Lurking Fear (1994)

Pretty Good

Admirable film.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Loosely based on a short story by H.P. Lovecraft, this Full Moon picture film has John Martenese (Bailey) following a corpse buried in a graveyard. Buried with the corpse is a Gangster's (Finch) money that his now deceased Dad had stolen. Upon arrival, John comes across a band of people who is holed up in the graveyards church. They're after a group of monster creatures that live under ground in tunnels that run through the graveyard. John finds out that the creatures, who have been killing off people for years in the town, are actually descendants of his family. The Gangster and his henchmen show up after the money as well as the creatures begin to stir. The filmmakers unfortunately really messed up a nice premise. The elements of a great creature/monster horror film are there. Underground creatures, that are very scary and creepy looking roaming around on a dark storm infested night around a graveyard. The creeping monsters are the best thing going here and supply the few chills the movie has. Great horror actors like Jeffrey Combs, (as a nervous Doctor) and Ashley Laurence are wasted here as most of the screen time is spent with the gangsters holding the group hostage as they seek the money. The characters are written as obnoxious, stupid or annoying and are played that way by a cast trying hard with nothing to work with. Good production values, set up of story and cast goes down the drain as the movie mostly plays like a two bit crime drama instead of the thrilling horror show it could have been. It is watchable, but utterly forgettable.

Lurking Fear starts as small time crook John Martense (Blake Adams) is released from prison after serving five years, he heads straight for a funeral parlour run by Knaggs (Vincent Schiavelli) whom is in possession of one half of a map that reveals the location of a buried body stuffed full of money & John has the other half. Together the two pieces reveal that John's father buried the body in a cemetery in his home town of Lefferts Corner, armed with the information he needs John heads off to find the town although the casino boss who John's father stole the money from in the first place is in hot pursuit. Once at Lefferts Corner things take an unexpected turn when a group of locals inside the Church are planning to rid the town of underground creatures who like eating the local population, John becomes involved as to get the money & save his own life he has to do battle with the creatures too...Written & directed by C. Courtney Joyner based on the short story of the same name by H.P. Lovecraft it seems that Lurking Fear is one of three filmed adaptations including Dark Heritage (1989) & the Rutger Hauer flick Bleeders & while Lurking Fear retains Lovecraft's original title unlike the other two it's perhaps the least faithful of the three & has no real connection to the short story other than feature a guy called Martense & underground creatures. Lurking Fear is almost a great film, every aspect is almost great but not quite, the character's are good & while I appreciate that there are no teenagers here & the cast are proper adults some feel like they are making the numbers up, while the story is good it never quite reaches the heights you hope for with the crime aspect not going anywhere (no-one gets the money) & there's no reasoning behind the underground creatures like where they came from or why they stay underground & there are little subplots like the religious angle where the Priest's faith is tested but again nothing is done with it. The set-up is good with various character's trapped fighting off flesh eating creatures outside but again you just hope for a bit more, the attack scenes are few & far between, there's never more than or two creatures on screen at once & aspects of the plot don't make much sense like why hasn't anyone stood up to these creatures before or why didn't anyone call the army or police & didn't anyone ever notice all the people going missing from that town? At a little over 70 minutes Lurking Fear is short, it's brisk & moves along at a good pace but you just can't help but feel a little disappointed at the end since this could have been great, I still enjoyed it & thought it was good but it should have been better.Lurking Fear has a good atmosphere about it, the dark night, the thunder storm, the dark underground tunnels full of creatures & a traditional Church as a setting but there's not much gore & while the make-up on the creatures are good we never see more than a couple. The ending also features some impressive & pretty big explosions. This was executive produced by Charles Band who was going to make it under his Empire Pictures company with Stuart Gordon directing (who is a bit of a H.P. Lovecraft expert now having already directed Re-Animator (1985), From Beyond (1986), Castle Freak (1995) & Dagon (2001) which are based on stories by him) before it went belly up & Full Moon Entertainment produced it.Made on a supposed budget of about $1,000,000 this has good production values, good effects, a decent cast & it actually feels like a horror film. Although set in the US this was filmed in Romania. The acting is pretty good with Ashley Laurence & genre favourite Jeffrey Combs the most familiar faces here.Lurking Fear is a film that is almost great, as it is it's still good but you can't help but feel a little bit more time & money Lurking Fear could have been a classic. I liked it & would recommend it especially to horror fans & those who like dark Gothic stories.

This is just awful. It's almost as if the writer had heard particulars of several Lovecraft stories, but didn't read them and didn't understand the basic concepts of his particular type of horror.While this one isn't a meandering mess of plot holes, such as Dagon is, the Lovecraftian elements feel like they've been welded onto a preexisting plot that has absolutely nothing to do with it.Full Moon has a number of Lovecraft adaptations that are fun, if not exactly true to either the story or atmosphere of the originals. This, unfortunately, isn't one of them. Skip this one and watch Reanimator again. Or even Castle Freak. Both of which have at least something of a Lovecraftian feel to them.

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?