The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 1990s Creature Features. In this series of horror-themed articles, we’ll be reviewing the creepiest scenes from various creature feature films of each decade. Most films within this subgenre are often a combination of Animals Attack Films, Survival Horror Films and Eco-Horror Films and feature wildlife run amok (often through mutation) and aliens or monsters hunting humans. These articles will showcase some of the subtle (yet terrifying) scares when nature (or an extraterrestrial being) turns on mankind.
Our third article covers the 1990s, which had a lower volume of horror films compared to the 1970s and 1980s. However, creature features were still popular during this time carrying over themes from previous decades with an increased focus on genetic engineering and sci-fi horror involving alien creatures.
Genetic engineering continued its growth into a major subgenre of both horror and sci-fi in the 1990s with films featuring genetic modifications in baboons in Shakma (1990), a dog in Man’s Best Friend (1993), a new insect species in Mimic (1997), sharks in Deep Blue Sea (1999) and a crocodile in Lake Placid (1999). But the pinnacle of genetic engineering-based creature features during the decade was the box office hit Jurassic Park (1993) which spawned a franchise involving the re-introduction of dinosaurs in present time.
As for sci-fi horror, there were numerous sub-themed creature features from climate change driven evolution of slasher-type creatures in Split Second (1992), alien parasites controlling humans in The Puppet Masters (1994) and The Faculty (1998), an alien species looking for a human mate in Species (1995) and the evolution of sea-based Ottoia that hunt humans in Deep Rising (1998).
After we get through each decade, we’ll have a cumulative article with the 25 Creepiest Scenes from Creature Features of All Time and you can find each article below as we post them over the following months:
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 1970s Creature Features
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 1980s Creature Features
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 1990s Creature Features
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 2000s Creature Features
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 2010s Creature Features
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 2020s Creature Features
- The 25 Creepiest Scenes from Creature Features of All Time
For our rankings we’re going to use some criteria to help define and refine our list. First, what is considered ‘creepy’ is often subjective. What might be creepy to some people might come off as boring to others. For the list we’ve compiled, we narrowed down the Top 25 to scenes that genuinely scared older members of KBZ when they saw these films at a younger age to recent generations that still found some of these older horror films creepy.
Second, we’re going to use the broadest interpretation of ‘creature features’ as possible to include natural or mutated wildlife, insects and marine life to monsters or aliens that qualify as ‘creatures’.
Third, we won’t be including certain types of monster movies dealing with werewolves, vampires, mummies and zombies. We will include them if wolves are the main focus of Films About Werewolves and bats or vampire bats have significant screentime in Films About Vampires. We have our own lists for the remaining monster subgenres with Films About Mummies and Films About Zombies.
Fourth, though certain types of monsters or aliens do make up part of the Creature Feature film subgenre, we’re going to give priority to films that feature natural wildlife or marine life hunting humans. As for body snatcher alien invasion-themed films, we will exclude Body Snatchers (1993) as it’s an updated remake of the 1956 and 1978 films but will include The Puppet Masters (1994) as it features an actual alien creature.
Fifth, we’re going to exclude ‘killer dolls’ from this list as they aren’t true creature features. This will affect films from the Child’s Play and Puppet Master franchises which originated in the 1980s and continued into the 1990s, Dolly Dearest (1991), Demonic Toys (1992) and so on.
Sixth, we will include some Films About Dinosaurs and Kaiju Films if their themes fit within this subgenre (i.e. man vs. beast).
And seventh, we had to follow our rule for all of KBZ’s film listings where we only list films that have a 4.0/10 or higher rating and were released between 1990 – 1999.
As we mentioned above, we’ll be releasing additional lists of the creepiest horror films of the decade over the next few months. You can refer to our schedule above or subscribe to our newsletter to get updated as we release each new article.
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The 25 Creepiest Scenes from 1990s Creature Features
Ranks 25-1:
#25 Baby Blood (1990) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#24 Split Second (1992) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#23 Shakma (1990) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#22 Full Eclipse (1993) Where to Stream / Buy: YouTube
#21 Anaconda (1997) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#20 The Puppet Masters (1994) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#19 Man’s Best Friend (1993) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#18 Deep Blue Sea (1999) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#17 Ticks (1993) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#16 Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#15 Deep Rising (1998) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#14 Species (1995) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#13 Lake Placid (1999) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#12 Necronomicon (1993) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
#11 Bad Moon (1996) Where to Stream / Buy: Amazon
