Dark Heritage

A group of campers is slaughtered whilst camping in a wooded area.Press reporter Clint Harrison decides to try to find out exactly what happened to those campers who died.He enlists two other men for help and goes to the woods where they reach an abandoned creepy looking mansion.Clint's team begins to die killed by some sort of bizarre creatures.What's going on in this derelict mansion?"Dark Heritage" by independent film-maker David McCormick is a watchable albeit quite slow-moving horror film inspired by short story written by H.P Lovecraft titled "Lurking Fear".The acting is amateurish and the dialogue is often terrible,but the monsters look creepy and the story is cool.6 Lovecrafts out of 10.

Though this is not a good film by any stretch of the imagination, it's been one of my favourites ever since I saw it about a year ago. The script is laughably bad, and the actors only make it worse. The lead actor, Mark LaCour, played one of the stupidest leading males I've ever seen in a horror movie: No matter what anyone said, his response of choice was "So, what does that have to do with us?". After awhile, you can almost predict what's going to come out of his mouth. As bad as the script and actors are however, this film does have some redeeming qualities. The silent, sepia-toned dream sequence about half-way through the film is actually very creepy and well done. In fact, I think the entire film would have been better if it was done like this scene. Though it usually seems that he's not sure how to work a camera, director David McCormick does know how to create atmosphere. The tunnel scene was very well done, claustrophobic and almost creepy. The ending was beyond obvious, but I still think it was pretty good. Last but not least, the Dansen clan themselves. Though many will disagree, I though these creatures were great. Once again I refer to the tunnel scene, the first time we see a Dansen-creature is an incredibly cool shot. Overall I recommend checking this out, providing you don't mind some very bad actors and a fairly low-quality DVD. Why do I say the DVD is low-quality? On the menu screen...the misspelled the title! Oh well...

6.5/10

I watched this because it was supposedly adapted from Lovecraft's Lurking Fear, and indeed it is.

The main house in it, I thought to myself, resembled the house Fletch inherited in Fletch Lives (1989). In fact, it is!: the Ashland-Belle Helene Plantation, Geismer, Louisiana, USA. I think it's unlikely they were both shooting there the same year. Dark Heritage seems like it could be several years older than its copyright date.

A reporter is sent to do a story on some campers that have been killed (we only see that two are attacked, but evidently more were). The newspaper's owner has the manager offer the reporter to stay in a nearby house about which he is also curious. The manager thinks it's a really bad idea, but the reporter agrees and has two other guys willing to join him.

Something happens during the night, and the two other guys are killed; the reporter flees. No evidence is found afterward, but a videotape they'd made shows up in the reporter's car mysteriously. He researches the house and the area in a library, where he meets two parapsychologists who are also interested in the house.

The new team of three goes back, and they discover strange holes in the ground around the house...

I don't think there will be any big surprises for anyone who has read Lovecraft's story, or the two other movie adaptations of it (Lurking Fear, and Bleeders AKA Hemoglobin). However, it is a good amateur effort.

I just finished up this unofficial adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear" that was shot in Louisiana. Outside of a few changes (names, setting), this follows the short story point by point for the first 70 minutes but then tries to inject its own "twist" ending that you could see coming from a mile away. Either way, it is a much better adaptation than Full Moon's THE LURKING FEAR. Too bad it is a terrible film. Director David McCormick shoots the thing with all the flair of an industrial short. I swear I counted maybe two camera movements. The creature design is cheap (we're talking store bought masks here) but shot in a dark manner (intentional or not) where they are somewhat creepy. The most impressive thing in the picture is the abandoned mansion but McCormick fails to exploit that as well. File this one under good adaptation, poor execution.

The girls might be prettier if you're their accompanist or a $#!+-faced onlooker. What I'm sayin' is that it'll take special circumstances for a non-whince reaction to this effort. The delivery of many lines appears to be distractingly unnatural for some actors. Lighting seems to be a problem, too, although failing eyesight may have accounted for my frequent squinting. And if you view this film, be open-minded enough to accept elements that no zoo or circus would reject: They are the above and below-ground creatures who feasted on dozens of campers near an empty Louisiana mansion. That's the discovery of a trio who is dispatched from their printed media to investigate the deaths. Then, two of THEM disappear, and the survivor is part of another threesome who take up the hunt. Eureka! I just realized what one of those aforementioned "special circumstances" would be - unconsciousness.