In my time I have sat through some truly awful horror movies but feel I have to talk about a mesmerizing piece of trash I caught on the cable channel Zone Horror a week or two ago; 1994’s Lurking Fear. I was so taken by the films terrible special effects, lack of continuity, vague allusions to Lovecraftian mythology and diabolical acting that I felt compelled to give it a second viewing.

The badly dubbed opening scene of two sisters squabbling in a dilapidated hotel room brings to mind the giallo films of the 1970s and 80s but without the visual flair and sense of unbearable tension. Indeed, when a creepy looking ghoul pops through a crack in the wall and tries to snag a sleeping bairn in its crib with a wire coat hanger it becomes glaringly obvious that the viewer is in for a Z-grade, one star treat.

The cast of Lurking Fear is a hotchpotch of soap opera hacks and genuine horror movie royalty, including Hellraiser’s Ashley Laurence (incorrectly credited as Ashley Lauren) and Reanimator’s Jeffrey Combs. Laurence is one of the aforementioned squabbling sisters who upon seeing her sibling killed by the crafty coat hanger fiend turns, seemingly overnight, from a bookish nerd scared of firing a gun into a Lara Croft style kick ass babe in a vest planting dynamite and driving a truck. Combs stars as a bearded, booze swilling doctor who has a fag on the go constantly, even whilst performing medical procedures – (and you thought the NHS was bad!). And to be honest they’re both great and bring some much needed class to the proceedings. Yet sadly they are so weighed down by the appalling script and wooden supporting players that their presence is akin to a deranged homeless wearing a monocle and an Elizabethan ruff.

All the horror movie clichés are present and correct; a lameass priest spouting bollocks in the face of certain death, a heavily pregnant woman who keeps saying “don’t let them take my baby!”, a spooky graveyard in the middle of a rainstorm and a bad guy who sounds like David Bowie doing an impression of Dot Cotton. You can tell he’s bad straight away for several reasons. First of all he’s English, secondly he’s got slicked back hair and thirdly he wears a single dangly earring – the universal symbol for a right nasty bastard.

The plot holes are so massive that any attempt to address them would be an exercise in futility, and although the film attempts to exist within the Lovecraftian universe I am at a loss to remember any of Lovecraft’s stories that involve a tough ex-con and some sleazy Eurotrash scumbags hunting for a corpse stuffed with money.

Yet the most galling thing about this mess of a film is the continuity which goes out the window faster than Father Karras at the end of The Exorcist. We are told that the monsters feed on people but when they finally capture and kill one of the baddies they choose to throw him through a window instead of tucking into his tasty flesh. Furthermore, despite living underground, wearing rags and eating babies most of the ghouls have an admirable grasp of the Queens English.

In fact the continuity supervisor must have been smoking a fat one during the scene in which the under siege villagers spend ages fortifying a knackered church building only for Jeffrey Combs to open the front door and stand casually smoking a fag. But my favourite lapse has to be at the end of the movie when Ashley Laurence runs down a tunnel in a blue vest only to emerge at the other end in a white shirt, simply magnificent.

Like most things I enjoy Lurking Fear left me feeling cheap, ashamed, somewhat emotionally soiled and deeply satisfied. I can think of no higher recommendation.