Category Archives: 1990s’

Film and TV Series from the 1990s’

Nemesis (1992)

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Let’s cut to the chase: does the line “86.5% [cyborg] is still human” send the kind of shivers down your spine that you haven’t felt since you were a teenager, imagining how wicked-ninja-cool it would be to live in a world of corps, cyborgs and corruption? If not, then this bit of contrived more-cyberpunk-than-cyberpunk nonsense from 1992 will bore the pants off you. If, however, it gets you revved up like the first assault rifle you fell in love with whilst thumbing through a hand-me-down copy of Guns and Ammo, then it’s quite possibly the film for you, depending on how much derivative, corny content you can put up with.

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Six String Samurai (1998) Buddy Holly, Nuclear Mutants, and Fancy Swords

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When people describe a film as having “a singular vision”, they normally mean something like the perfection of The Godfather, the scale of Heaven’s Gate, or the symbolism of 2001: A Space Oddity. They normally don’t mean “so bugnuts crazy, that it’s the only example of its genre ever likely to exist”, but Lance Mungia’s 1998 independent work Six String Samurai can only be described as such, because if there exists another post-apocalyptic samurai rock ‘n’ roll road movie homage of the book the Wizard of Oz, then I sure as hell don’t know about it – and trust me, I’ve looked!. Having seen it, you’ll understand why it’s a both a pity and a grace that this is the case, because it does what it sets out to do with so much style and swagger, and you’ll be convinced that no other attempt could ever get it so right.
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Benny & Joon (1993)

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Benny and Joon is a 1993 feelgood romantic comedy/promotional vehicle for the acting talents of the then rising star Johnny Depp, about the lighthearted and loving moments of living with nondescript and nonthreatening mental illness. No, don’t run away! It’s all very well intended and far to homely to cause outright offence; it’s simply “of its time” trying-to-be-considerate offensive and a lightweight take on a heavyweight issue. That makes it better, right??

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Funnyman (1994) – Gross out British horror

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Whilst the British movie industry has added many a fine villain into the canon of horror genres, it’s never been especially good when it comes to the comedic anti-hero side of things. Whilst Hammer Horror developed one of the definitive Dracula’s, Clive Barker birthed the undying Pinhead into the world, and we have enough psychologically-broken bastards to fill Broadmoor Hospital three times over (Max Parry from The Last Horror Movie still gives me the shivers, check that out but keep the lights on!)… but as soon as we give them a pithy one-liner it all goes a bit wrong, normally resulting in something halfway between Kenny Everett and Ken Russell. Maybe it’s a hangover from the 80s when any half decent horror got hurried to the thriller section, or maybe it’s because we were just embarrassed at how very good the Americans are at it.

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The Crow (1994) – 90s Goth meets comicbook heroes, with a banging soundtrack

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Back in the distant past of the mid 90s, there were exactly two film posters that ruled the walls amongst the heady intellectualists of A-level and first year university students. One was the classic Uma Thurman-fronted pastiche of Pulp Fiction, displayed to signify that you were sophisticated, with a touch of the retro-chic charm and danger of a 70s heroin overdose about you, and imply the student could more than likely quote all the movies that Quentin Tarantino errantly used the word “inspired” about. The other poster, normally positioned with far less lighting, was any of the myriad of designs for the 1994 Brandon Lee movie The Crow – they signified that you were serious, sensitive, and had a wardrobe that was 90% various shades of fading black. It also aligned you with the nebulous tribe of “alternatives” that found common ground and shared symbolism in one of the greatest movies about a comic book… one that everyone swore they had read the first time it was released.
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