1. Paris Trout (1991)
A small town shopkeeper exacts a terrible revenge after a customer refuses to pay back a loan. This movie has its issues: the relationship between Dennis Hopper's character and his mother could have been demonstrated better, the ending isn't the slam dunk you want it to be, and I wasn't buying the love triangle, but the performances are great and there are two scenes in this movie that are truly hard to watch.
Paris Trout never arrived in theaters, but instead went straight to Showtime. It was directed by Stephen Gyllenhaal, Jake Gyllenhaal and Maggie Gyllenhaal's father.
In another timeline Dennis Hopper was a much bigger star. It's almost a shame he was so erratic at pivotal points in his career. Then again maybe that same eccentricity is exactly what led him to so many memorable roles.
2. Neon City (1991)
Vanity was FINE.
...and I like the idea of a "bright." In terms of storytelling you could go in a lot of different directions with that one.
Neon City, like Omega Cop and its sequel Karate Cop below, is essentially a Western set in the near future, with the differences being that Neon City had an actual budget, a competent director, people who could act and an above average screenplay. In it Michael Ironside plays a bounty hunter on a quest for revenge, with Vanity as a bounty he picks up along his way.
It's a surprisingly good movie. In the city/town scenes the lower production values show, but other than that it's well acted and interesting throughout.
The most French English-language movie you're likely to see. The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish offers a very whimsical love story in which Bob Hoskins plays a devotional photographer, Jeff Goldblum plays a would-be Jesus, and Natasha Richardson plays the object of their affections. It's far from the best thing any of the actors involved have done, but it's very charming nonetheless.
4. Men at Work (1990)
It doesn't really get "funny" until Keith David shows up, but real-life brothers (and mullet aficionados) Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez have a lot of chemistry. Estevez was also a serviceable director as early 90s comedies go.
Men at Work was filmed and edited somewhere between the first Young Guns and Young Guns II, at a transitional point in both Sheen and Estevez's careers. Estevez would go on to do The Mighty Ducks and Another Stakeout, while Sheen's credits include Navy SEALs and Hot Shots!
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5. Moon 44 (1990)
Director Roland Emmerich's sixth movie, and the last before his departure from then-West Germany for the sunnier hills of Hollywood. His following movie would be 1992's Universal Soldier, and from there he'd move on to Stargate and Independence Day. I think I might like his West German catalog. Those movies look weird.
And hey there's Michael Pare! Whatever happened to Michael Pare? Well, post-The Philadelphia Experiment he did (and is still doing) a whole lotta movies you probably never heard of, unheard-of classics such as Elite Target and Shark Island.
The rest of the cast? Well, there's the bad guy from Cobra, "Evil Ed" from the original Fright Night and, of all people, Malcolm McDowell. I guess he was free that weekend.
The "plot" is something like a prison movie meets Top Gun in space - but with helicopters. Just don't ask me what they're mining on that planet, or why whatever they're mining is so important. Those parts of the movie don't make much sense.
6. Omega Cop (1990)*
There's "so bad it's good" and then there's "so bad it's better." This one, along with Moon 44 above, definitely belongs to the latter category.
Star Ron Manchini predicated his brief but obscure career on Chuck Norris once referring to him as "tough," and from a stint in the pages of magazines like Black Belt he went on to do a series of action movies you've probably never heard of.
In Omega Cop the near future is beset by solar flares which inexplicably turn people evil, leaving Manchini to contend with the mutants and/or murderous cancer survivors plaguing Los Angeles.
Manchini, it must be said, was an actor of such ability that he made even Chuck Norris look like a polished thespian, and his entourage of struggling actresses only show him to further disadvantage.
Oh, and Adam West (TV's Batman!) plays Manchini's boss. The scenes the two of them share are probably the highlights - or maybe I should say lowlights - of the movie.
7. Masters of Menace (1990)
David Rasche (Sledgehammer!) and his gang of Roadmasters terrorize the "straights," with hilarity ensuing. Alongside Men at Work this is one of the two more professionally produced 1990 films discussed here, even if it features a cast better known from television and went direct-to-video.
That Confederate flag wouldn't, if you'll excuse the pun, fly now, but this movie does a decent job of maintaining that Animal House vibe. Some of the gags are still funny, and the cast is very engaging.
Fun Fact: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Belushi and John Candy all appear in this movie.
8. Karate Cop (1991)**
"I'd like to, but my feet are killing me!"
"...and everybody else!"
The sequel to 1990's Omega Cop.
Ron Marchini returns to dispense justice in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this time with slightly higher production values. It's not as enjoyably crappy as Omega Cop but it's good for a few laughs.
David Carradine pops up in this one. In 1991 his career wasn't exactly flourishing.
9. Nothing but Trouble (1991)
I must have seen this back in the day. As I sat watching it I began to remember some of the lines. I'm sure I never saw it in the theater, so it must have been on cable at some point.
It's far from perfect, and I'm not sure that the house full of traps is used as effectively as it could be, but Nothing but Trouble is relatively fun and still somewhat amusing. Director Dan Aykroyd and John Candy do double and triple duty as other characters in the film, and Chevy Chase was always a serviceable straight man.
The part I'd completely forgotten was Demi Moore. In 1991 she was between Ghost and A Few Good Men. When you think about "Bobo" and 'Lil Debbull" in Nothing but Trouble, and then flash forward to Moore's role in The Substance, this movie seems very prescient.
And hey, check it out! Digital Underground! If you squint real hard you can just make out a young Tupac Shakur in their midst. This was his first movie, and no, he wasn't in Digital Underground very long.
Fun Fact: This movie was to some extent inspired by Hellraiser.
10. Sidekicks (1992)
Critics DESPISED this one, but then again that's not surprising. Chuck Norris was never their favorite actor.
The thing is, they were onto something with Sidekicks. Instead of making Norris responsible for the drama, it places him inside Jonathan Brandis' daydreams, thus putting the weight of the story on the rest of the cast. This was, I think, a strategy that worked very well indeed.
Jonathan Brandis, by the way, had a hard time of it post-Sidekicks. He went on to a series of increasingly (or maybe I should say decreasingly) lower budget films until 2003, the year in which he committed suicide. In the span of ten years or so he went from teen heartthrob to Hollywood nobody, and the descent into obscurity was very difficult for him.
Fun Fact: If Brandis' teacher looks familiar it's because she's played by Julia Nickson-Soul, who also played Stallone's love interest in Rambo: First Blood Part II. The "Soul" in her last name came from then-husband and fellow actor David Soul, whom she later divorced.
11. Wilding (1990)
You know you're in trouble when the editor decides to share all the key moments from the movie in the opening credits. Why? Because that was all the film they had! No money left over for a credit sequence!
Helmed by John Travolta's older brother Joey and the inestimable Wings Hauser, this one's so bad it demands to be seen. It was filmed in Yuma, Arizona of all places, and none of the cast and crew went on to fame and fortune afterward.
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12. Fifty/Fifty (1992)
Peter Weller (Robocop) and Robert Hays (Airplane!) team up to take down a third world dictator. As a project this movie has an interesting history: it began life as a Sylvester Stallone/Eddie Murphy vehicle, morphed into a Sylvester Stallone/Kurt Russell vehicle, and was later abandoned to the likes of Weller and Hays. At the time Weller had just appeared in Robocop 2, and Hays hadn't done much Airplane 2: The Sequel nearly ten years before.
This movie was something of a last gasp for Cannon Films. By 1992 their best years were behind them, though the company would be restructured in several forms up until the present day.
13. The Boneyard (1991)
Horror "comedy" that isn't especially funny. If you ever want to see the difference between actors with presence and actors without this is the film to watch. Phyllis Diller and Norman Fell weren't exactly Hollywood heavyweights, but even so their short appearances in this movie distract mightily from the other, less emotive actors in their midst.
14. Seedpeople (1992)
Charles Band, that latter-day Roger Corman, brings us this latter-day ripoff of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It might have been cheesy fun if the gore wasn't constantly interrupted by tedious stretches of soap opera-worthy dialogue.
15. Amityville 1992: It's About Time (1992)
The clock idea is/was interesting. Maybe if they'd just taken that, and focused in on every room in the house inhabiting a different time period, or on time moving faster or slower in each room, they could have built up to the idea of each member of the family moving through a different causal loop, with these loops converging in the movie's final scenes.
Yeah, that could have worked. But instead of that we got (and are getting, and will get) another lame haunted house movie wherein the various characters' actions don't make much sense, both from their own perspectives and from the perspectives of other characters inhabiting the same movie.
16. Liebestraum (1991)
Sometimes "sexy," mostly pretentious film noir offering from director Mike Figgis. Figgis would be nominated for Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay for Leaving Las Vegas a few years later, and there are elements of that movie in this one, but it's not nearly as good.
17. Short Time (1990)
HA HA HA blood diseases are HILARIOUS!!
Or not. Dabney Coleman (!) stars as a cop on the verge of retirement notified that he only has a short time to live, with Matt Frewer (a.k.a. "Max Headroom") as his partner and Teri Garr (!) as his ex-wife.
And NONE of it is even remotely funny, despite the fact that this was supposed to be a comedy.
18. Spaced Invaders (1990)
Invading Martians are mistaken for trick or treaters and Halloween hilarity ensues. Or does it?
This is the kind of movie I remember from the late 80s/early 90s: kid-friendly films with a lot of sequel and merchandising potential. The scripts for a lot of these movies? They were beside the point.
19. The Dream Machine (1991)
You've seen Corey Haim in The Lost Boys; maybe you've also seen him in License to Drive or Dream a Little Dream, but what about The Dream Machine? Have you ventured down that particular rabbit hole yet?
No? If so, good for you. This movie just CRAWLS by, with neither a single laugh nor a single titillating moment to be found in its 1.5 hour runtime. It was obviously made for Haim's teenage fans, most of whom had already deserted him by 1991.
20. Denial (1990)
Robin Wright and Jason Patric mope around and say cryptic things to themselves, each other, and whoever else is handy. If you've ever had to sit through a particularly tedious drama class, this movie feels exactly like that. One of the most excruciating things I've seen in a long time.
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*Some sources say 1989, not 1990 on this one. It was probably direct-to-video, so I doubt it matters much.
**The video on YouTube is of extremely poor quality. Sadly the Criterion version was not available!
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