Summary
- B-movies are cult classics, typically low budget films in genres like horror, sci-fi, and action, with campy charm and creative premises.
- Directors like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson excel at making small budgets stretch, turning B-movies into pop culture phenomena with creative talent.
- Films like “Cube,” “Hardware,” and “Tremors” showcase the unique and diverse offerings of B-movies in the 90s, ranging from horror to sci-fi.
The humble B-movie is something of a lost art form in the modern era, with the 1990s possibly being the last great decade for the genre. “B-movies” refer to any film with a miniscule budget that wrings entertainment out of cheap thrills, action, stupendous gore, and sex appeal. Usually living in the realm of science fiction, horror, action, or martial arts movies, these types of films fulfill a cult niche with their unmistakable campy charm. While the 80s had their own best B-movies, the 90s are a strong contender with some powerful offerings.
The best B-movies know not to take themselves seriously while making their tiny budgets go as far as possible. It’s not an easy task, but talented directors like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson are more than capable of making paltry production costs go much further than ever expected. Add in some half-decent (or memorably bad) acting performances, creative premises, and an undeniable pop culture impact, and B-movies can end up being so much more than the sum of their parts.
10 Cube
1997
A B-movie beloved enough to spawn its own modest series of spin-offs, Cube is an incredibly creative bottle movie that makes the most out of its limitations. The film follows an eclectic group of strangers who suddenly wake up inside a mysterious shifting labyrinth of cube-shaped rooms with no memory as to how they got there. They have to work together to survive the deadly traps of the facility while keeping tabs on each other to avoid becoming a human shield.
Cube is carried by its incredibly creative premise, building on the mystery of the purpose of the Cube with very gingerly doled-out answers that are then ruined by the specificity of the sequels. The gruesome traps of the various shifting rooms of the puzzle-like torture chamber deliver a wide variety of creatively brutal deaths, even if many of them are quite predictable. Cube doesn’t quite execute its concept as strong as other B-movies of the 90s did, but was popular enough to get its own trilogy of films for a good reason.
9 Hardware
1990
A rare horror movie featuring a robot as the primary antagonist, Hardware is a shockingly atmospheric splatterfest set in a well-realized science fiction world. Taking place in a post-apocalyptic future in which meager bands of humanity get by in the hollowed-out ruins of a technologically advanced society, Hardware centers around a soldier who gifts his artist girlfriend an old robotic head to use in a sculpture. When the head reactivates, building a body for itself out of scavenged materials, terror breaks loose in the couple’s small community of survivors.
Like Cube, Hardware takes advantage of its dense, claustrophobic setting to evoke a world much grander than what is shown on screen. Hardware does a better job at worldbuildling, however, and crafts a truly memorable cybernetic killer to set loose on its endearing characters that viewers will genuinely want to see live to the end credits. That being said, the slow pacing and lack of pop culture impact keeps Hardware a more obscure cult classic.
8 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
1990
Big family-friendly franchises aren’t typically what one expects to be paired with a B-movie, but it’s hard to argue that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles doesn’t fit the bill. From its small budget to its schlocky premise, the live-action manifestation of the beloved comic-turned-80s-cartoon certainly qualifies as a B-movie in all the ways that matter. Not re-inventing the wheel, the first 90s Turtles movie tells the origin story of the titular crime-fighting reptile youths and their earliest battles with the evil ninja clan The Foot, and their deadly master, Shredder.
While the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have gone on to have many incarnations since, their radical 90s versions left a lasting impression on the hugely-popular franchise since. From the Turtles’ radical slang to their humble beginnings, the 90s movie is able to navigate putting such a bizarre premise into live action with some wickedly creative animatronic costumes. Even if it’s corny and painfully dated, the first of the 90s TMNT movies deserves recognition for just how far it managed to run with such a difficult assignment.
7 Tremors
1990
Another B-movie popular enough to inspire sequels, Tremors is a unique creature feature with an unmatched sense of bravado and panache. Starring Kevin Bacon, the movie revolves around a small southwestern town that comes under attack from a horde of terrifying creatures that burrow through the earth. It’s up to Bacon’s Val, a handyman with an unerring knack for fighting the tunneling horrors, to save his eccentric community.
Evoking the creature features of the 1950s, Tremors manages to expertly balance its horror with precise comedy. Even if its multi-million dollar budget and star power puts it on the pricier side of the B-movie spectrum, the film is unapologetically rooted in the aesthetics and sensibilities of the genre. Though Tremors might balance its scares and laughs a little too evenly, being competent but never amazing in either category, the whole Tremors series wouldn’t have happened without fervent fan demand.
6 El Mariachi
1992
Without knowing the history of Spy Kids and The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D director Robert Rodriguez’s cinematic track record, one might be surprised to learn he was behind some of the bloodiest B-movies of the turn of the millennium. Enter El Mariachi, a Spanish-language neo-Western that makes high noon shootouts a bloody good time. Shot with a mainly amateur cast on an absolutely paltry budget, the film follows a drifting musician who is mistaken for a dangerous criminal.
El Mariachi takes advantage of its desolate filming location to stage some gorgeous, sweeping cinematography and pulse-pounding firefights that earned every penny of its impressive box office run. The creative use of a guitar case as a weapon is pure Robert Rodriguez charm, and the unabashedly campy director manages to squeeze every drop of talent out of his inexperienced cast to paint a highly-entertaining narrative of love and deception. Even if the budget and Rodriguez’s inexperience form countless cracks on the finished product, it’s hard not to admire El Mariachi.
5 Ricki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky
1991
One of the most violent martial arts movies ever put to screen, Ricki-Oh: The Story of Ricky is a marvelous B-movie that needs to be seen to be believed. The story, as much as there is one, centers on the titular Ricky, an inexplicably superhumanly strong ruffian who is jailed in a deadly super-prison after getting revenge for his girlfriend’s murder. What follows is a bloody series of attempts on Ricky’s life as he draws the ire of various elements within the prison, striking them all down one-by-one.
The gruesome deaths of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky alone are enough to carry it into the B-movie hall-of-fame, with realism thrown out the window as Ricky disembowels, breaks, and snaps his opponents in increasingly creative ways. It’s hard not to fall in love with Ricky’s simple overpowered strength as he tears through his prison, surviving even the most audacious threats, including a last-minute addition of a literal inhuman rage monster. The English dub, nonsensical plot, and sheer brutality of the film may be distracting at times, but as a B-movie, it’s nearly unmatched.
4 From Dusk Till Dawn
1996
Though he didn’t direct it, the fingerprint of infamous pulp action director Quentin Tarantino are all over From Dusk Till Dawn, which he wrote and starred in. At first, the George Clooney star vehicle seems like a run-of-the-mill crime movie, featuring two criminals on the run through the American Southwest who take a hapless family hostage during their botched escape. It isn’t until 40 minutes in that the film abruptly shifts gears, becoming a vampire movie when the characters are trapped in a bloodthirsty strip bar secretly ran by the creatures.
For the incredible rug-pull it’s able to get over on its viewers, From Dusk Till Dawn is a legendary combination of horror, action, and comedy with B-movie charm in every crevice. From the endearingly cheap vampire costumes to the hilariously creative weaponry at play, including a codpiece-mounted revolver, the film knows what it is and succeeds in a ghoulishly fun action romp with flying colors. What keeps From Dusk Till Dawn to eclipsing the following B-movies is some of its questionable sexual content, including one of the most egregious examples of Tarantino’s obsession with feet.
3 Night Of The Living Dead
1990
Zombies and B-movies go together hand-in-rotting-hand, and films like the 1990 version of Night of the Living Dead prove why time and time again. A remake of George A. Romero’s legendary zombie movie of the same name that popularized the genre, Night of the Living Dead posits a similar premise. In the midst of a deadly zombie outbreak, seven survivors manage to huddle together in a rural farmhouse, holding out against the slowly-advancing undead horde for as long as they can.
Unlike most remakes, Night of the Living Dead plays things very close to the original, acting mostly as a modernized update of the 1968 classic with glorious 90s special effects. The characters also get a stronger pass in this iteration of the story, expanding upon relationships and themes that were only hinted at in the predecessor. As well as Night of the Living Dead has aged as a zombie movie classic, it stands on the shoulders of giants, and doesn’t rely enough on its own ideas to truly be one of the B-movie greats.
2 Army Of Darkness
1992
A direct sequel to Sam Raimi’s cult classic remake of his own film, Evil Dead 2, Army of Darkness takes Ash Williams and the Deadites to a whole new world. Picking up where the previous film left off, Army of Darkness sees Ash flung into a portal that spits him out in the middle ages, having to contend with the superstitious folk of the era as a time-displaced survivor. As if that weren’t bad enough, the Deadites seem prolific in this age, forcing Ash to mount a resistance against the titular army of the undead.
Taking the creativity of Evil Dead into a daring setting far beyond its typical cabin in the woods, Army of Darkness deserves credit for expanding the possibilities of not only the franchise, but B-horror movies as a whole. Jam-packed with just as much flagrantly fake blood and guts as the original, Army of Darkness does get decidedly more silly with its violence, ascending to almost Tom and Jerry-levels of slapstick humor that has yet to be surpassed. If it wasn’t for another zombie movie the same year, Army of Darkness could easily have a case as the greatest 90s B-movie.
1 Braindead
1992
These days, Peter Jackson is known for his groundbreaking work on the Lord of the Rings movies. Tolkien fans are frequently shocked to learn that the director got his start crafting one of the most disturbingly violent zombie movies ever that has since ascended to the throne of 90s B-movie royalty. Enter Braindead, marketed in North America as Dead Alive, the film presents the grisly tale of a young, lovestruck boy desperately trying to keep his zombified mother safe in the midst of a deadly undead plague caused by the bite of a mysterious creature.
Braindead is the king of B-movie gore, managing to go over-the-top with its zombie maulings in a way that’s overtly unrealistic, yet somehow still chilling to watch unfold. The humor and performances of Braindead are also shockingly on-point, wading through the buckets of blood with a proficiency that anchors the carnage in something tangible. Braindead put Peter Jackson on the map for a very good reason, and to this day towers over all other B-movies of the 90s.