Dark Heritage (1989)

I saw this movie years ago and the only thing I remembered about it is the title was misspelled Drak Heritage. When you can't even spell your title correctly, it doesn't bode well for the film itself.

Reporter Clint is sent to an abandoned mansion after people at a nearby campsite are murdered.  Legend has it that there have been unsolved deaths associated with the house for over 100 years and that there is lighting seen before disappearances or death takes place.  This doesn't really explain the connection to the massacre five miles away, but whatever.

When Clint and a couple other people working for the paper stay overnight at the mansion, the other two disappear and Clint runs off in fright.  The police think he killed the others and the newspaper puts him on leave with a warning to drop the story.

But of course Clint wants to know more and ends up meeting two parapsychology grad students while doing research.  The three team up to investigate the campsite where the murders took place. While there, lightening starts and they decide to wait out the storm in the murder camper.  That works out as well as expected when one of the grad students dies.

This leads to the most ridiculous part of the movie when Clint says they need to bury the Greg, the dead guy, as the police already suspect him of murdering the other people at the mansion. Really? Jack was friends with Greg and was a witness to the fact that Clint didn't have anything to do with the death. But in the end, Jack ends up agreeing!?! Come on!! Nothing suspicious about burying the dead guy you didn't kill.

Then the movie switches to investigating the Dansen's owners of the mansion. One of them  disappeared in 1821. But he's got a grave so explain that. They decide to dig up the grave to see if he's in it. Say what?  Seems like a weird thing to do, but it does lead the story to the only spooky stuff that happens.  Even though it appears to be a rubber mask, there is something that totally freaks me out about seeing that face in the underground tunnel.

This is based off a Lovecraft story, Lurking Fear. I'd suggest reading Lovecraft rather than watching this.  The sound is constantly distorting as if the needles are redlining rather than checking their volumes during recording. Also though the release date is listed as 1989, it looks like it was possibly done earlier.

It's not a good sign when you misspell the title of your movie.