Of all the sub-genres in the world, my two personal favourites would have to be ‘Die Hard on a...’ and ‘... From Hell’. Today we’re entering the world of 90’s thriller films once more to explore the boom of films in the fashion of Fatal Attraction (One night stand from hell), as the peak of the sub-genre. The great high concept films of all time, all can be described in one sentence, as I have done with each of these films. Give a studio that sentence, pick a couple of stars and solid director and you should have a great film on your hands. In many ways the genre appeals to us in the worst ways, it’s exactly the sort of nightmare fuel that keeps us up at night, playing on our very worst “What if?” sensibilities. It’s a very dynamic and brilliant concept that led to some terrific films, and some not-so-terrific films. Let’s look at some of them now.

Corrupt cop from hell...

Internal Affairs  (Dir.  Mike Figgis, 1990)

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Above everything else Internal Affairs was a bit of a comeback vehicle for Richard Gere, but in many ways one of the most bizarre of all time. Internal Affairs is perhaps the worst kind of comeback vehicle for a major romantic lead star, for Gere’s Dennis Peck is one of the most brutal and unflinching, and frankly darkly entertaining villains of all time. Gere had an incredible 1990, with Pretty Woman also coming out this year, offering Gere fans and movie fans alike a real batsh*t double bill. Frankly, Internal Affairs is truly excellent. It really does encompass the absolute best that this genre can create. The genre is always at its peak when it purposefully perverts people and jobs that need trust for them to work at all. Above all the rest that we will find on this list the job and the people that we do implicitly put the most trust in, is of course the police. Despite that of course the concept of the corrupt cop is nothing new in media or of course in real life. “Trust him... He’s a cop” may very well be one of the best taglines of all time. Gere is just having an absolute blast with this role and Henry Bean’s taut and intense script allows for some just outrageous moments of pure villainy and insanity. However for as far-fetched as the script sometimes goes, the film’s director Mike Figgis always manages to bring us back to a brutal sense of reality. Figgis really does manage to elevate what could have been a visually bog-standard film into something frequently very dynamic and artful, through the use of montage, slow-motion and extreme close-ups, not unlike The Silence of the Lambs of the following year. At the heart of both Lambs and Affairs is a key cat and mouse back and forth game of wits between two sides of the same coin. Here we have Peck going up against our titular internal affairs officer, Raymond Avilla, played brilliantly by Andy Garcia. Now the film’s behind the scenes has become quite notorious for an off-set troublesome relationship between Gere and Garcia, but now that all the smoke has settled, one could make the argument that it was exactly the sort of intense bravado that led to their on-screen fury being so believably intense and masterfully presented. Garcia is really great and makes me wish that his leading man run reached some higher peaks, however he just can’t beat Gere, in this truly sensational turn.

Apartment tenant from hell...

Pacific Heights (Dir. John Schlesinger, 1990)

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Certainly a lesser film in the otherwise stacked filmography of John Schlesinger, this film follows a tenant from hell played by Michael Keaton as he wreaks havoc upon Melanie Griffith and Mathew Modine, a couple who have just invested in a San Francisco based property with two rooms to rent out.  Based upon screenwriter Daniel Pyne’s own experiences (naturally very, very heightened) of a tenant that he could not evict, the screenplay started out more so like a thriller version of Schlesinger’s groundbreaking drama Sunday Bloody Sunday, with Keaton’s character being a bisexual man who seduced both Modine and Griffith. The film we eventually get is a pretty tame and very watered down film that doesn’t really take advantage of the ace in the hole it has with Keaton, instead of being a simple story of a rat in the walls, the film becomes a film not unlike The Firm with a bizarre left turn con aspect (featuring a thankless and dialogueless role for Griffith’s real life mother and superior actress Tippi Hedren). That’s the films other major issue; Griffith is just no good in it. We don’t really care for the human aspect of the drama, because we don’t really care for the human. Modine does great work in the beginning, but becomes incapacitated for much of the final third of the film. The film is just pretty bland, and whenever it does kick into some sort of gear that’s remotely interesting, it immediately moves us onto something far less interesting. There’s a ton of first appearances and early roles for actors we would come to know of, ranging from Laurie Metcalf, to Miriam Margoyles – but the film is just quite frankly not interesting in the slightest. Its initial threats and issues are resolved very quickly or have uninteresting and disappointing resolutions. This is unfortunately a case of a great concept thwarted.

Husband from hell...

Sleeping with the Enemy (Dir. Joseph Ruben, 1991)

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Of course of all the scenarios in this article a husband from hell who abuses his wife mentally and physically is one of the more realistic and obviously more serious and tangible pitches of the lot, and for the most part Joseph Ruben’s 1991 domestic abuse on-the-run thriller Sleeping with the Enemy deals with the seriousness of its subject with a deftness that really allows for the weight of the film to hit home. However on the other hand there is a litany of reasons and the like for how this film really does go to some outrageous and unintentionally humorous extremes with many of its performances and sections of dialogue. The film is key for its star Julia Roberts, as it really does mark the first film completely constructed as a vehicle for her, bar the initial envisioning of Jane Fonda in the role when Nancy Price’s novel was first picked up for adaptation. I guess of all my film based opinions, my indifference towards Roberts has always been the opinion that has garnered the most shock and disgust when it’s broached in conversation. Sleeping with the Enemy is for me once more a further pretty average performance. The strength of the film lies in its construction and its genuinely great setups and payoffs. However ultimately the film is most remembered I feel and rightfully so for the completely insane lead villain performance of Patrick Bergin as Martin, Robert’s abusive and manipulative b*stard of a husband. Bergin really is batting for the fence with every single line reading and small action. Everything is over the top, which is not to say that it’s not effective in developing an atmosphere of dread and fear, just a little bizarre when watched in samples, or actually when you watch the film from top to bottom.  Many talk about the film as if it’s Robert’s major beginning as a female lead, and the film did become a huge success financially in no small part to her burgeoning celebrity, however at the end of the day, for better or for worse, it’s Bergin’s performance and the plethora of crazy idiosyncrasies that his character is given, that make him into a true beast of a villain, and make this film into one that remains to this day very rewatchable.

Nanny from hell...

The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (Dir. Curtis Hanson, 1992)

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Curtis Hanson had a tremendously interesting directing career that was unfortunately cut short with his passing in 2016, with films ranging from coming of age dramas like Wonder Boys to the seminal rap film 8 Mile, with his distinct pinnacle being the absolute undisputable masterpiece L.A Confidential. 5 years prior to Confidential however, Hanson turned to directing a very well made and entertaining domestic ‘from hell’ psychological thriller pitting the family of a woman assaulted by her gynaecologist against their new nanny, who is secretly the rapist’s widow seeking revenge. The themes of motherhood and some of the presentations of women in the film were met with controversy, with certain critics declaring the film as anti-feminist, along with certain actresses turning down roles in the film for that same reason. Despite the film being filmed by Hanson, the film as actually the first script of Amanda Silver, stemming from her final film school thesis project. Silver would actually go on to tell another tale of revenge with the also brilliant Eye For An Eye. Silver’s script is well structured and delivers a decent amount of ever-increasing thrills, specifically with the brilliant creation of our central ‘nanny from hell’; Peyton, played with devious cunning and wonderful seduction by Rebecca De Mornay. De Mornay plays every facet available to her in her cannon, working her charms along with her subtle villainies wonderfully well and usually in tandem. As with the best of this brand of film we must care for the family being tormented and here we really do, with Anabella Sciorra’s Claire being the centre of a realistic and eventually divided family unit. Julianne Moore stars in one of her earliest roles as Claire’s friend Marlene and immediately makes a mark for herself when it comes to wholly realising characters with tremendous ease. The film really is a more than solid feature delivering on all the thrills and tensions that it sets out to offer.

Another corrupt cop from hell... Except this time it’s Ray Liotta

Unlawful Entry (Dir. Jonathon Kaplin,  1992)

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Of all the films in this article, this may very well be one of the best. After a home invasion, married couple Kurt Russell and Madeline Stowe employ the help of a seemingly kind and considerate police officer played by Ray Liotta, to help them get the proper home security outfit to avoid any further unlawful entries or disturbances. We know where this is going however, when Liotta’s Officer Pete Davis slowly reveals himself to first be a rebellious cop fighting against what he sees as a system that lets criminal after criminal get away with heinous crime, before further revealing himself to be a psychotic stalker infatuated with Stowe’s Karen. NOTE: Yes, it is a little jarring to have Liotta repeatedly scream “Karen!” and not think of Goodfellas. Kaplan’s direction is simple but more than services the film, allowing for a taut and tense thriller that more than works to thrill and petrify as it continues forward to its undeniably scary climax. Also looking at the film now perhaps as a commentary on the abuse of power of a police officer can be more than seen to be applicable to what we know, especially with the film’s L.A.P.D setting. The films tagline; “A man obsessed will do anything for love. A cop obsessed can get away with it”, really brings home the inherent terror at the heart of the film and its horrifying ramifications. What brings home the terror the most is of course however Liotta fulfilling the promise of his role in Something Wild, by bringing us one of the scariest and most terrifying villains of the decade and of this genre. Again however we are dealing with a performance that is made all the more frightening by the lack of villainy that the character embodies in certain circumstances, making the allowance of him into the marriage unit all the more believable and his turns to psyhcopathy all the more alarming and certainly all the more unexpected. Stowe and Russell further bring home the dread and drama of the film giving two terrific performances that never once allow for the sort of implausibility that these stories can sometimes bring to rear its head. These are smart and honest people that are taken for a horrid wild ride. The fact that they are believable, again, only furthers the genuine terror pulsating through the feature.

Roommate from hell...

Single White Female (Dir. Barbet Schroeder, 1992)

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One of the perhaps most well known of this genre would be this Bridget Fonda and Jennifer Jason Leigh starring thriller, with a recently single designer ending up with the flat mate from hell when a seemingly normal woman reveals herself over time to be a deeply disturbed woman with many deeply rooted issues. The main plot and action of the film of course takes the form of Leigh over time slowly modelling herself after Fonda, starting with clothes choices, before hair styling, before even having sex with Fonda’s on and off boyfriend Stephen Webber. The rising tension of the film is a pretty well crafted one, but the clear strengths of the film are with its performances, chiefly with Leigh’s clear decision to make her character so much more than cookie cutter cheap attempt to recreate Alex Forrest. Despite Leigh’s strengths creating a character of depth, she is failed from time to time by the screenplay that does work largely in servicable thrills, rather than anything more emotionally, physically or mentally complex, such as n the case of Alex Forrest. An interesting conclusion does separate this film from the others in the fray, however of all the films on this list I don’t particularly understand why this was one of the major ones to enter the lexicon and pop culture world. An enjoyable thriller all the same however. 

Daughter’s boyfriend from hell...

Fear (Dir. James Foley, 1996)

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What makes this genre so intriguing is that it plays on our implicit fears of worst case scenarios. The worst case scenario for any father is of course that his daughter’s first boyfriend turns out to be a psychotic murderer, this is of course the implicit fear at the heart of 1996’s Fear, directed by James Foley. Foley is an interesting director, cause after directing some of Madonna’s best videos ever, aswell as a great episode of Twin Peaks, he went on and directed the seminal masterpiece Glengarry Glen Ross. After that however, we really didn’t get much, with him currently directing the lowest of the low; Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed. His second film after Glengarry however was Fear, an ideal pot-boiler thriller positioning some fine stars with some very good thriller direction, all leading to some excellent scenes of tension. Fear however is no great masterpiece, with its corny dialogue, incredibly hilarious roller-coaster f*ngering sequence (set to a very nice cover of Wild Horses) and its very much over-the-top second half performances. The rollercoaster scene in question is largely funny due to the level of sheer finger dexterity that would be needed for what is clearly being achieved as we note through Witherspoon’s acting. Frankly Wahlberg’s David should be no less than a concert pianist. The over-acting is the film’s most watchable aspect, but also its biggest flaw, with it setting up a very believable and romantic relationship between mark Wahlberg and Reece Witherspoon, before having Wahlberg’s David flip without any gradual nature at all. David is a hilariously over-the-top villain and is a frequent pleasure to watch, when he’s not being overly horrific in his actions against Witherpsoon (serving her role as a confused and abused 16 year old very well, even if the character does lacks any agency). William Peterson is David’s foil, as Nicole’s (Witherspoon’s) dad Steve. Peterson is very enjoyable as his growing fury continues to affect his relationship with his daughter and wife, Amy Brenneman as Laura. If anything I wish there was more of David’s cunning side, for instance his subtle flirtations with Laura are a far more incendiary and interesting aspect to this character than his brutal violence and sexual abuse. Fear isn’t great, but it’s definitely good and features some wonderful, if melodramatic turns, from all involved. Think of it as a terrifying psycho-drama version of that dreadful comedy Why Him?

Fan from hell... Obviously

The Fan (Dir. Tony Scott, 1996)

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Now for as bog standard in many ways that The Fan is, for some reason it still works for me on a pure entertainment level. Tony Scott, who I have devoted multiple articles on this blog too, really does have a tact for making films nothing short of pure adrenaline. The Fan is nowhere near the best work of anybody involved, but certainly does fly by and keeps the tension and action going for the full two hours it runs for. For the first half an hour or so of the film, we really do get the feel for the joy of baseball fandom. The smartest card the film plays is that it really does bring us into this world to the extent that we feel greatly for all involved. Besides Scott’s typically brilliant direction of sub-par material, the film really does have two great performances at the core of it. Robert De Niro is our titular fan, whose deep love and obsession with the San Francisco giants leads to a compulsive obsession with their newest and most expensive sign in years, Wesley Snipes. De Niro is playing in a world here that we have seen him tap into before, but never really with this much malevolence and human desperation. Rupert Pupkin of The King of Comedy of course plays with some of these exact same obsessed fan notions, but here his Gill is purely the spawn of a desperation, making him all the more villainous in many ways. Not quite Pupkin, but also not quite the pure evil tongues speaking Max Cady of Cape Fear. Snipes however really does work for me in a way that he of course has done many times in this decade of his career. Ultimately however the film does fall into some overly 90’s tropes, with some bizarre editing choices and insanely whacky music choices, excluding the nice through line of Rolling Stones tracks. The Fan is a dynamic and enticing film that gets close to being something really special, but does unfortunately fall between two stools when it comes to delivering a thriller for the ages, despite the immense amount of talent involved.  

Step-siblings that want to f*ck... From hell, I guess...

Cruel Intentions (Dir. Roger Krumble, 1999)

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Look this is perhaps the biggest stretch, but I wanted to talk about Cruel Intentions, so here we go. This super sexual darkly comedic modernisation of Choderlos De Lacios’s Les liasisons dangereuses, made popular by Christopher Hampton’s play adaptation, which in turn became Stephen Frear’s wonderful Dangerous Liaisons, is a deeply perverted very wild ride. Roger Kumble writes and directs, taking great pleasure in managing to make the suggested sex and sensuality of an oppressed time become the chief crux of this 90’s set film, whilst still making realistic reasons for the plot elements to still occur. There is a hilarious amount of letter-writing for 90’s Manhattan prep school students, but in many ways that adds to the film’s wryly anachronistic tone. The immense privilege of our characters gives way to the film’s outrageous plot as we follow two step-siblings make a wager to take the virginity of the new headmasters daughter, a prim and proper Christian ‘perfect’ girl who has vowed to wait until marriage.  Although many could look at this film through a cancellation lens and comment on the sexual politics of it, I really don’t see it as a film that glamorises any of the actions of those involved. The only glamorisation lies with the charisma oozing and ungodly sexual performances of our two leads; Sarah Michelle Gellar, stars as Kathryn Mertuil (the step-sister), so blissfully cunning and dry in her delivery and positioning of herself as a Machiavellian seductress who takes great pleasure in knowing that she can always get what she wants at any time. Ryan Phillipe is Sebastian Valmont (the step-brother), so dashing and evil in the first half, but so brutally conflicted in the second. The interplay between these two is what makes the film what it is; a bizarre, erotic masterwork of 90’s camp thrillers. What makes Intentions stand apart I firmly believe is that Roger Kumble understands the tone of the film and never lets go of either the sincerity, darkness or brutality that lies frequently at the heart of certain scenes. Then there is beyond our two leads a sensational supporting cast, including another wonderfully vulnerable ingénue performance from Reece Witherspoon, which takes a wicked final turn into the headstrong characters we would come to love her for. Selma Blair is charming as Cecile, a flummoxed girl caught in Kathryn’s web of deceit. But it’s Phillipe and Gellar that make this film the absolute gem that it is. 

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Perhaps one of the most fun and re-watchable sub-genres of all time, ‘from hell’ movies are always a delight, even if they are frequently ridiculous and often absurd. They are however always at their best when top-quality stars give in to material that without their performances could be drab, much the same can be said for directors – just look at some of the names we have said today, whatever it was about 90’s thrillers that brought in droves of talent, I will be forever thankful.

- Thomas Carruthers