Who doesn’t love the ’90s movies? It felt like an era when Hollywood was willing to try just about anything — especially in 1996. It’s no surprise the year gave us huge hits like Mission: Impossible, Independence Day, and Scream, alongside others that didn’t come anywhere close to making the same impact at the box office. On the other hand, some of those movies eventually became favorites that quite a few people still talk about and recommend. Some only found an audience once they hit VHS, while others were played over and over on TV until someone finally gave them a chance, but what matters is that they became films people still remember for all kinds of reasons.
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Thirty years later, this list brings together 4 of the best cult classics from that particular year. If you’re not someone who remembers them fondly, you’ll at least understand why anyone who saw them back in the day still looks back on them with so much nostalgia.
4) The Craft
The Craft should be much more mainstream, considering it’s a witch movie with an audience for this kind of thing, and it still holds up pretty well. Its story follows Sarah (Robin Tunney), a teenager who arrives at a new school and ends up becoming friends with Nancy (Fairuza Balk), Bonnie (Neve Campbell), and Rochelle (Rachel True), three girls who practice witchcraft. At first, using magic seems like the perfect solution to all four girls’ problems: they can get revenge on people who hurt them, get what they want, and finally have some control over their own lives. However, Nancy in particular starts taking things way too far. But then why does it still work thirty years later?
The movie doesn’t make its protagonists the typical perfect teenage girls you would find in movies from the era; they’re insecure, unforgiving, sometimes cruel, and clearly have no idea what to do with the power they’ve gained. And that’s also what explains its cult classic status, because The Craft has such a strong identity, from its visual style to the dynamic between the four girls. Sure, it’s dated in some ways, but that doesn’t make it a bad thing — actually, it makes you want to go back to the ’90s and be just like them. Plenty of dark and supernatural movies (or even horror like Scream) defined a generation, but this one has a special place because it’s the kind of specific influence you can see in films and shows like Jennifer’s Body, Fear Street, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and American Horror Story: Coven.
3) Joe’s Apartment
It’s very possible that you’ve never seen Joe’s Apartment because it really is a cult movie, but the best way to explain it is this: a guy moves to New York, rents a run-down apartment, and discovers that he has to share the place with thousands of cockroaches that talk, sing, and dance — yes, that’s basically it. Joe (Jerry O’Connell) is trying to start a new life, but his problems get worse when the building’s owner decides to kick him out and turn the property into a more profitable project. The cockroaches then end up helping Joe deal with everything. It’s such a specific premise that it’s hard to imagine a studio releasing anything quite like it today, but that’s where the movie’s charm comes from.
Not everyone is going to like it, and that’s completely understandable. Watching it requires you to go along with it, because it’s pure raunchy, goofy comedy with enough weirdness to feel nostalgic. To pull that off, Joe’s Apartment mixes live-action actors, digital effects, musical numbers, and gross-out humor without much concern for looking normal. It didn’t work at the box office and was pretty much rejected by mainstream audiences at the time, but it became a cult classic after finding a second life on home video and TV. Basically, this is a film that could have disappeared without anyone caring, but it’s worth remembering because of how fearless it was. It literally doesn’t look or feel like anything else that was coming out of Hollywood at the time.
2) Kingpin
You know those comedies where the main character is always one bad decision away from turning an already crazy situation into something worse? Kingpin is exactly that. Here we meet Roy Munson (Woody Harrelson), a former professional bowler whose career was ruined by his rival, Ernie McCracken (Bill Murray). Years later, Roy meets Ishmael (Randy Quaid), a young Amish man with an impressive talent for bowling, and decides to take him on the road to compete in a tournament while trying to make some money and, on top of that, settle the score with Ernie. The story is pretty much an excuse to put these characters through a series of increasingly ridiculous situations (which was a classic formula in the ’90s), and that’s where the fun comes in.
The film was made by the same directors behind Dumb and Dumber, so the humor isn’t toned down at all, and it has no intention of making its protagonist a particularly likable person. Are some of the jokes dated? Absolutely, but the whole setup still works, and for anyone who enjoys this kind of comedy from the era, it’s one of the best picks. However, it only became beloved by a certain audience after it left theaters, since unfortunately it was released at a pretty bad time and struggled at the box office partly due to the Olympics. These days, some people call Kingpin a seriously underrated gem, and honestly, it’s hard to argue with a movie that’s already this much fun just by having Harrelson and Murray in it.
1) James and the Giant Peach
James and the Giant Peach is officially a children’s movie, but anyone who watched it as a kid probably understands why it can also feel like a nightmare — which makes it so memorable. James is an orphan who lives with his cruel aunts until he gets some magical ingredients that make a peach grow to a gigantic size. When he climbs inside the fruit, he discovers that it’s inhabited by insects and ends up traveling with them to New York. The thing is that these insects include a spider, a centipede, and other creatures that probably wouldn’t be a child’s first choice for adventure companions. And it’s made with stop-motion animation that makes everything even creepier.
Overall, it’s a film with a really good story and some genuinely beautiful moments, but also creatures that can send a shiver down your spine. Naturally, that might seem like an odd combination, but the truth is that it’s beloved because it’s mostly a story about escape, with characters who feel like real friends, a very distinctive visual world, and the feeling that a kid is watching something their parents don’t have control over. If Tim Burton, with his familiar style, can be a hit (and he’s also the movie’s producer here), then why wouldn’t James and the Giant Peach be too, right?
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Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
