with almost no budget, yet a gripping and harrowing tale.
Cronos (1993)
Guillermo Del Toro became one of the most successful Spanish filmmakers of the last two decades, moving between horror, fantasy, and action movies almost flawlessly. In 1993, Del Toro directed his debut movie, Cronos, a Spanish-language film about men looking for an artifact that promises immortality.
Del Toro showed his love for mythology and fairy tale-styled storytelling with the movie, and it even included one of his long-running actors in Ron Perlman. It only received a release in two American theaters in 1993 and remains an obscure, but fantastic horror movie by a future Oscar-winning director.