The 1990s gave us some of the greatest movies of all time, including Jurassic Park, The Matrix, Pulp Fiction, The Shawshank Redemption, and the list goes on. However, in addition to the good, the decade also produced the bad and the ugly. And somehow even more offensive than the merely forgettable films were those that cemented themselves in our memories, occupying valuable real estate with their bizarre concepts and over-the-top performances.
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How so many of these movies were greenlit in the first place remains a mystery, and how some of them succeeded at the box office is even more puzzling. Whether they are popular among general audiences, latent cult followings, or unwilling ’90s kids who formed core memories around VHS previews, these are the movies from the decade we just can’t seem to shake.
7) The Flintstones
When The Flintstones hit theaters in 1994, Universal touted it as the family movie event of the summer. With John Goodman as Fred, Elizabeth Perkins as Wilma, Rick Moranis as Barney, and even Halle Berry in a breakout supporting role, the cast was stacked. And the marketing worked because the movie was a hit, pulling in over $340 million worldwide and debuting at number one at the box office.
But critics and audiences quickly soured on it. The sets and costumes captured the prehistoric cartoon world, but the story was muddled, and the lame puns wore thin over its nearly two-hour runtime. For many viewers, it became the kind of movie you remembered more for the marketing tie-ins (McDonald’s promotions, toys, and even a video game) than the film itself. It’s more proof that a box-office hit can still be a movie you’d rather forget.
6) The Beverly Hillbillies
Hollywood tried to cash in on ’90s nostalgia by reviving old TV hits, but The Beverly Hillbillies movie made it clear that not every sitcom was meant for the big screen. Starring Jim Varney as Jed Clampett, the movie was marketed as a backwoods romp that would appeal to longtime fans. Instead, it earned scathing reviews, with Roger Ebert famously calling it “one of the worst movies of this or any year.”
The problem was that the jokes relied almost entirely on hick stereotypes and slapstick gags without any real heart or creativity. The original TV show had a certain charm that came from culture clash humor, while the movie rested heavily on low-hanging “hicksploitation.” While it underperformed at the box office, it remains ingrained in the zeitgeist for being a terrible take on the original.
5) Alien 3
Coming off of James Cameron’s Aliens, expectations for Alien 3 were sky-high. Instead, what fans got was one of the most infamously troubled productions in Hollywood history. With no finished script when filming began, multiple rewrites from different writers, and studio interference at every level, David Fincher’s directorial debut was doomed from the start. The finished product killed off beloved characters from the previous film in the opening minutes and stripped the franchise down to a bleak prison-planet setting.
While it earned over $100 million overseas, the film underperformed in the U.S. and earned mixed reviews, with many calling it a huge step down from its predecessors. Sigourney Weaver delivered another strong performance, but even she couldn’t salvage what Fincher himself would later disown. It’s a movie most fans wish didn’t exist in the canon, but because it’s part of a beloved franchise, nobody can quite forget it either.
4) Showgirls
Few films in the ’90s bombed as hard as Showgirls. Marketed as a bold NC-17 exploration of ambition and sexuality in Las Vegas, it was met with horrendous reviews and dismal box office returns. The exploitative nudity, poorly written script, half-baked characters, and melodramatic performances made it an easy target, with critics ranking it among the worst films of all time.
Yet in a surprising second life, Showgirls went on to become one of MGM’s best-selling titles of all time, making over $100 million in home video and eventually being embraced as a cult classic. Today, some fans argue it’s a biting satire about the exploitation of women in entertainment, while others love it precisely because it’s absurd and trashy. Whether you laugh at, cringe at, or admire it, Showgirls is unforgettable.
3) Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
The first Mortal Kombat movie wasn’t perfect, but it did well enough to convince fans and studio executives that a sequel would be a worthy endeavor. However, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation arrived with a whole new creative team, recast most of the original actors, and killed off its fan-favorite hero Johnny Cage in the opening scene. What followed was a cacophony of awful CGI, terrible writing, and frankly unwatchable performances that had fans of the game crawling out of their skin.
The sequel was torn to shreds by critics as one of the worst movies ever made. It bombed so hard at the box office that a planned third film was dropped, and the franchise lingered in development hell until it was rebooted in 2021. And yet, precisely because of its sheer catastrophic failure, it lives on in our hearts and minds. To this day, you’ll find fans online referencing iconic lines like: “Too bad YOU… will die!” It may have set the franchise back twenty years, but many consider it to be so horrible that it’s wonderful.
2) Jack Frost
Christmas flicks are allowed to be absurd, so on paper, a heartwarming family Christmas movie about a dad who comes back as a snowman to bond with his son could have worked. In practice, Jack Frost was one of the most bizarre misfires of the decade, and maybe the strangest movie ever. Starring Michael Keaton as a rock musician (turned snow dad), the film bombed at the box office. Critics called it creepy, confusing, and unintentionally funny.
Despite all this, the movie has survived thanks to nostalgia, and the frightening poster featuring the Keaton snowman monstrosity is seared into our minds. Many of us remember watching it on VHS during Christmas, or at the very least, seeing the trailer in the VHS previews of other holiday classics like Home Alone. No matter how much you want to bury Jack Frost under a snowdrift, the uncanny snowman with his pointy eyebrows always finds his way back into your thoughts come December.
1) Coneheads
Spinning an SNL sketch into a feature-length comedy was a common practice in the ’90s, resulting in hits like Wayne’s World and cult classics like A Night at the Roxbury. However, the strategy didn’t always work, and sadly, Coneheads was destined for failure. The film debuted at number six on its opening weekend, underwhelming at the box office and earning terrible reviews. King critic Roger Ebert dismissed it as “dismal, dreary and fairly desperate.” Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin reprised their roles, but the humor simply couldn’t transcend skit territory.
Despite its failure, Coneheads lives on in pop culture because it’s now forever wedded to it’s source material. It’s hard to think of the hilarious skit without then thinking of the film flop that followed. Nobody really loved it, but nobody ever forgot it either. And while it never gained the cult following of something like Showgirls, Coneheads remains an unforgettable relic of the decade and the beginning of the end for SNL’s film outings.
Any big ones we left off? Leave your ‘90 movie guilty pleasure in the comments below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
