Lurking Fear

This movie has buried treasure, gangsters, monsters under a town, is based off of an H.P. Lovecraft story, and stars Jeffery Combs (Re-Animator). Sounds fun right? Wrong. This movie has everything going for it but it fails miserably. The lack of execution is pretty blatant, from the editing, directing and acting, it all falls flat. Even the great Jeffery Combs could not rescue this pile of not so pleasant things. Our main character is probably the worst actor in the film but hey whatever. His character is just released from prison and is in search for his Dad's long lost buried treasure that just so happens to be buried in a town with a bunch of monsters hiding beneath the local cemetery. Eventually are Hero, a bunch of gangsters and some locals barricaded them selves in a church trying to survive from the monsters. This movie should of been Night of the living dead mix with evil dead, but instead we get a boring snooze fest. The reason why it fails is because its trying to be an action horror comedy, but fails at all three. At first glance the film seems interesting but it gets bogged down by its convoluted plot in the second act and you don't even care how this movie ends by the time you get to the third act. The only entertainment in this movie is Jeffery Combs. He is plain awesome. This movie is for Jeffery Combs completist only.

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Very loosely based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, this Full Moon cheapie deals with an ex-con going to the town of Leffert's Corner to dig up a corpse that his late father stuffed with money. Unfortunately for him, his father's old partners are on his trail. On top of that, Leffert's Corner has been dealing with attacks from underground creatures for years, and they live beneath the very cemetery the money is buried in.

Anyone going into this expecting a faithful Lovecraft adaptation certainly aren't going to find one here. Don't expect a good movie either. Right from the opening scene, we're immediately hit with some horrible acting, and it doesn't get much better from there. The lead (Blake Bailey), who also narrates on occasion, is particularly awful. The only actors who don't come off too poorly here are Allison Mackie as an eccentric femme fatale and Jeffrey Combs as the town doctor. Ashley Laurence (credited as Ashley Lauren for some reason), such a likable heroine in the "Hellraiser" films, is just annoying here as a bitchy Rambo wannabe.

There's a lot of really bad editing in this thing, and the attempts at action suffer for it. What little story there is doesn't come together in any satisfactory manner either. The ending is laughable, especially when you throw in Bailey's final voice-over. Full Moon has managed to churn out a few good movies, but this isn't one of them. I bought the VHS for 50 cents at a video store that was going out of business, so at least it was cheap.

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.

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?

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...