Mortal Fear (1994 TV Movie) User Reviews

Typical TV fare.

[Hey_Sweden · 5/10 · 30 September 2018]

'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.

The book is no doubt better

[Streetwolf · 3/10 · 24 November 2001]

I never read the book of Robin Cook, but I wasn't very fond of this movie so I think I will skip the book. Short summary of the story is: A widowed Chief of Staff Dr. Jennifer Kessler (Joanna Kerns) finds out that her patient has died due to some sort of cancer, which she doesn't quite believe because he was fine when he had a check up done not too long ago. When another patient dies the hospital pathologist lets her in on how impossible it is for those patients to have died with natural causes. The hospital administrator Phillip Montgomery (Gregory Harrison) and Jenny get involved, but she still has problems with intimacy after her husband, a researcher passed away in an accident. When a well known researcher approaches Jenny telling her his life is in danger due to a miracle he found he winds up dead in front of her with the same symptoms as her other patients leaving with no clue on to who is behind on all of these killings, but she suspects Dr. Ralph Wannamaker (Robert Englund...aka Freddie Kreuger)who seems to dislike people that cost too much to save. I'd give this movie a 3 out of 10 only because Gregory Harrison looks so wonderful in this and the actors fought hard to keep this movie interesting, but it's the kind of movie you really don't want to see if you're going to the hospital some time soon.

Disgraceful

[kallabos-1 · 19 December 2003]

I was shocked to see how much a good story can be destroyed by a studio. Virtually the entire original story of the book was thrown out. Even the gender of the lead two characters was changed. A few of the principle characters retained their names from the book, but not much else. While the producers try to satisfy all demographics, the main plot get shot full of holes. The end product brings shame on the original Robin Cook Novel.

Book much much better

[rahrahgreg · 1/10 · 15 November 2006]

I finished the book last night. It was tremendous. I have seen the movie. It is totally different. In the book, set in rural Vermont, married doctor's Angela and David, with their sick daughter Nikki, find themselves ostracized from the community, their colleagues, the hospital that employs them after discovering that something is killing patients in the hospital. It does involve the insurance company etc. I find it odd that not one of the movie's characters shares a name with the book's characters. Read the book, steer clear of the movie. Joanna Kerns is at her telemovie best of course, the supporting cast show enough life to make it believable, though I am not sure hysterics were in the correct places.

some books just don't translate to the(big or small) screen

[disdressed12 · 3/10 · 6 May 2007]

this movie was very disappointing.not only was it exceedingly depressing,but it had zero suspension or tension.the whole thing was just one long drag. some people might like it,but it definitely is not my cup of tea.i haven't read the book,but i'm sure it is heads and tails above the movie in every respect.clearly many books do not translate well onto the screen.i won't say the acting was bad,because the actors had nothing to work with.this movie is truly one of the most tedious and hardest to get through,though not the worst movie i have ever seen.but if you read the book first,you will likely be very disappointed in the movie version.this is just my opinion,of course,but i'd have to give "Mortal Fear" 3/10

Dx: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

[rmax304823 · 4 August 2003]

Robin Cook's first novel, "Coma," was an unpretentious thriller that was made into a movie that was an unpretentious thriller. And the book was kind of fun, too, in ways that the movie missed. In the novel, when the heroine is kibbitzing around with the computers and digging up information she has fantasies about discovering a brand-new illness which will be called, naturally, "Wheeler's disease," after her. Cook's next novel, "Sphynx," wasn't so interesting, and was repetitive, presumably based on Cook's hobby (Egyptology) rather than his vocation (medicine). But at least we learned something about how to tell a fake artifact from a genuine one. By the time this movie was released, the store of tales seems to have been exhausted and we get "Coma" recycled but still recognizable.

Joanna Kerns is a sensible widowed doctor. One of her colleagues who is doing research in molecular biology, a constant smoker, which is always a bad sign in a character, played by what's his name Bell, which is even a WORSE sign because he's never played anything other than a raving lunatic, says he needs to talk to her. They meet for dinner and he says people are trying to kill him but before he can explain why he dissolves in a fit of coughing, exsanguinates all over himself, the restaurant table, the window, and so forth, and drops dead of an apparent heart attack.

The pathologists find that his heart was that of a 100-year-old man which strikes Dr. Kerns (but nobody else) as a little strange since the guy was only 48. She begins to investigate, poking her nose into places and information preserves where she has no business. Dr. Bell has an assistant, Judith Chapman, who never smiles, stares unblinkingly at Dr. Kerns, and answers questions elliptically. (Cf., Elizabeth Ashely's character in "Coma.") Chapman winds up dead too. So does Dr. Bell's sexy girlfriend, from an overdose of old age, although you'd never know it by looking at her.

And then there is yet another mad-looking scientist, played by the guy who plays Freddy Krueger, who acts guilty but is a red herring. (Cf. Rip Torn's character in "Coma.")

And -- oh, did I tell you? While kind of investigating these mysterious deaths on the side Dr. Kerns become involved with a hospital administrator, Gregory Harrison, a paragon of Thespian qualities. He's a nice, sympathetic sort of fellow (although not a doctor) and although he does things that the writers put in the script to make him look guilty too, he's -- well, never mind.

The engine behind the plot has something to do with "the protein around the DNA" that turns the aging process on and off. The only problem is that Dr. Bell found out how to turn it on but not how to turn it off. One injection and the aging process gets going "full blast," as one character puts it. The cells evidently cash in their telomeres as if their telomeres were junk bonds. I couldn't exactly follow why the villain decided he wanted exclusive control over this substance. There's a lot of the usual blather about how doctors are like God and all that. I wish they'd get over that notion. It always makes me think of the old joke. "What's the difference between God and a doctor?" "God doesn't think he's a doctor."

This is absolutely no better than average TV fare. Skip it if there's anything else on that's at all worthwhile.