Lurking Fear

In LURKING FEAR, a group of greedy crooks, and a ghoul-fighting duo (Ashley Laurence and Jeffrey Combs!) all wind up in the same cemetery for different reasons. When the ghouls begin to rise, the blood hits the fan.

Loosely based on the story by H. P. Lovecraft, this FULL MOON production is a crime drama / horror movie hybrid. The criminals are -mostly- reprehensible, and the monsters are well-realized and fairly unnerving.

Mr. Combs gets to play the drunken doctor, while Ms. Laurence plays her character as a sort of Sarah Connor in the graveyard. The action builds slowly up until the truly explosive denouement.

Another decent creeper from FULL MOON's heyday...

VERY loose adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft story of the same name is nowhere as good as Stuart Gordon's "Re-Animator" or "From Beyond". Although those adaptations also played fast and loose with their source materials (for my money, the only film to really feel like a Lovecraft story is the 2005 faux silent film "The Call of Cthulhu"), but this adaptation fails at even being entertaining. The story involves rival groups of criminals looking to dig up a corpse in a graveyard that's hiding a big stash of stolen money. However, this same night a group of townspeople are planning to dispose of an ancient evil living beneath this very same graveyard. The film boasts a stronger than usual cast for a Full Moon Features production, with Jon Finch ("Macbeth" "Frenzy"), Jeffrey Combs ("Re-Animator" "The Frighteners", Paul Mantee ("Robinson Crusoe on Mars" "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"), Vincent Schiavelli ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" "Ghost"), and "Hellraiser" star Ashley Laurence, but they are wasted with poorly developed characters, though Schiavelli is a lot of fun in his one-scene appearance at the start of the film. When I rewatched the restored blu ray print of the film, I was struck by the better than expected photography by regular Full Moon cinematographer Adolfo Bartoli ("Trancers" 3-5, "Oblivion" 1-2, "Puppet Master" 3-5, etc.). However, writer/director C. Courtney Joyner ("Doctor Mordrid" "Puppet Master III: Toulon's Revenge") fails to create much atmosphere and it's unclear if the film wanted to be a serious horror film or wanted to be tongue-in-cheek. It ends up being neither and fails as a whole. FUN FACT! It "The Lurking Fear" was originally to be made by producer Charles Band's earlier company Empire Pictures and directed by Stuart Gordon, which I'm sure would have been a MUCH better film.

When said viewer took a gander at LURKING FEAR, I couldn't believe I was watching Jon Finch(from my favorite version of MACBETH) and Jeffery Combs(REANIMATOR). LURKING FEAR is dull, contrived, stupid, and ultimately very pointless. Furthermore, the plot hardly resembles Lovecraft, and the electronic score is annoying.

As a horror fan, I was repelled. All of its attempts at humor made my stomach growl, and the horror scenes and effects were lame. If LURKING FEAR were just a bit smarter and had a more satisfying plotline, I could overlook that it is cheap. But, noone seems to mind how bad the film is. All the actors(including Ashley Lawrence from Hellraiser films)don't seem to care. Maybe the producers spent all their money on this cast, because they didn't seem to put more than five bucks into the production budget. Avoid this one, everyone. Its a real bomb.

At least there weren't fake lasers, the group of bratty ill-prepared teenagers on a trip, excessive profanity. It did have some stereotypical "cool tough guy" acting by some of the actors (eg Catherine played by Ashley Laurence kept racking the slide of her pistol almost every time she drew it). Still she was hot.

I am always up for a "bad" horror flick. It is generally entertaining, what with pointing out inconsistencies and laughing at the bad monster effects. However, I was not laughing when I saw "Lurking Fear." This was easily the worst "bad" horror movie I've ever seen! The inconsistencies were atrocious, the effects particularly poorly done, and the foley... don't even get me started! As far as Full Moon movies go, this one is a particularly bad example. I have only one "lurking" question remaining... What happened to the baby?