A Deadly Legend (2020)

1 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Mound of Dirt

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Simply trying to synopsize this "everything-but-the-kitchen-sink" low-budget horror movie is enough of an indication as to just how nonsensical it really is, but it's also poorly-written nonsense.

In A Deadly Legend, Joan (Kristen Anne Ferraro) buys some land and hopes to open a summer camp. Unfortunately, the land is said to be cursed, marked by an ancient stone seal under a mound of dirt. When Mike (Eric Wolf) bulldozes it, and accidentally cuts his hand over the seal, a terrible evil is unleashed.

A woman (Jean Tree) is pulled under the lake and disappears, only to come back as a warrior witch. And Mike becomes something like a vengeful zombie, randomly killing. Fortunately, two young women, Amy (Daniella DeCaro) and Krissy (Andee Buccheri) have a mysterious connection to the supernatural. Can they find out what happened centuries earlier and put a stop to the evil?

A Deadly Legend constantly relies on bad expositional dialogue that no actual humans would ever say to one another. It's the kind of movie in which characters are constantly saying each other's names out loud, and in which cell phones don't work. And, while it does offer a multi-cultural cast, including mixed-race couples, it also falls back on the old cliché of killing the non-white characters first.

Three familiar faces appear in smaller roles. Judd Hirsch is crazy old Carl, who runs an antique shop and warns against building on the cursed land. Corbin Bernsen is Matthias, who knows all about the old legend, and provides more exposition. And Lori Petty is positively bonkers as Wanda, who spends the entire movie either drinking beer or looking for more beer.

Truthfully, some of this stuff is (perhaps unintentionally) pretty funny, and with plenty of gratuitous gore, there is a small chance that A Deadly Legend could someday qualify as a "so-bad-it's-good" classic.