Lurkers (1988)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The lurkers of the title are malevolent ghosts who terrorise a woman by appearing regularly and sinisterly in her orbit. They seem to be in some way associated with a house she lived in as a child.This cheap horror film was directed by Roberta Findlay who also delivered the comparably low-budget Prime Evil (1988) the same year. Findlay will probably be best remembered for her association in one of the most notorious movies of all time, Snuff (1976). She and her husband made an ultra-low-budget killer hippies movie in Argentina that riffed off the then very recent Manson murders, namely The Slaughter (1971). This movie was considered so bad it barely was ever released and winded up being bought by an 'enterprising' distributer and having the infamous snuff footage added on to the end...and the rest, as they say, is history. I am actually in the minority and genuinely enjoyed The Slaughter material from Snuff and so do have to give some respect to Findlay for being involved in that. Lurkers, on the other hand, is less memorable and is basically a passable-at-best ghost movie set in New York City. Nothing in it is especially good but it does entertain up to a point at least. Most memorable scene? Probably the bit where a couple of nude models chat expertly about the stock market.

The Plot.Cathys mother killed her father and tried to kill her when she was ten. Her younger brother, a priest, holds her responsible. Fifteen years later Bob manipulates a clingy, drippy Cathy into falling in love with him. He lures her back to the apartment building of her youth for a so- called work party. There, he and his business partner Monica and a few of their oddly pathetic friends hold Cathy hostage for a few hours before forcing her off the side of the building roof. She becomes one of them, a 'lurker'. The building is supposed to be 'hell' and everyone born there is evil and is brought back there to die. Cathy becomes one of the lurkers who floats around town warning other people who the baddies try to get back to the building - Bobs new girlfriend and Cathy's priest brother including.This was supposedly filmed in Washington Heights, NY. A bunch of scenes are from Lincoln Center, however and many of the interior apartment shots don't resemble anything from Washington Heights.It's really poorly directed lending support to my theory that women cannot direct. The story is fragmented and boring. This is supposed to be a cult movie but it has none of the kewl quirky exposition that real cult movies contain.Given the director's past foray into porn, i suspect this movie had some mob money in it.There's really nothing redeeming about this film. The acting is abysmal and the plot is not remotely interesting. Plus it's hard to follow.

Troubled young lady Cathy (a sympathetic performance by the attractive Christine Moore) is haunted by visions of horribly disfigured deceased people and flashbacks of her late abusive mother. Director Roberta Findlay, working from a convoluted, yet intriguing script by Ed Kelleher and Harriette Vidal, relates the absorbing offbeat story at a hypnotically gradual pace, does a sound job of crafting a spooky surreal atmosphere, makes fine use of gritty New York City locations, delivers a reasonable amount of gore as well as a pleasing sprinkling of tasty gratuitous female nudity (plus there's even a pretty hot soft-core sex scene), grounds the fantastic premise in a plausibly drab workaday urban reality, and tosses in a few inspired kinky touches for good sleazy measure. The okay acting from the competent no-name cast keeps this picture on track: Gary Warner as caring photographer boyfriend Bob, Marina Taylor as glamorous socialite Monica, Roy MacArthur as the creepy Desmond, Peter Oliver-Norman as sniveling wimp Steve, Nancy Groff as loyal gal pal fortune teller Rita, Tom Billett as dangerous psycho Leo "The Hammer," and Carissa Channing as sunny barmaid Sally. Ubiquitous East Coast exploitation cinema regular Ruth Collins has a small part as a model while indie horror scream queen Debbie Rochon pops up in an unbilled bit as a party guest. The surprise grim ending packs a startling punch. Ed French's grotesque make-up for the titular ghastly ghouls is quite freaky and impressive. Findlay's fairly polished cinematography provides several unnerving images. Walter E. Sear's shivery score hits the spine-tingling spot. A nicely quirky fright flick.

"Lurkers" was one of the last movies the Crown-International studio released to theaters. In several aspects, it's one of their strangest. Although the movie was made in the late 1980s, if you didn't know that beforehand, you would probably swear that it was made in the early 1970s, with its drab and murky cinematography, substandard sound, and an overall cheapness that means there is very little horror material like blood, gore, or creature effects. It's trying to be a psychological horror like those found in the 1970s, but the screenplay is very incoherent, from the heroine's vague relationship with her brother to the unexplained fact as to just who killed her mother when she was just a child. The whole movie plays like something Troma at the time would have picked up instead of a distributor of a more ambitious nature.