The ’90s brought us a lot of great movies, but it also brought us a lot of cringe moments. And these cringe moments come in different forms. Some scenes make us cringe because they’re so poorly executed, but some actually make us cringe for the right reasons. Just because a scene is uncomfortable, doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad. In fact, that may have actually been the intention of the filmmaker, as you will soon see. And that’s the purpose of this list. To deliver a round-robin cringe-style buffet of the good, the graphic, and the uncomfortable moments that are in some great, and not-so-great films.
Here are 11 of our favorite cringe moments that will make you wonder how these scenes didn’t end up on the cutting room floor.
Related:Highest Grossing Comedy Movies of the ‘90s
11"Air Gordon" - Wild Wild West (1999)
Wild Wild Westwas a unique experimentation that blended modern action tropes with 1869 vernacular and a steam-punk aesthetic. On paper, it sounds amazing,but this Will Smith moviewas widely considered to be a flop. As ambitious asthis film was ($241 million budget), it fell short in many ways. In most cases, it was the humor that fell flat. Between the gratuitously racist drawl of Dr. Arliss Loveless, and Artemus Gordon referring to Salma Hayek’s Rita Escobar as a “breast of fresh air,”Wild Wild Westis actually quite crass for a film that boasts a PG-13 rating.
But we can forgiveWild Wild West’sfailed attempts at shock humor in most cases, because they were just trying to make us laugh. What’s absolutely unforgivable, however,is the sneaky product placementthat took us out of the film. Artemus Gordon was a brilliant mechanical engineer and inventor who made all sorts of wildly elaborate contraptions, like bulletproof chain mail, disembodied head projectors, and the bivalve interior combustion twice-exhausted bi-axle nitro cycle.
So when he comes up with a flying contraption, does he take Jim West’s suggestion, and call it an Elevation Enhancer? No. He calls it the “Air… Gordon.” You know. Like the shoes.
10Lung Pogo - Leprechaun (1993)
1993’sLeprechaunis one of those movies that’s so bad that you can’t help but enjoy it. And the makeup was top-notch for a B-film with a $5 million budget. But the line delivery and limericks could have been better served by a more exhaustive punch-up to the script. One of the more notable cringe moments involved inLeprechaunwas joyfully sung by Ludban Buttowski, our short-statured murderer with a penchant for shoe-shining.
When he embarks on his blood-drenched foray in avoidance of four-leaf clovers, he tracks down one of his missing gold coins to a local pawn shop. When he confronts Joe, the pawn shop owner, he kills him with a pogo stick, by jumping on him repeatedly, penetrating his skin, breaking his bones, and singing a joyous little ditty. As he maniacally hops up and down, he sings, “This old lep, he played one, he played pogo on his lung!” If you’re watchingLeprechaunstrictly for entertainment value, it’s an amazing line, but if you’re watching this through a more critical lens, you may find yourself cringing just a little bit.
9Killing Rufio - Hook (1991)
Do we really need to say it?Hookis a family movie with a PG rating, stars Robin Williams, and is about the magic of rediscovering your youth. Sounds like a magical adventure, doesn’t it? Reuniting yourself with your inner child is one of those feelings that is hard to top, because though you lose a lot of innocence when you grow up, you’re able to still look at the world with the joy and curiosity of a child if you’re brave enough.
There’s one glaring problem, however. In the third act, Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman) kills Rufio. You read that correctly. Listen, we understand that an antagonist has to pose some sort of threat, but couldn’t Hook have just put Rufio in a cage, and slowly lowered it into the ocean, so Peter Pan could save him in a nick of time? This would make Peter Pan become the hero that he needs to be, while still letting us know that Captain Hook is a serious villain who should never be crossed.
We don’t get that outcome inHook. Instead, Captain Hook stabs Rufio. It’s one of those things that you don’t really think about if you’re a kid watching this movie, but as an adult, it’s hard not to be just a little upset over a child having an on-screen death in a children’s movie.
8Bathroom Scene - Senseless (1998)
Using flatulence as a mechanism for humor is like merging onto the highway with two flat tires. Just don’t. In fact, it should be an unspoken comedy rule that you should never trust a fart to do more than elicit a chuckle at best. And if you do think that popping an air biscuit is instrumental to breaking some tension, you must do so sparingly.
This is the problem withSenseless,which in many ways is just a gross-out comedy that falls as flat as Darryl Witherspoon’s depth perception when he’s in the height of his sensory experimentation. The scene in question involves Darryl eavesdropping on Janice and Tonya while they’re talking about their romantic woes in the ladies' room. Tonya enters the stall, and punishes the porcelain in a way that we can only describe as vicious and intermittent.
Through lines of dialogue like “corn, I don’t remember eating no corn,'' we hear an obnoxious sequence of plops and drops that would make us laugh if we were still in grade school. But Marlon Wayans’ feigned expression of disgust doesn’t really dial in the laughs. A well-placed toot would have been way more effective than the minute-long scene we were presented with.
7"It’s a man, Baby" - Austin Powers (1997)
Though theAustin Powersfranchise is not without its charm, one of its shortfalls is leaning into a joke a little too hard. When Basil Exposition introduces Powers to his mother, Austin punches her in the face, before boldly claiming, “That’s not your mother, it’s a man, baby!” before trying to tear off what he perceives to be a mask and hairpiece. But to Basil’s horror, it was actually his mother, whose only fault was being an elderly woman.
When Austin Powers is prompted to explain to himself, he states that she looks like she was “beaten with an ugly stick.” Now, we’re not without a sense of humor, and we do find the initial exchange to be funny, but the scene goes too long, as is the case with many other jokes throughout the film and franchise. Sometimes beating a joke into the ground until it comes back is a solid way to get a laugh, but what did that old lady ever do to Austin?
6"Look at that pooper" - Hackers (1995)
1995’sHackershas a lot going for it. For its time, it was one of those innovative films that highlighted the cutting-edge and potential of the internet, and the fashion was quintessentially ’90s, but in a good way. In a lot of ways, this movie had its finger on the pulse, and it still holds up to this day. But some of the throwaway lines are quite silly, and don’t do much service to the story that’s trying to be told.
One notable instance is when Cereal Killer (Matthew Lillard) is walking through a party and makes a comment about a woman he sees off-screen. He loudly proclaims, “Oh, look at that pooper, man! Spandex… it’s a privilege, not a right,” before continuing to go about his business. The line just comes out of nowhere and feels like an unnecessary added joke that didn’t need to exist. In another context, like a raunchy college comedy, this quick exchange could land, but it just doesn’t work inHackers.
5Any Scene with The Violator - Spawn (1997)
Spawnwas a great movie in a lot of ways. This was in the early days ofcomic book adaptations, and filmmakers were still testing the waters. Though the movie ultimately scored a 17% on Rotten Tomatoes, we still consider it to be a suitable proof of concept for the genre as a whole, and for that reason, we’re glad thatSpawnexists in this form.Spawnhas the comic book characteristics that we have grown to know and love in the Marvel and DC Cinematic Universes, but it feels more like a prototype than anything else.
One of the missteps inSpawnwas theoveruse of comedic reliefin the form of John Leguizamo’s Violator character. This is another one of those instances where gross-out humor doesn’t work. Well, it’s not that it doesn’t work, it’s just cringe in the context of a PG-13 movie. The Violator is a grotesque shape-shifting clown, who eats maggots, uses too much sexual innuendo, and overuses toilet humor in a way that’s cringe to an adult audience. Trying to shoehorn adult humor into a film that’s targeted toward a teenage demographic often makes the jokes fall flat because writers have to slip the humor past the censors, and it more often than not comes off as disjointed and weird.
If an R-rated version ofSpawnever gets developed, we think The Violator could do an excellent job eliciting laughter. But in many ways, the jokes are corny in their delivery, and leave a lot to be desired.
4Shameless McDonald’s Plug - Richie Rich (1994)
Richie Richwas a fun movie about an exorbitantly wealthy child of the same name. He has everything a kid could ask for. He even has a McDonald’s in his home. On one hand, this is every child’s dream. We mean, what kid doesn’t love a Happy Meal? You get a toy, piping hot French fries made to order, crispy, expertly breaded Chicken McNuggets, and of course, the secret sauce that boasts a simple recipe, but is somehow impossible to replicate. Wait a minute, this is sounding like a commercial. And this is exactly why this scene is so cringe. It makes us wonder how much Ronald and Co. paid for this advertising slot in the middle of a children’s movie.
But as much as we want to blameRichie Richfor its crass commercialism, it’s still not as bad asMac and Me,which had a five-minute dance-off at McDonald’s, and made sure that everybody in the audience knew that Coca-Cola is in fact, a popular brand of soda that you could buy at the store.
3Hooking up with Student - Election (1999)
There’s no real way to gloss over the sex scenes inElectionwithout feeling really uncomfortable. The through line in question is the adulterous relationship that Jim McAllister has with his student, Tracy Flick. Though there is no nudity inElection, we’re more than able to connect the dots. Not only is it implied that McAllister is having a sexual relationship with his underaged student, he also fantasizes about her while having intercourse with his wife, and the entire exchange is one that makes us uncomfortable to say the least.
Related:Why Office Space Is the Best Comedy of the 90s
2Swizzle Stick Scene - Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo (1999)
Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolois one of those movies that is cringe by its very nature, so we don’t want to fault it too much for its overt sexual overtones, and shock humor. But there is one scene in particular that makes us cringe for a different reason than every other film on this list. When Deuce realizes that the martini with two olives that he ordered would cost him $8.50, he cancels the order in favor of a cranberry juice that would only cost three dollars.
But the martini he originally ordered was already prepared, meaning that Deuce was now on the hook for $11.50, which he didn’t want to pay because he canceled his original order. The bartender, played by the late, great Norm Macdonald, has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to skipping out on your bar tab, and says to Deuce, “if you don’t pay me now, I’m gonna take this swizzle stick, and uh, I’ll be shoving that right up your pee hole.”
See what we mean? This is one of the best lines in the movie, as well asa classic Norm Macdonald delivery. But we’d be lying if we said that we didn’t cross our legs and wince in pain just imagining what that would feel like. This is the one instance where we think the humor itself isn’t cringe, but rather how our mind’s eye can manifest this exchange in the form of physical pain, which makes us cringe for a completely different reason.
