Won't boot after installing Lion

I upgraded to Lion on Sunday. The machine started to act real slow, so I ran Disk Utility and it said my hard drive needed repair.
I shut down and rebooted and hit COMMAND + R. Nothing happened.
Reset PRAM and nothing happened.
The machine loads to the grey screen, and you cannot hear the machine working at all. If I let it sit for about 30 minutes, the Apple shows up, but never goes any further.
My machine was working perfectly in Snow Leopard.
I am not finding any solutions, short of calling Apple and paying the $49 fee to see if they want walk me through fixing it some other way.
Any other suggestions?
Thank you
Sean

Your options are quite limited. You need to reinstall Snow Leopard, but to do that involves erasing the hard drive. After reinstalling Snow Leopard you can upgrade it to 10.6.6 or later. Open the App Store where you can re-download Lion should you choose to install it.
Downgrade Lion to Snow Leopard
1. Boot from your Snow Leopard Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Quit DU and return to the installer. Install Snow Leopard.
This will erase the whole drive so be sure to backup your files if you don't have a backup already. If you have performed a TM backup using Lion be aware that you cannot restore from that backup in Snow Leopard (see below.) I suggest you make a separate backup using Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.1.
If you have Snow Leopard Time Machine backups, do a full system restore per #14 in Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions. If you have subsequent backups from Lion, you can restore newer items selectively, via the "Star Wars" display, per #15 there, but be careful; some Snow Leopard apps may not work with the Lion files.

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In addition to MGW's suggestion...........
See the following Articles:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25497 Older versions of Mac OS than what comes with your computer
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25517 Mac OS: Versions, builds included with PowerPC Macs (since 1998)
==========
Without the original System DVDs that came w/the iMac, all you have is a glorified doorstop. You need the System DVDs to troubleshoot. *Especially Install Disc #1.*
You can get replacement System Install & Restore CD/DVDs from Apple's Customer Support - in the US, (800) 767-2775 - for a nominal S&H fee. You'll need to have the model and/or serial number of your Mac available.
If you're not in the US, you may need to go through the regional Apple Store that serves your location to find the contact number. Here's a list of links to all of those -
http://store.apple.com/Catalog/US/Images/intlstoreroutingpage.html

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