moonspinner55 Two college-age girls travel to farming country to console their friend, whose husband was recently killed in a tractor accident in their barn (which no one attempts to investigate or explain). The land appears to be cursed, yet the leader of the local religious sect, the Hittites, wants the young widow to vacate so his people can take it over. Director and co-scenarist Wes Craven takes the Amish way of life and style of dress and makes it macabre...but not frightening enough to bolster this wayward whodunit with occult overtones. Ernest Borgnine gives an amusingly glinty-eyed performance as the intimidating leader of the Hittites, and gets the best lines ("You are a stench in the nostrils of God!"). The mixture of T&A and terror wasn't invented here, though it's disheartening to see talented Craven stooping to this cheesy level. His career went soft during the slasher era, not receiving a boost until "A Nightmare on Elm Street" rescued him three years later. *1/2 from ****

ersinkdotcom Jim Schmidt (Doug Barr) turns his back on his Hittite faith and moves to the city to start a new life. He returns with his new bride, Martha (Maren Jensen), to the place he grew up. His father, Isaiah (Ernest Borgnine), and family have disowned him for leaving the Hittite faith. They will have nothing to do with him or his bride. When Jim is killed in a mysterious tractor accident, Martha begins to suspect that the Hittites are trying to drive her away from the land she lives on and still claim is theirs. A series of brutal murders further prove something's not right in the little country community.Director Wes Craven obviously used "Deadly Blessing" as practicing grounds for his future horror exploits. One example is a very familiar camera angle used in "Deadly Blessing" that he re-used in the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street." It left me smiling throughout the entire sequence. One thing I'll give Craven is he knows how to drum up enough suspense to make you nervously bite your fingernails through pacing and editing alone. There are some genuinely nerve-wracking moments in "Deadly Blessing."The movie boasts an interesting variety of cast members at various times in their careers. "Deadly Blessing" is Maren Jensen's ("Battlestar Galactica") last big-screen role. It features Sharon Stone in one of her first film appearances. Genre-favorite Michael Berryman ("The Hills Have Eyes") appears as a creepy mentally handicapped Hittite.Ernest Borgnine had already won Academy and Golden Globe Awards before taking the role of cult leader Isaiah. Any other actor of his caliber probably would've stuck his nose up in the air and walked away when offered this role in a low-budget horror film. Borgnine instead throws himself into the character and adds a level of class to the movie that takes it to a whole new level.

shmucking Rural thriller about a young woman and her friends being stalked by an unknown presence and dealing with an intimidating cult-like group of religious fanatics. First of all, this movie has a genuinely spooky vibe that is maintained throughout the entire movie. It never lets up for a minute, and holds the audience in it's spell. The photography and music is very effective and atmospheric, and all the actors maintain the seriousness, never giving way to campy self-awareness. Ernest Borgnine has an intensity that comes off very well, and the other actors similarly aren't afraid to be very emotional and revealing. There's some excellent scary scenes and some other ones that are just very intense. My only criticism is that the ending seems too abrupt. I wish the movie had gone on longer. This is the kind of film that can get inside your subconscious and haunt your dreams if you open yourself up to it's spell. A one of a kind movie that effectively presents a memorably haunting atmosphere.

BA_Harrison Deadly Blessing is one of Wes Craven's lesser-known films, largely forgotten by all but the most avid horror buffs, but those who have thus far only sampled the director's more celebrated titles should definitely make the effort to check this one out: there's plenty of atmosphere, some effective scares, decent performances from a surprisingly good cast, and one hell of an unpredictable finalé, but best of all Deadly Blessing sees Craven planting seeds that would grow to become iconic moments in his later work.Maren Jensen threatened by a snake in her bath is undoubtedly the basis for an almost identical scene in A Nightmare on Elm Street, where Freddy's gloved hand rises out of the water between the legs of a dozing Nancy; Elm Street's freaky dream sequences clearly mirror those experienced by Sharon Stone's character in Deadly Blessing; and this film's shock ending is just as sudden and silly as Ronee Blakley's very similar departure through her front door window courtesy of Krueger.There are also a couple of striking similarities to Scream: Ghostface terrorising Neve Campbell is highly reminiscent of an attack on Stone by a cloaked figure in a barn, and there is little doubt in my mind that Scream's 'double killer' revelation was also inspired by this earlier Craven effort.And although this might be stretching things a tad, Deadly Blessing's 'chickens in the coffin' scene and its whole 'creepy religion' angle remind me just a bit of The Serpent and The Rainbow...Deadly Blessing's legacy is surely enough to qualify the film as recommended viewing for horror fans, but factor in several very attractive actresses (with Jensen providing the obligatory nudity), Michael Berryman from The Hills Have Eyes as Hittite man-child William Glutz, Howie from The Fall Guy, a supremely sinister Ernest Borgnine, several cool death scenes, a sneaky visual reference to Craven's 1978 TV Movie 'Summer of Fear', and the truly whacked-out last reel (which includes both a killer hermaphrodite and an incubus!), and what you have is an entertaining slice of American rural Gothic that definitely deserves a watch.