Best Science Fiction Movies of 1990

The final installment of the Back to the Future trilogy finds Marty digging the trusty DeLorean out of a mineshaft and looking for Doc in the Wild West of 1885. But when their time machine breaks down, the travelers are stranded in a land of spurs. More problems arise when Doc falls for pretty schoolteacher Clara Clayton, and Marty tangles with Buford Tannen.

Hick handymen Val McKee and Earl Bassett can barely eke out a living in the Nevada hamlet of Perfection, so they decide to leave town -- despite an admonition from a shapely seismology coed who's picking up odd readings on her equipment. Before long, Val and Earl discover what's responsible for those readings: 30-foot-long carnivorous worms with a proclivity for sucking their prey underground.

A quartet of humanoid turtles, trained by their mentor in ninjitsu, must learn to work together to face the menace of Shredder and the Foot Clan.

Wallace and Gromit have run out of cheese, and this provides an excellent excuse for the duo to take their holiday to the moon, where, as everyone knows, there is ample cheese.

Five medical students want to find out if there is life after death. They plan to stop one of their hearts for a few seconds, thus simulating death, and then bring the person back to life.

Dr. Peyton Westlake is on the verge of realizing a major breakthrough in synthetic skin when his laboratory is destroyed by gangsters. Having been burned beyond recognition and forever altered by an experimental medical procedure, Westlake becomes known as Darkman, assuming alternate identities in his quest for revenge and a new life with a former love.

A police chief in the war-torn streets of Los Angeles discovers that an extraterrestrial creature is hunting down residents - and that he is the next target.

After a successful deployment of the Robocop Law Enforcement unit, OCP sees its goal of urban pacification come closer and closer, but as this develops, a new narcotic known as "Nuke" invades the streets led by God-delirious leader Cane. As this menace grows, it may prove to be too much for Murphy to handle. OCP tries to replicate the success of the first unit, but ends up with failed prototypes with suicidal issues... until Dr. Faxx, a scientist straying away from OCP's path, uses Cane as the new subject for the Robocop 2 project, a living God.

Larry Burrows is unhappy and feels powerless over his life. He believes his entire life could have turned out differently had he not missed that shot in a baseball game when was a kid. One night he meets this mysterious man, who could change his fate by offering him that alternative life he always dreamed of. But as Burrows embarks on this journey of self discovery he realises that even this new life has its problems and drawbacks..

A medical school dropout loses his fiancée in a tragic lawnmower incident and decides to bring her back to life. Unfortunately, he was only able to save her head, so he goes to the red light district in the city and lures prostitutes into a hotel room so he can collect body parts to reassemble her.

Jack Caine is a Houston vice cop who's forgotten the rule book. His self-appointed mission is to stop the drugs trade and the number one supplier Victor Manning. Whilst involved in an undercover operation to entrap Victor Manning, his partner gets killed, and a sinister newcomer enters the scene...

Herbert West once again revives the dead. This time, he brings Dan's ex-girlfriend's heart back inside a 'perfect' body. Dr. Hill returns as the evil nemesis who lost his head.

The Enterprise has a deadly encounter with the Borg, resulting in Picard's kidnap, while Commander Riker encounters a beautiful rival with an eye on his job.

In 1960, seven pre-teen outcasts fight an evil demon who poses as a child-killing clown. Thirty years later, they reunite to stop the demon once and for all when it returns to their hometown.

Mark 13 is a government-built killing machine programmed with artificial intelligence, able to repair and recharge itself from any energy source. Through a series of coincidences, the cyborg's head ends up in the home of a sculptress as a bizarre Christmas present from her boyfriend. Once inside its new home, the cyborg promptly reconstructs the rest of its body using a variety of household utensils and proceeds to go on a murderous rampage.

In 1960, seven outcast kids known as "The Loser Club" fight an evil demon who poses as a child-killing clown. Thirty years later, they reunite to stop the demon once and for all when it returns to their hometown.

12:01 PM is a 1990 short film directed by Jonathan Heap and starring Kurtwood Smith. It follows Myron Castleman, an everyman who keeps repeating the same hour of his life, from 12:01 PM to 1:00 PM. The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film.

The time is in the future and the youth gang violence is so high that the areas around some schools have become "free-fire zones", into which not even the police will venture. When Miles Langford, the head of Kennedy High School, decides to take his school back from the gangs, robotics specialist Dr. Robert Forrest provides "tactical education units". These are amazingly human-like androids that have been programmed to teach and are supplied with devastatingly effective solutions to discipline problems. So when the violent, out-of-control students of Kennedy High report for class tomorrow, they're going to get a real education... in staying alive!

In a dystopicly polluted rightwing religious tyranny, a young woman is put in sexual slavery on account of her now rare fertility.

Nina is totally heartbroken at the death of her boyfriend Jamie, but is even more unprepared for his return as a ghost. At first it's almost as good as it used to be - hey, even the rats that infested her house have disappeared. But Jamie starts bringing ghostly friends home and behaving more and more oddly.

George Jetson is forced to uproot his family when Mr. Spacely promotes him to take charge of a new factory on a distant planet.

Barry Allen, crime lab detective, is transformed into the Flash, the fastest man alive, and takes on the Dark Riders, a motorcycle gang terrorizing Central City.

Blending fantasy and reality, this animated short is a bold inquiry into an as yet unresolved problem - the nature of human identity. When a scientist creates a machine that can make copies of physical objects, including humans, a number of ethical questions arise. Is the technique moral? What of its safety? A film by Oscar-winning filmmaker John Weldon (who also wrote the catchy banjo tune that punctuates the story's changing moods).

The ultimate weapon, claimed to be safe for mankind, produces global side-effects including time slides and disappearances. The scientist behind the project and his car are zapped from the year 2031 to 1817 in Switzerland where he meets Dr. Victor Frankenstein, Mary Shelley and others.

A psychological thriller from the writer of the original "Twilight Zone!" In a showdown of man vs. machine, Martin plunges into a chaotic nightmare trying to save his mind from the megalomaniacal corporation!

Modelling themselves after an idyllic cookie-cutter suburban 1950s family, a colony of insects move from South America into the United States with the intent of getting access to the nation's nuclear resources.

A crew of Martians overhears a radio broadcast of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" coming from Earth, and, thinking the Martian fleet is attacking Earth, they land their broken-down ship in a backwater mid-American town. As luck would have it, they land on Halloween and get mistaken for trick-or-treaters. Comedy ensues as the Martians try to get taken seriously.

Three evil dragons from ancient times arise to earth to destroy the land and devour the souls of the weak. Only Koichi, with the power of the ancient warrior-god Takegami residing within him can fulfill the prophecy and defeat the growing evil. There is only one problem, Koichi may not be willing to fight.

During the critical experiment that would rid David Banner of the Hulk,a spy sabotages the laboratory. Banner falls in love with the spy, Jasmin, who performs missions only because her sister is being held hostage by Jasmin's superiors. Banner and Jasmin try to escape from the enemy agents to rebuild their lives together, but the Hulk is never far from them.

During World War II, a brave, patriotic American Soldier undergoes experiments to become a new supersoldier, "Captain America". Racing to Germany to sabotage the rockets of Nazi baddie "Red Skull", Captain America winds up frozen until the 1990s. He reawakens to find that the Red Skull has changed identities and is now planning to kidnap the President of the United States.

The first of two compilation films for Ultraman Great (aka Ultraman: Towards the Future). Jack Shindo is an astronaut doing research on the planet Mars. On a routine mission to survey the desolate landscape, he discovers mankind's greatest threat, Gudis, whose monsters have been ordered to kill all life on Earth. Jack must work with the mysterious colossal alien Ultraman and the Universal Multipurpose Agency to save humanity from extinction!

Year 2038: The mineral resources of the earth are drained, in space there are fights for the last deposits on other planets and satellites. This is the situation when one of the bigger mining corporations has lost all but one mineral moons and many of their fully automatic mining robots are disappearing on their flight home. Since nobody else wants the job, they send prisoners to defend the mining station. Among them undercover agent Stone, who shall clear the whereabouts of the expensive robots. In an atmosphere of corruption, fear and hatred he gets between the fronts of rivaling groups.

Welcome to Terminal City, a decaying world where the citizens wallow amidst a mind-boggling profusion of discarded consumer goods; a ruthless world where television is exploited to its fullest to sell yet more needless junk to eager consumers; a bewildering land where the unreal is real and the real, unreal. Alex Stevens is hurled into this bedlam where he finds himself pitted against the maniacal Ross Gilmore, Mayor of Terminal City, and the evil Bruce Coddle, agent of Gilmore's Social Peace Enforcement Unit.

It is the year 2022. A mysterious systems failure causes the crew of a spaceship to be stranded on the dark side of the moon, while rapidly running out of fuel and oxygen. They are surprised to discover a NASA space shuttle floating in space, and board it in the hope of salvaging some supplies. One by one, the crew is possessed and killed, and it is up to Paxton Warner to find the links between the dark side of the moon, the Bermuda Triangle, and the Devil himself.

A murderous baboon escapes from a laboratory and roams the research building, and begins to kill some teenagers who are also in the building playing a Dungeons-and-Dragons type game.

A young man finds out that his parents had been used in an atomic-weapons experiment shortly before he was born, and that the results have had some unexpected effects on him.

Unicom is a powerful organization overseeing most of the world after its economic collapse. They have banned computers and robots in an attempt to insure "life, liberty, and the pursuit of economic stability". When a Unicom Synth robot infiltrates a southwest TV station and kills the manager, a revolutionary against the gestapo-like corporation, a lowly Unicom delivery man must help the rest of the station survive through the incoming "thermal storm".

The Secrets of the Back to the Future Trilogy was a program hosted by Kirk Cameron. The show answered questions that Back to the Future fans sent in by letter. It was released onto videocassette in 1990 and as a bonus feature on the disc for Back to the Future Part III in the 2002 release of the Back to the Future trilogy. It is also available in the 2010 Blu-Ray trilogy.

An experimental submarine with a very experienced crew, the "Siren II" is sent to find out what happened to the "Siren I" after it mysteriously disappeared in a submarine rift. Things go awry when they begin to find things that shouldn't be there...

A huge solar flare is predicted to fry the Earth. Astronauts aboard the spaceship Helios must go to the Sun to drop a bomb equipped with an Artificial Intelligence and a Japanese pilot at the right time so the flare will point somewhere else.

A genetically re-engineered dog develops a psychic link with a monster created in a lab experiment which goes awry.

Five female pirates pilot the Sol Bianca, a starship with a higher level of technology than any other known. With it, they seek out riches, such as the Gnosis, an legendary item of power, and pasha, the most valuable mineral in the galaxy.

Young film student tries to sell his weird movie to a desperate film producer who is in need of a tax write-off. The producer screens the film "Lobster Man From Mars". What follows is one of the most bizarre and funny film within-a-film send-ups: Mars suffers from an air leakage, and send the dreaded Lobster Man to Earth to steal its air. The plot is foiled by a mad scientist, a girl, and an army colonel. The producer buys the movie, but it makes a huge profit and the producer is sent to jail, with the film student taking his place as the studio hot shot.

Future Americans decide to time travel to 1776 to ask the founding fathers for the solutions to their problems. A glitch in the time machine changes their destination to 1976. Still believing themselves to be in 1776, the time travellers attempt to study this "ideal" civilization. 70's jokes, props and stars abound.

After someone is killed in the subterranean project called "Shadowzone," a NASA captain is called in to investigate. In the project, sleeping subjects are induced into a deep EDS state whereby they become portals to a parallel universe. Unfortunately this causes adverse reactions in the subject, and something gets through the portal, the consequence of which is an attrition problem.

In the not-too-distant future Berlin is shocked by a series of spectacular suicides; a policeman's investigations lead him to a beautiful, enigmatic woman and the revelation of a sinister plot to manipulate the population through mass hypnosis.

Two aliens arrive on Earth trying to kill each other. This is not easy, since they seem to be able to regenerate lost body parts and survive bullet wounds. Both of them happen to meet a young pathologist Dori Caisson, and each alien tells her that he is a peacemaker (an intergalactic cop) and that the other one is a bad guy. Whom can she trust?

In the bleak near future Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone with cops pitted against assorted law-breaking lowlifes. Sergeant Arliss Ryder (well played with customary wired intensity by the always great Wings Hauser) has an electronic device put into his back that turns him into an out-of-control psychotic killer and put on the Strike S.Q.U.A.D. (an acronym for Scum Quelling Assault Urban Devision), which is a unit of crazed cops assigned by Captain Bill Quinton (a typically gruff Alex Cord) to rid the City of Angels of criminals by using any means necessary. The only problem is that Arliss discovers what's going down and decides to put a stop to all this madness.

Space-faring hero and galactically-renowned stud Flesh Gordon is kidnapped by a group of space cheerleaders hoping to use him to save their planet. A being simply known as Evil Presence has been rendering the men of their world impotent, and the women are desperate for some form of relief. Flesh's girlfriend Ardor, meanwhile, is following behind to try to keep him out of trouble, but soon finds herself kidnapped by Evil Presence's henchman who has plans of his own. Can Flesh get the men of this planet standing tall once again?