Horror is a flexible genre. You can scare people with shadows, serial killers, or even possessed dolls. But The Fear (1995) decided to split the difference and give us a villain that’s literally a wooden mannequin named Morty. Yes, the Big Bad here is not a demon, not a deranged killer in a mask, but … Read More “The Fear (1995): When Your Villain Is a Wooden Dummy and That’s Still the Most Lively Performance” »
In 1995, someone thought: What if we combined Terminator, Short Circuit, and the boys’ locker room scene from Porky’s—but on a Lifetime Movie budget? Out slithered Evolver, a direct-to-video fever dream in which a robot voiced by William H. Macy learns swearing, voyeurism, and murder faster than any teenage boy ever could. This isn’t just … Read More “Evolver (1995) – When Skynet Shops at RadioShack” »
Ah, Embrace of the Vampire. A movie less remembered for its gothic horror than for the fact that it marked the long-awaited moment when Alyssa Milano, forever burned into our collective consciousness as wholesome Samantha from Who’s the Boss?, finally threw off the shackles of primetime chastity. Yes, in 1995, boys of the Clinton era … Read More “Embrace of the Vampire (1995) – The Boobs that Launched a Thousand VHS Rentals” »
Every generation gets the hero it deserves. In 1995, America apparently deserved Nicole Eggert in black pleather, Richard Grieco chewing scenery like a starved hyena, and Tom Savini wandering around looking like lost raccoon. Welcome to The Demolitionist, a film that asked the important question: “What if RoboCop was directed by a guy whose day … Read More “The Demolitionist – RoboCop’s Broke Cousin Nobody Invited” »
If you were a straight-to-VHS connoisseur in the mid-’90s, you may have stumbled across Deadly Sins sandwiched on the video store shelf between Witchboard III and Poison Ivy II. It’s one of those Canadian-American horror hybrids that promises steamy scandal, religious guilt, and a few dead teenagers—basically the holy trinity of mid-’90s pulp. Directed by … Read More “Deadly Sins (1995): Alyssa Milano Goes to Catholic School, All Hell Breaks Loose” »
Every so often, Lifetime—the network of battered spouses, cheating husbands, and ominous phone calls that start with “Don’t go in there, Karen”—accidentally stumbles into something resembling watchable. Deadly Love (1995), starring Susan Dey as a vampire photographer (yes, really), is one of those accidents. It’s as though a soap opera got drunk, passed out in … Read More “Deadly Love – Lifetime’s Fanged Midlife Crisis” »
Let’s just get this out of the way: when your movie has The Killer Bee Nightmare in the title, you’d better deliver two things—killer bees and nightmares. Instead, this Fox Network made-for-TV extravaganza delivers approximately 80 minutes of Robert Hays sweating in flannel while bees hover politely off-camera, as if they were waiting for union … Read More “Deadly Invasion: The Killer Bee Nightmare (1995) – Buzz Off” »
Every once in a while, a film comes along that is so brazenly awful, so shamelessly derivative, and so criminally cheap that it becomes a kind of cinematic crime scene. Enter Cruel Jaws (1995), a.k.a. Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws, a.k.a. The Beast, a.k.a. “that thing Bruno Mattei directed when he was drunk and trying to … Read More “Cruel Jaws – When Shark Movies Jump the Shark” »
If you were alive in 1995, you might remember Congo as the movie where a talking gorilla, a Romanian treasure hunter, and Laura Linney’s cheekbones all teamed up to sell popcorn. On paper, it was Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park follow-up, promising another hit about science gone wild and nature chewing back. On screen, though? Well, … Read More “Congo (1995): A Banana-Scented Blockbuster That Accidentally Became Comedy Gold” »
By the time Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest hit VHS shelves in 1995, you’d think even the cornstalks would’ve unionized and refused to work. But no, the stalks kept rising, the kids kept chanting about He Who Walks Behind the Rows, and horror fans kept wondering: How many of these damn movies can … Read More “Children of the Corn III: Urban Harvest – Corn in the City, Nobody’s Pretty” »
