The Screen Addict | Unsung Heroes of the Nineties

The Nineties were the best decennium for film. More stone-cold classics than in any other time period, and I am proud to have been in the middle of it as a burgeoning film-enthusiast. There are countless “Best Films of The Nineties” lists out there, and everybody more or less agrees on the top ten, five and maybe even three. Let’s just say that The Shawshank Redemption (1994), The Usual Suspects (1995) and Fight Club (1999) are always somewhere among the top-listed features.

I am not arguing the sheer brilliance of these films – quite the contrary. But in the spirit of the No. Bad. Films. philosophy, I would like to shed some light on the lesser celebrated stars of the decade. These titles have had no shortage of disparaging reviews by “critics” who actually believe that it is their moral obligation to protect people against “bad” films. This film writer however, never understood the point of dissuading fellow cinephiles. That is why the No. Bad. Films. approach always strives to honor the wise words of Walt Whitman (and Ted Lasso) – be curious, not judgmental.

During my film-formative years, there were many, many less revered pictures that nevertheless kept speaking to me time and time again. Reviewing these titles, two early-Nineties SciFi pics undeniably stand out. Interestingly, both are much-derided sequels to undisputed classics in the genre.

Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987) has had a profound impact on our perception and understanding of Science Fiction. Actually, I would even dare to go so far as to say that there is SciFi before RoboCop, and SciFi after RoboCop.

Provided that we can all agree on the fundamental genre-distinction between SciFi (Blade Runner (1982), The Terminator (1984) and Gravity (2013) for example) and Fantasy (e.g., The Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter franchises), I have absolutely no reservations about stating that Verhoeven’s seminal film changed the course of this particular style of filmmaking forever. And to reassure my fellow film geeks – I wholeheartedly acknowledge the equally formative influence David Lynch and James Cameron have had on the genre, but I think we can safely say that Verhoeven brought something fresh to the table that has since inspired many filmmakers to up their game (Blomkamp, Wheatley et al.)

However, it is not Verhoeven’s Eighties masterpiece I wish to celebrate on this forum. Today, I want to talk about its sequel – RoboCop 2 (1990).

I have mentioned ad nauseam that as a Nineties Hollywood-hungry teenager, I had to rely on my local video rental-shop for my film fix. This is how it came to be that I actually saw RoboCop 2 before I got to appreciate the original. Verhoeven’s film machine-gunned its way into theatres when I was only nine years old, and although I wasn’t much older when the sequel hit the shelves, the video-store clerks happened to be a bit more liberal when it came to age restrictions.

RoboCop 2 is one of the last big-budget Hollywood films that relies heavily on practical special-effects, and that alone is enough to deserve my enduring love. The late Eighties and early Nineties saw the dawn of groundbreaking digital movie-magic in industry-changing films like Willow (1988), The Abyss (1989) and Jurassic Park (1993). The imaginative images in RoboCop 2 however, are almost exclusively created in-camera, no computer involved.

Directing these wonderful models and maquettes, was a duo that had worked the same magic on the second – or fifth, depending on your beliefs – Star Wars installment a decade earlier.

Irvin Kershner and Phil Tippett are the driving creative forces behind some of my favorite – and frustratingly underappreciated – SciFi-Action films ever. Never Say Never Again (1983) and The Golden Child (1986) are widely considered career lows for Sean Connery and Eddie Murphy respectively. To me however, these films mean so much – due significantly to the involvement of Kershner and Tippett.

Tippett remains to this day one of the leading figures in the effects biz, but Kershner – a revered film school professor who was hired by his former pupil George Lucas to expand the galaxy far, far away – quietly retired from feature filmmaking after RoboCop 2.

The beautiful thing about practical effects, is that they age much better than early digital effects. With resolution getting higher and higher on home-entertainment sets in particular, some great films from The Nineties that rely heavily on CGI do not hold up so well when transferred to HD – I am looking at you, Blade (1998)…

The special effects in RoboCop 2 however, are just as spectacular today as they were in 1990. The extensive use of go-motion – a more sophisticated and natural looking variation of stop-motion animation developed by Tippett – still make the sequences with the terrifying RoboCain cyborg an absolute blast to watch.

Unfortunately, the go-motion technique is costly and laborious. And with CPUs quickly becoming more and more powerful, this particular style of effects has all but disappeared from film production. Very rarely does a contemporary filmmaker still use puppets or miniatures. After all, the computer can conjure up virtually every conceivable image. What it will never be able to do though, is build a soul out of ones and zeroes. And a soul is exactly what a practical effect does have.

As I mentioned earlier – before veering wildly off course with my love letter to Robo – the early Nineties actually brought two loathed sequels to SciFi masterworks. The second unsung hero of the era is the absolutely awesome Predator 2 (1990).

For this follow up to the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger Actioner, the excellent Stephen Hopkins took over directing duties from John McTiernan. Hopkins was hot property by 1990, having just directed the fifth installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.

Of the five Predator films that have been released to date – not counting the two crossover features – I rate Hopkins’s Predator 2 second best. Actually, I position McTiernan’s and Hopkins’s entries in the franchise at a very close first and second place. Prey (2022) holds a very solid third spot, and the other two films follow at a distant fourth and fifth, in order of release year. Full No. Bad. Films. disclosure – this is my opinion, I am not stating that Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018) are objectively bad.

In an earlier piece about the Alien and Predator cinematic universe, I wrote about an awesome Easter-Egg in Predator 2. During the climactic sequence aboard the Yautja spacecraft, we catch a glimpse of a trophy case that actually holds a Xenomorph skull… The suggestion that the Yautja apparently hunted and killed the fearsome creature from the Alien films, just made me jump with joy. I found out much later that this was actually Hopkins’s idea. The director had read and loved the Alien vs. Predator comic books and decided to pay homage. This further solidified my admiration of the filmmaker.

Predator 2 features some truly inspired casting, too. Schwarzenegger – like McTiernan – did not return for the sequel, after the first film had made him one of the highest-paid actors in the world. Patrick Swayze and Steven Seagal were both considered, but Hopkins ultimately went with the leftfield choice of Danny Glover – and the film is better for it.

Joining Glover is the always amazing Bill Paxton, who shares with Lance Henriksen the gruesome honor of being one of only two actors who have had “run-ins” with The Big Three of SciFi Baddies – a T-800, a Yautja and a Xenomorph.

And then there is the force of nature that is Gary Busey… Busey may be the only actor who can play a baddie even when he is supposed to be the good guy. Busey is obviously awesome in everything from Lethal Weapon (1987) to Drop Zone (1994), but his performance in Predator 2 specifically stands out to me, just because of the unbridled fun the actor appears to have with his character – the shady, morally dubious government-agent Peter Keyes.

The decision to move the action from the jungle to a – at the time – futuristic Los Angeles, is an inspired one. Where AvP2 (2007) – I am sorry, but I refuse to use the film’s ridiculous official title – in my opinion did not maximize the potential of a Yautja in an urban environment, Predator 2 delivers on the possibilities of a city hunter in spades.

You can almost feel the sweltering, suffocating heat of gang-war torn LA. To incorporate the bloody rivalry between Columbian and Jamaican drug lords, is truly a screenwriting masterstroke. It really sells the mythical, almost God-like image of The Yautja to have these terrifying gangbangers come to the conclusion that there’s something much more dangerous than them out there.

Predator 2 also introduces us to some exciting, never-before-seen Yautja tech – like throwing discs and spears, the net, and the ability to switch between different heat signatures, as seen in the slaughterhouse sequence. This scene is awesome anyway, because it features Gary Busey at his most Busey-est, and basically sees hunters and hunted alike just go completely berserk.

Another superbly effective sequence is the subway attack. Due to the fact that everyone on board is armed – an interesting nod to U.S. Gun Culture – The Hunter eliminates every single passenger. An electrical failure causes the lights in the subway tunnel to appear like strobes, and combined with The Yautja’s holographic camouflage, this gives the scene a truly nightmarish feel.

Predator 2 ends on another high note, with one of the The Hunters throwing Glover’s Lt. Harrigan an antique flintlock pistol. This gesture of respect simultaneously suggested that The Yautja had been hunting apex predators for many centuries and opened the possibilities for a sequel that could potentially take place hundreds of years earlier. Sadly, it would take 14 more years for The Yautja to make another appearance, and at the time of writing this piece, a Predator has yet to go back in time – not counting the opening sequence in the Director’s Cut of AvP. Then again, who knows what new owner Disney has in store for the property…

(Author’s note – this piece was originally written before Prey came out, and has been edited since. Proud to say that I accurately predicted the future of the franchise, though!)

The next two “forgotten” films of The Nineties, star one of my favorite actors of all time – Richard Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss had of course already won an Academy Award and starred in many, many classics by the time The Nineties rolled around, but this writer always particularly enjoyed the parts the man played just before we hit Y2K.

The first of the two is Lasse Hallström’s hidden gem Once Around (1991). I say hidden, because it was not widely celebrated when it came out, and even today it is a serious challenge to find a copy of the film. I saw it – as I have mentioned here so many times before – on a good old rental-tape from the Dutch equivalent of Blockbuster Video.

The film follows the eldest sibling from a tight-knit Italian-American family, finally finding true love with a salesman who charms his way into the lives of her initially reticent relatives.

OA is certainly not an easy watch. Dreyfuss plays a charismatic, but at times flat-out abrasive businessman, and love interest Holly Hunter and her family are not your typical RomCom characters.

This “Slice of Life” approach is exactly what makes OA such a soul-stirring viewing experience, of course. The characters are authentically flawed, and we recognize our personal pitfalls and shortcomings in them.

Sure, Dreyfuss’ Sam Sharpe can be brash and obnoxious, but Danny Aiello’s patriarch in his turn is unreasonable and prone to emotional outbursts. Hunter’s Renata Bella is forever seeking the approval of her judgmental sister Jan (Laura San Giacomo), but eventually calls her out on being a horrible hypocrite. It turns out Jan herself is having an extramarital affair with an old boyfriend.

Every minute of OA just feels painfully authentic, and its climactic sequence still haunts me to this day. Obviously, ahead be spoilers…

When Renata and Sam – who is now in a wheelchair due to poor health – escape the hustle and bustle of Renata’s overbearing family for a couple of hours to visit a frozen lake, Sam, with their newborn son in his arms, watches from a distance how Renata shows off her ice-skating skills. Gliding back to Sam, Renata suddenly stops dead in her tracks while her face fills with complete and utter terror. When the shot changes to her PoV, we quickly learn what has Renata shell-shocked – Sam slumped in his wheelchair, still holding their baby boy. In blind panic, Renata lunges forward in an attempt to get to her husband and child as quickly as possible, but the sudden, uncontrolled thrust causes her to fall flat on her face. Hard. She scrambles to her feet and rushes towards her loved ones, but it is too late – Sam is dead.

Just writing about this sequence gives me the chills. It is quite frankly one of the most devastating moments in modern cinema I have ever seen.

OA does end on a high note, though. When the entire family is driving back to the Bella home after Sam’s funeral, Danny Aiello’s Joe Bella – with whom Sam had the most challenging relationship – exclaims he wants to go “once around” the roundabout, in honor of the late son-in-law he couldn’t help but love. See this film.

Four years after OA, Richard Dreyfuss made another film that has stuck in my soul ever since I (reluctantly) first saw it on the big screen. Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995) – about an aspiring composer who, initially out of necessity, turns to teaching a high-school music class and ends up having a profound influence on many of his students – is precisely the kind of film that would never be made today because traditional studios cannot fit it into a “business model”. It is, after all, neither a sequel nor a superhero film.

To be fair – I was 17 when MHO came out, and wasn’t too keen on spending 90 minutes watching a music teacher, either. I had deeply detested only two courses in high school because of unfit and uninspiring teachers – PE and music. So when my father suggested we should go see this film, I wasn’t, let’s say, chomping at the bit.

My reservations where unjust though, because MHO unequivocally changed my life for the better. I was prepared to not like the film at all costs, but something happened to me when Glenn Holland’s story unspooled before my eyes.

The story is obviously heartwarming and inspiring, but to me the key element that pushes MHO from good to great, is the phenomenal score by the late Michael Kamen. Just watch how Kamen’s music lifts an otherwise relatively straightforward opening-credits scene to a completely different level.

I absolutely love how the soundtrack changes from diegetic to non-diegetic as Glenn Holland’s slow tinkering on the piano swells into Kamen’s sweeping, phenomenal score. It is right up there with the opening credits of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) another one of my all-time favorites, which was – perhaps unsurprisingly – also composed by Kamen.

Obviously, the choice to execute an opening scene this way is mostly the director’s, and MHO found an excellent one in Stephen Herek. Herek is one of those “under-the-radar” filmmakers who quietly made a couple of outstanding films that didn’t necessarily get the appreciation they deserved. These “Guns for Hire” also include fellow journeymen like Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man (1991) director Simon Wincer, Roger Spottiswoode of Deadly Pursuit (1988) and Michael Ritchie, who made Fletch (1985) and the aforementioned TGC.

Although mostly active in TV these days, Herek had a pretty prolific feature-film run during The Eighties and early Nineties with back-to-back hits Critters (1986), Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead (1991).

Herek’s films are typically filled to the brim with big names and – interestingly – often feature brief, early appearances by future stars. David Duchovny, Jussie Smollett and Billy Zane all had their “cherry popped” in Herek flicks, and MHO holds the same neat little surprises. Keep your eyes peeled for small, but significant roles for Terrence Howard and Forest Whitaker, as part of a formidable supporting cast that also features Olympia Dukakis, William H. Macy and Glenne Headly.

Upon revisiting MHO, it also occurred to me that the film is exceptionally “woke” for its time, given that all hearing-impaired people in the film are played by actors who are actually deaf. No risk of misguided outrage here…

The Nineties hold many more hidden gems. I adore the chemistry between John Goodman and Peter O’Toole in the hugely satisfying High-Concept Comedy King Ralph (1991). Somehow, this rather unassuming film managed to snare not one, but two British acting legends with John Hurt as Goodman’s deliciously evil nemesis in the quest for the rightful heir to the British throne.

Screenwriting legend David Mamet wrote scripts for a staggering number of films during The Nineties, and I feel three of these titles might be among his best work ever. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) features an absolutely stellar cast – Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Ed Harris, to name but a few – spit-firing one after another infinitely quotable line. Hoffa (1992) sees another acting legend (Jack Nicholson) take on the role of the infamous teamster boss, with Danny DeVito co-starring and behind the camera. DeVito had by then very successfully branched out to directing with the pitch-black Comedies Throw Momma from the Train (1987) and The War of the Roses (1989). And lastly, The Edge (1997) has a billionaire (Anthony Hopkins) stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with the secret lover (Alec Baldwin) of his wife.

The Edge is also on my list of films with stunningly scored opening-sequences. The tiny prop-plane traversing the majestic Alaskan mountains accompanied by that rousing score, just fills me with awe and wanderlust. Rest in power, Jerry Goldsmith.

On the brink of Y2K, we were first made aware of the SciFi construct that is The Matrix (1999). I believe few – if any – films before and since have had an impact quite as significant as The Wachowskis’s game-changing epic. However, I need to mention three SciFi features from the same decade that were far less celebrated, but are nonetheless very dear to my heart.

Strange Days (1995), a story conceptualized by James Cameron with the Rodney King case in mind, was brought to the screen by the director’s (literal) partner-in-crime Kathryn Bigelow. Groundbreaking for its PoV camerawork and the exciting, fresh perspective on virtual reality, the film is an undisputed classic in my book.

Kevin Costner applied his flair for epic storytelling he so effectively displayed in Dances with Wolves (1990) and Waterworld (1995) one more time with The Postman (1997), but this time audiences unfortunately stayed away. I absolutely loved the film. It has been a while since I last screened it, but the story of a drifter in a post-apocalyptic world who decides to self-distribute a bag of undelivered mail he accidentally stumbles across, somehow connected with me. It is a story about hope unlike any other I ever saw. Add to that a truly villainous performance by Will Patton and a wonderful James Newton Howard score, and I will be yours forever.

There have been many Horror films set in space since Ridley Scott’s game-changer Alien (1979), but few have had an impact on me quite like Event Horizon (1997). I have expressed my admiration for Paul W.S. Anderson through the No. Bad. Films initiative. before, and EH helped build that appreciation. The titular spaceship holds an engine capable of generating a portal to another dimension that turns out to be a place worse than hell. And when Anderson does hell, he really does hell. Astonishingly, the director had an infinitely more gruesome cut of EH prepared for release, but the studio balked and ordered him to tone it down. I have only one thing to say to Paramount – Release The Anderson Cut.

Michael Douglas appeared to be comfortable with taking less prominent roles during The Nineties, and it made for some pretty awesome flicks. One of these Douglas co-starrers, was another film featuring fearsome hunters from Predator 2 director Stephen Hopkins. In The Ghost and the Darkness (1996), Douglas plays a trapper who is hired to dispose of two man-eating lions that prey upon railroad workers in 19th-century Africa.

Much has been said about Douglas’s reluctance to give up top billing in TGatD in particular, but the irony is that neither he nor co-star and fellow prima-donna Val Kilmer where the true heroes of the film to begin with. TGatD is a cinematic masterpiece because of the stunning direction, photography and editing of the two titular feline characters. Screenwriter William Goldman once pitched this story to the studio as a cross between Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Jaws (1975), and that is exactly what it is.

TGatD is based on real events, and the remains of the actual lions are on display in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. What struck me when I visited the museum many years ago, is that the beasts were actually two females. Hollywood just chose to give them wild, flowing manes because it adds to the drama.

I cannot write about TGatD without mentioning the incredible score the late Jerry Goldsmith composed for it. Just listen how it brilliantly captures the setting and scope of the film.

The other “forgotten” film in which Douglas chose to have a slightly less prominent screen presence, is A Perfect Murder (1998). This taut, hugely effective Thriller somehow never gets mentioned among similar shining stars of the decade like Se7en (1995) and The Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Douglas is clearly enjoying himself here, playing the character he plays like no other – the shady billionaire. With his company in financial trouble, Douglas’s Steven Taylor blackmails Viggo Mortensen’s struggling artist David into killing his rich wife Emily, with whom David is having an affair. Emily – played by Gwyneth Paltrow on the top of her game – finds out about her husband’s evil plot, and expertly flips the script on both conniving men.

Douglas, Mortensen and Paltrow are all obviously splendid, but the more subtle heroes of the film to me are David Suchet – who plays the subdued but cunning detective on the case – and director Andrew Davis, a filmmaker who I have always greatly admired. Sadly, things have been uncharacteristically quiet around Davis for the better part of two decades now.

Rounding up last loved ones –

As a life-long fan of The Little Tramp, I thoroughly enjoyed Sir Richard Attenburough’s Chaplin (1992). Robert Downey Jr. is just ab-so-lute-ly phenomenal in this biopic.

Brian De Palma and Al Pacino reunited exactly ten years after Scarface (1983) for Carlito’s Way (1993). My unpopular opinion is that C’sW is a better film than Scarface – and I like Scarface a lot.

Before The Wachowskis reinvented SciFi with The Matrix, they wrote the script for Assassins (1995), starring Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas. Even though I have since learned that the siblings were unhappy with rewrites by Brian Helgeland and had wanted their names removed from the film, I am very fond of Assassins and consider it an Action highlight of The Nineties.

A Civil Action (1998) is a darker, but in my opinion superior take on the same subject matter that is front and center in Erin Brockovich (2000) – I also prefer the cast of the former…

And finally – I cannot heap enough praise on Joe Johnston’s October Sky (1999), a little-seen film about a coal miner’s son (Jake Gyllenhaal) who is so inspired by the Russian-American Space Race, that he defies the odds and his father’s wishes to seek a future in rocket science.

Honorable mention – although it by no means flew under the radar and contrary to popular believe, did make money, Roland Emmerich’s Godzilla (1998) is absolutely an unsung hero of The Nineties because it was almost universally panned. I love the film, and I don’t care that the beast does not even remotely resemble the original Toho creature. To me, Patrick Tatopoulos’s design was amazing. A wonderful continuation of the stunning visuals he initiated in Stargate (1994) and Independence Day (1996).

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