Fear Clinic (Blu-ray / DVD)
Staci Layne Wilson
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Starring Robert Englund, Fiona Dourif, Angelina Armani, Thomas Dekker
Directed by Rob Hall
Distributed by Anchor Bay Entertainment
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” as President FDR so famously said during his First Inaugural Address. Or was it Freddy Krueger in the first A Nightmare on Elm Street movie? Either way, fear is here to stay – and so is Robert Englund.
The latest team-up between the merchant of bad dreams and the emotions they invoke is a new horror flick called Fear Clinic. Englund stars as Dr. Andover, the creator of a nifty cure-all he calls the “Fear Chamber” – it’s a device of his own design which encases fright-frozen patients in a coffin-like embrace, dunks them in liquid, and washes away all their phobias. Well, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Of course… once in the isolation chamber, some of the doctor’s patients enter a netherworld that’s far more frightening that anything their own fevered imaginations could ever conjure up.
The action takes place at the tumbledown treatment center, where the doctor is observing just a handful of head-cases. Sara (Fiona Dourif) is deathly afraid of the dark. Blake (Thomas Dekker) is a former soldier dealing with hallucinogenic PTSD. Caylee (Angelina Armani) suffers from bulimia-induced boogeymen. The horror hospital’s employees include Bauer the orderly (Corey Taylor of the metal band Slipknot) and Gauge (Kevin Gauge) the maintenance man; these two provide the comic relief.
The movie is beautifully and cinematically shot by the uber-talented Joseph White, and the practical effects provided by Hollywood hotshots Steve Johnson and Robert Kurtzman are ghoulishly good. The props, production design, costuming, and everything else that’s real is fab. But when it gets to the fantastical elements – namely the CGI used to conjure up Grudge-style black tendrils and gooey mold-like bile – Fear Clinic falls super-short. When the Fear Chamber comes to “life,” one can’t help but think of yet another classic Englund vehicle, The Mangler.
If you can look past the overly ambitious use of computer effects and you don’t need much in the way of story (original or otherwise), then Fear Clinic is worth a peek thanks to a charismatic performance from the ever-reliable Englund and the lion’s share of screen time given to the excellent Dourif. The rest of the cast is up to the task, and it’s exuberantly directed, which is more than can be said for a lot of straight-to-disc flicks. (Though Fear Clinic did enjoy a successful festival run.)
In terms of special features all there is is a short making-of featurette.
Special Features
- Making-of
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Film
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Special Features
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