'Mortal Fear' is a pretty standard made-for-TV thriller scripted from a novel by Robin Cook, veteran of medical mysteries. It's quite undistinguished, competently directed but utterly lacking in any sort of style. It tries to get your interest by showing a little bit of sex and skin, but is somewhat neutered in this aspect by being prime time, network stuff. The novel is likely more satisfying and more nuanced; there might have been some potential in the material, but it's handled in strictly routine fashion.
Lovely 'Growing Pains' mom Joanna Kerns plays Jennifer Kessler, the chief of staff at a cutting edge clinic. She's been grieving due to the loss of her beloved husband in a traffic accident. While she gets romantically pursued by the clinics' administrator (Kerns' fellow TV veteran Gregory Harrison), Jennifer is confronted by the prospect of patients who grow extremely sick in a very short amount of time. One of them, Alvin Hayes (Tobin Bell), a superstar researcher at the clinic, dies right in front of her at a restaurant. Jennifer races to solve the mystery while characters periodically keep getting killed.
The main reason that this viewer watched this back in 1994, and revisited it today on DVD, is the curiosity value of the cast. Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund is on hand to play an arrogant physician and thorn in Jennifers' side whose job it is to be suspicious at every turn. Of course, now the movie has even more of a curiosity factor due to the subsequent genre stardom of co-star Bell, who began playing Jigsaw in the "Saw" horror series a decade later.
Much of the cast does creditable if not outstanding work. Max Gail of 'Barney Miller' fame adds humour as a detective. The cast is rounded out by other TV names: Katherine LaNasa ('Three Sisters') as a stripper, Judith Chapman ('The Young and the Restless') as an ad exec, and Rebecca Schull ('Wings') as the chief medical examiner. Englund, at least, is fun. It's amusing to see him in this sort of thing. Kerns and Harrison do look great.
Ultimately, this is very predictable stuff, complete with a climactic scene where the villain pleads their case to a distraught Jennifer.
Five out of 10.
Lovely 'Growing Pains' mom Joanna Kerns plays Jennifer Kessler, the chief of staff at a cutting edge clinic. She's been grieving due to the loss of her beloved husband in a traffic accident. While she gets romantically pursued by the clinics' administrator (Kerns' fellow TV veteran Gregory Harrison), Jennifer is confronted by the prospect of patients who grow extremely sick in a very short amount of time. One of them, Alvin Hayes (Tobin Bell), a superstar researcher at the clinic, dies right in front of her at a restaurant. Jennifer races to solve the mystery while characters periodically keep getting killed.
The main reason that this viewer watched this back in 1994, and revisited it today on DVD, is the curiosity value of the cast. Robert "Freddy Krueger" Englund is on hand to play an arrogant physician and thorn in Jennifers' side whose job it is to be suspicious at every turn. Of course, now the movie has even more of a curiosity factor due to the subsequent genre stardom of co-star Bell, who began playing Jigsaw in the "Saw" horror series a decade later.
Much of the cast does creditable if not outstanding work. Max Gail of 'Barney Miller' fame adds humour as a detective. The cast is rounded out by other TV names: Katherine LaNasa ('Three Sisters') as a stripper, Judith Chapman ('The Young and the Restless') as an ad exec, and Rebecca Schull ('Wings') as the chief medical examiner. Englund, at least, is fun. It's amusing to see him in this sort of thing. Kerns and Harrison do look great.
Ultimately, this is very predictable stuff, complete with a climactic scene where the villain pleads their case to a distraught Jennifer.
Five out of 10.