Lurkers

New Yorker Cathy is haunted by visions of her murderous mother and a mysterious little girl. Good thing she has photographer Bob as an anchor. But for how long, given her horrific delusions.

The logic of this horror flick appears to be that if a spoonful is good, then a truck full has to be better. But it's not. The piling on of scenes, themes, and effects soon gets tedious. That is, how many kissy-faces do we need to show that Cathy loves Bob, or that Cathy is full of delusions if that they be, or that darkness can be dangerous. Too bad, because the basic idea of a hell-house has potential.

With a tighter script and more strategic use of effects, there's a good movie core lurking within. As it is, the producers appear unable to deal effectively with structure, and that includes color photography for its own sake. Now, I'm not up on post-70's horror films. But if you want to check out how similar material can be effectively done, check out Val Lewton's 1943 classic The Seventh Victim. That tight little B-film also shows why audience imagination is horror's most powerful source. And that's especially important given today's overpowering appeal of special effects.

As one of veteran exploitation director Roberta Findlay's 1980s horror movies, "Lurkers" is overall dull and draggy for the most part. There just isn't much "horror" in it, and it moves along at too slow a pace, with characters who are largely uninteresting. It DOES have its creepy and disturbing elements, but it takes until the end for this movie to finally start getting more watchable.

Beautiful Christine Moore plays Cathy, a classical musician who as a child had seen her mother murdered, and had even almost died herself. She'd also seen ghostly individuals emerge from the walls of her bedroom. Now, 15 years later, she's engaged to supposed nice guy photographer Bob (Gary Warner), but strange things are now occurring, and she's reminded of her childhood home and traumas.

One thing that does give "Lurkers" some passing interest is the scene where two models, played by Ruth Collins and Annie Grindlay, converse about the stock market (!) while undressing. It has no relevance to anything else in the movie but is so unexpected that it's rather amusing. As for the rest of it, there may not be enough of value for rabid horror fans. Ed French supplies some enjoyably gruesome makeup effects, and there's a sadistic creep (Tom Billett) who chases women with a sledgehammer. The electronic music score by Walter Sear is unbelievably awful at some points. The acting is tolerable at best; Moore has some appeal even if she's not much of an actress.

Horror lovers may want to see this for completions' sake, but it's not exactly a must-see.

Five out of 10.

I watched this movie at eight o'clock in the morning after being awake for two days. The front of the box hardly looked promising, but when I read the summary on the back, (She's into her boyfriend, Bob. Just like he's into Satan!) I realized that I had to give this movie a chance. Honestly, it must be one of the worst movies I've ever seen (and I am a fan of Plan 9 From Outer Space). There is plot but hardly a point. The scene when Bob asks "Orange you forgetting something?" made the whole movie worthwhile as well as a few other choice words I'll leave you to discover. I would honestly recommending watching it while you are a little overtired because it provides some laughs and a lot of confusion. Be prepared to giggle and scratch your head at the dialogue and scenarios. I agree with the chap above and gave it a ten. It's cinema at it's worst and that's something to be proud of.

After emotionally / psychically being abused by her mother, Cathy would hear tales that the lurkers would come and get her if she was naughty. These lurkers were ghostly figures that hanged around the apartment building and only she saw. While, playing with friends the skipping rope strangely finds itself around Cathy's neck with little concern from the other children. Then a mysterious lady shows up and everything goes back to normal. Then we skip 15 years into the present where Cathy is in a relationship with a photographer, Bob. They're happily in love, but there's something lurking under the surface and Cathy starts getting recurring nightmares of her traumatic childhood.

Roberta Findley might not have a great rep behind her films, but surprisingly I enjoyed "The Oracle", which made me grabbed this particular flick. The shame was that I didn't quite get into this shonky trash, despite an interestingly offbeat concept. Sadly I found it quite tough going as its terribly talky without really going anywhere with the idea. Sure, chat is fine, but when it strings you along and along with even more lifeless chitchat. The overall silliness of it shows up strongly that your hoping it would break out the madness, but it hardly eventuates. When it does. It's not for long, and back to pointless chitchat we go. Throw in plenty of redundant build-ups and odd stretches that fill like nothing more than fillers to pad out the running time. This only dragged out the slow pace even more. It should have been more fun than it was, as I found myself to be either bored or baffled.

The plotting of the flat story was a convoluted jumble (It skips in between a whole lot of elements) with many uneventful happenings. It's a nasty little item that doesn't explicitly show it, but it's grim and mean-spirited in nature. After a genuinely creepy and tight opening couple minutes when Cathy was a child and throw in some motherly love. Some inspired touches creep up here. It never seemed quite sure where to go and its poor execution shows it up immensely. The look and feel of it is quite amateurish and it can't seem to shake it or work around it without embarrassingly telegraphing to us.

Now it's better to leave the moronic script alone! While, the overwrought music score is quite a groaner and like something that would fit nicely in a silent film. The only real component technical aspect had to be that it was actually pretty well shot and caught the grimy locations. The acting was very indifferent and Christine Moore in the lead role was the only one to give a reasonable turn. Roy MacArthur had a bit a fun with his performance and lightened it up when on screen.

This forgettable, drab feature definitely squanders every opportunity to make something fulfilling out of this idea.

Lurkers (1988)

BOMB (out of 4)

Poor old Cathy is being haunted by ghosts who seem to want revenge over the acts that happened in her childhood. Many years ago poor Cathy was the victim of her mothers abuse, which in turn lead to her mother killing her father and eventually killing herself. Cathy continues to be haunted by this and apparently the ghosts that also haunt the apartment building. Now Cathy is all ready to be married but her fiancé insists that she visit her brother who just happens to hate her due to the parents. By doing this Cathy gets closer to the building where all of this terror took form. Yawn.

Here's another contender for one of the worst horror films of the decade. While watching this film I couldn't help but regret loving this genre so much. Unlike other bad horror films, sadly this one isn't bad enough to fall into the "so bad it's good" category and once again, by the fifteen-minute mark I was starting to think about scratching my eyes out. The director certainly forgot to use a script but he was smart enough to try and keep my eyes in my head by throwing out some nudity but even that didn't help.

This movie is pure amateurism all the way through and it appears the director simply raised some cash and fired friends to do the roles not once considering if they could actually act or not. There are so many bad things in this film that they get so annoying one can't help but wish their fate is coming soon. Just check out the incredibly stupid scene where the two lovers feed one another pizza. Was this supposed to be romantic? If so, pizza lovers beware because you might not ever look at a slice of pepperoni the same way again. There's even a cute little scene where our female hero encounters some street gangs, which were apparently leftovers from Death Wish 3. It goes without saying the film offers no scares, no good gore effects and nothing else for that matter. Instead of watching this film I'd recommend you get some exercise by watching your grass grow.