Customer Reviews

Lurking Fear [VHS]

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lurking Fear isn't really that accurate of an H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, but, as far as movies go, what cinematic try ever has been? While this is a sad and movies have been dismissed (with good reason) because of this, I think it would be a bit rash with this movie. I say this because the movie is still entertaining, has a little bit of gore and a few tensely horrific moments, sports a good cast including the immortal Jeffrey Combs, and has a nice looking "monster" design.
The story is about a now isolated town that, over the years, has been steadily deprived of its occupants by creatures dwelling in tunnels beneath the local cemetery. Through haphazard means, our main characters Cathryn Farrells, looking for a little vengeance, and John Martens, looking for a fortune buried somewhere in the cemetery, find themselves teamed up with a disposable cast (poor Mr. Combs) as they try to live through the night.
Besides, subhuman creatures feeding on flesh-flavored Pop Tarts is enough to bring out the kid in all of us!

This is a 75-minute film adaptation of an H.P. Lovecraft short story. The writer and director (John Finch) have taken the somewhat cerebral tale, and tarted it up with a crime story backdrop: there's a family patriarch who was recently buried, reputedly with a hefty stash of cash sewn into his chest cavity. A few shady characters ride into town and threaten the locals, wanting to know the location of the grave. The catch, of course, is that a few ghouls residing near the cemetary don't want the body found. And what a fun bunch they are.

This is one of the more entertaining Lovecraft adapatations available. It's not quite top-drawer in the manner of The Ressurected or The Call of Cthulu, but it's a much better bet than a few of them out there. Filmed in Bucharest, Romania circa 1994, the film does take advantage of aging buildings to provide atmosphere. Plotwise, the director has stuck with Lovecraft's New England flavor, but a Romanian farm village doubling as 'Leffert's Corners' has to be taken with a grain of salt. The gang of crooks are driving a classic '62 Impala convertible with license plate frames advertising a dealer in 'Arkham, MA', a nice touch for fans. For good measure, Re-animator's Jeffery Combs plays the town doctor, with hammy relish. It doesn't hurt that one of the more slimy characters eventually gets his heart ripped out, either. Overall, it's a nice trip for those into the gothic horror genre.

A brief (but informative) making-of film is included as an extra, along with the trailer.

In this chilling tale based on a story by horror-master H.P. Lovecraft, an isolated desert town has been ravaged for years by grotesque creatures who dwell in the depths beneath the local cemetery.
Cathryn Farrel returns to this miserable place with one goal in mind: to avenge the brutal death of her beloved sister by the creatures. In the midst of a storm, she wires the decaying graveyard with enough explosives to blow the entire undead population back to hell...for good!
Young John Martens shows up with his own score to settle. His mission is to recover a fortune in loot buried somewhere in the cemetery by his now dead father. Before the night is through these two strangers find themselves unlikely allies in an effort to defend themselves against the hungry undead as well as an equally deadly gang of misfits who aim to beat John to the hidden cache.
In a terrifying, bone-chilling clash, they battle with ghouls in a blood-soaked finale.

A group of unsuspecting thieves are caught in one town's struggle for survival when a search for hidden treasure leads them into the bowels of a cursed church that is guarded by hideous monsters. Director C. Courtney Joyner aspires for the same level of success as Stuart Gordon had achieved in PIT AND THE PENDULUM with this low-budget H.P. Lovecraft tale, but unfortunately he falls short due to the uneven pacing and passable performances. Jeffrey Combs is wasted here as the town's doctor, but HELLRAISER's Ashley Laurence comes through as another strong female protagonist. LURKING FEAR only has a few fleeting bursts of energy throughout the majority of the plot, with the characters spending most of their time bickering and waiting for death in the empty church. Things finally pick up towards the end, when the floorboards give way and drop the last remaining survivors into the demons' lair. While the creature designs are genuinely frightening, the cheapness of the latex costumes is always apparent. Lovecraft fans are better suited with films like DAGON or CASTLE FREAK, but LURKING FEAR does prove to be a gory and mildly entertaining adaptation.

-Carl Manes
I Like Horror Movies

Lurking Fear (C. Courtney Joyner, 1994)

The one good thing I can say about Full Moon Entertainment, the undisputed king of bad straight-to-video horror movies since the mid-eighties, is that when you pop in a video (or DVD, now) from Full Moon, you know what you're going to get. C. Courtney Joyner, who also directed the Full Moon classic Trancers III, helms this Lovecraft adaptation that even manages to make Brian Yuzna's hilarious Dagon monstrosity look worthwhile.

John Martense (Head of the Family's Blake Bailey, at the beginning of his extremely short acting career) has just gotten out of prison after serving five years, and is to pay a call on an associate of his late father's, Knaggs (the ubiquitous Vincent Schiavelli). When he shows up, it turns out Knaggs has half of a treasure map. Martense has the other half, discovered in his father's effects. All Martense has to do in order to avoid having to ever do anything that might send him back to prison again is go dig up the money, which is buried in a cemetery in Martense's hometown. Stuffed in a body. (Did I say something about not going back to prison?) Problem is, the town has suffered the depredations of subterranean monsters who only come out when it storms. There's one hell of a storm blowing in, and the remaining residents of the town, led by spunky Cathryn Farrell (Hellraiser's Ashley Laurence), have decided to make a stand against the monsters, with the graveyard being the battleground. Yeah, the graveyard where Martense has to go dig up a couple million dollars stuffed in a dead body. And, of course, the guys who Martense's old man stole the money from? Yeah, they want it back, and they want it back badly enough to come in person, headed by the slick, evil Bennett (Kingdom of Heaven's Jon Finch).

It's a typical Full Moon joint in that the acting is bad, the effects are worse, and the script is laughable. (Why is it that so many Lovecraft adaptations have such awful scripts? Inquiring minds wanna know.) It's a bit less typical in that the supporting cast includes some folks who the average American will actually recognize, them being Laurence (hasn't everyone seen Hellraiser? And if not, for the love of pete, why?), bad-Lovecraft-adaptation alum Jeffrey Combs (From Beyond, etc.), and of course Schiavelli.IMDB reports that Stuart Gordon was originally tabbed as the director for this project, which makes perfect sense given the subject matter and cast. I never thought I'd long for a Stuart Gordon Lovecraft adaptation, but he certainly couldn't have mangled this film as badly as Joyner did. Still, it's watchable, in that train-wreck kind of way, which makes it better by default than about two-thirds of the movies I've watched this week. **

I was extremely dissapointed to see how this movie butchered H.P. Lovecraft's original story. The history of the Martense family is only vaguely touched upon, wherein the original story it was the central theme. The FX wasn't half bad, and the acting was okay. If you can totally seperate this movie from the original story, you'll find it's an average movie.

A monster is going to town on a small town. Gore galore! Genre actor Jeffery Combs is in fine form. A good, by the numbers monster flick that is sure to please the diehards who watch it. I like this so much I have a poster of it in my room. This is one of the better Lovecraft adaptions. I would compare this to the first Unnamable and Castle Freak.

This movie sucked! It had dry acting and the monsters looked really stupid. These supposedly "horrifying" monsters look more like senile old men on crack. The movie drug on and on and you just wanted ever so badly to hit the stop button but kept youself from doing so (that is, if you rented it). In other words, don't waste your time on this peice-o-trash.