Dark Heritage

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

Let's get the bad out of the way: This is a regional horror film, with non-actors and no budget. However, what surprised me about this film was that it actually managed to generate some sort of atmosphere, and even more surprising is that I didn't fall asleep.

A journalist with bad hair gets sent to research a story with a guy about as wooden as the back yard of B&Q. There's a house in Louisiana where there's a doings a transpirin' and it's up to the journalist and his two buddies to find out what's going' down. His buddies disappear, so the journalist does what people never do in horror films: he actually runs away! That was refreshing for starters.

Although he does go back with two other guys. Despite the legion of handicaps this film has, it still manages to keep going at a good pace, and by the time the creatures appear I was forgiving the film for it's faults. Don't go in expecting a classic, or even a normal film, and you should have a good time.

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.

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.

It can never be a good sign when a film's credits don't list any name as "writer". Sure, everybody knows the plot is inspired by H.P Lovecraft's "The Lurking Fear", but even the legendary horror author remains uncredited, and nobody else is mentioned for the adaptation, neither. "The Lurking Fear" is a fantastically horrifying tale, but it has yet to receive a good film version, and this clearly wasn't going to be it. "Dark Heritage" truly is a laughably incompetent late-80s horror dud, but at the same time I must admit it's also tremendously entertaining! Three guys head down to Louisiana to investigate a mass murder that took place at camping ground near a reputedly haunted mansion. Sure, I know they look like drunken perverts on a fishing trip, but they are actually reporters of a newspaper. They spend the night at the mansion, but one thunderstorm and a bit of blurry camera footage later, two of them have vanished and the survivor is blamed for murder. But our hero, Clint, quickly finds two new buddies (two 40-year-old college students) to further investigate the origin of the hideous demons crawling around the Dansen estate.

Now, I know Lovecraft's tale "The Lurking Fear" rather well, and what I honestly can't figure out is why the name and nationality of the spooky immigrant family changed for this version? It always was the Martense family and they came from Holland. Now suddenly, they are the Dansen family from Norway? Lots of the things happening in "Dark Heritage" are dumb and don't make the slightest bit of sense, the dialogues appear to be written by a 4-year-old, and the acting performances are beyond insufferable. On the other hand, the make-up effects are surprisingly gross (the bloke with the half-eaten face is terrific) and the "underground dwellers" look effectively creepy. I enjoyed it, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to tolerant fans of cheap and cheesy 80s horror flicks. Still, the film could have used a couple of females in the cast, and the finale is a total letdown, so I really can't give it a rating higher than 4.