Deadly Blessings (1981)
Young attractive Martha Schmidt has opted out of living in Los Angeles and upped sticks to live with her fella Jim (Doug Barr) on a Pennsylvania farm. Her closest neighbours are the Hittites, similar to the Amish in their choice to farm the land, follow the word of God and dismissal of mod cons. Her fella’s dad, Isaiah (Ernest Borgnine), is none too pleased with his son’s choice to marry outside their collective and has shunned them both. Not such a bad thing as he, if at all, has anything nice to say. One tragic tractor accident later and Martha is widowed. Her two best friends, Lana Marcus (a very young Sharon Stone) and Vicky Anderson (Susan Buckner), drive up from the city to comfort her and possibly persuade Martha to give up her life on the farm and return to whence she came.
Matters take a bigger turn for the worst when local nuisance William Gluntz (Michael Berryman) disappears and Lana starts experiencing unsettling nightmares. Isaiah is keen for his former daughter-in-law to bugger off and would gladly buy the land off her, an offer Martha refuses to accept even though she’ll be on her own once her two friends return to the city. There’s much talk of the ‘Incubus’ but never at any point does anyone stop to ask why they keep getting called that or what it means. Still there’s next door neighbour Louisa Stohler (Lois Nettleton) and her offspring Faith (Lisa Hartman), neither part of the Hittite faction, to jolly up Martha’s spirits, consider all men pigs and drop in the odd load of free eggs to munch on so it’s not all bad? Also Martha has a babe on the way and Vicky has eyes for the late Jim’s brother John (Jeff East) so what could possibly go wrong?
Much is made on the Blu-Ray that until Deadly Blessing Wes Craven was not considered a horror director – really? Up till Deadly Blessing’s release Craven had pretty much upset just about everyone with his original Last House on the Left (1972) and to some lesser extent with The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Also around the time of Deadly Blessing there was a plethora of Craven horror culminating in his genre piece de resistance A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) – elements of which can be seen in this from the snake rising in the bath – similar to Freddie’s gloved hand reaching up in Nancy’s bath – and the nightmares.
Speaking of nightmares Deadly Blessing’s most notable scene involves a rather large spider falling into Lana’s mouth. During filming Stone was advised not to worry about a real spider being plopped into her gob as the worse case scenario would be a little bite. Stone was informed that a tarantula’s bite was similar to a bee sting so there was really nothing to worry about. Stone asked what would happen if the spider’s fangs were to be removed so there was no possibility of a bite to contend with and the spider wrangler said that the tarantula would not be able to eat so would suffer a slow and horrible demise. Fledging diva that she was Stone said ‘Do it’ and the scene was filmed.
This Blu-Ray and DVD Deluxe release is being sold as a Sharon Stone vehicle purely on the basis of her subsequent career exceeding the others for flicking her legs and revealing her fanny years later – this was her first speaking role as prior she was in a Woody Allen film but not required to talk. The extras are fairly decent although Berryman sounds deeply disgruntled about an industry he only popped into for extra money and although the honesty is refreshing hearing someone moan is not and makes you want to turn it off.
Everyone agrees that the final shock was naff and only there really as since Carrie everyone felt that a horror picture should have one final shock each time. After Carrie it was felt that all genre movies had to have that one last scare to appease audiences whereas really it became tiresome very quickly. The ending to Deadly Blessing is no different and Wes Craven was not a fan of having to add one.
Michael Berryman is there to mislead the viewer into thinking he has a more integral role in matters. Maren Jensen (Battlestar Galactica) apparently didn’t do any other films after this nor TV which is a shame as she is a decent lead. It’s mainly Sharon Stone that gets all the scares whether pouring milk only to find the carton filled with blood, having a big spider dropped into her mouth or trapped in a huge barn it’s her lungs that get the workout.
Ernest Borgnine was nominated for a Golden Raspberry for his performance as the grumpy elder. Quite why I don’t know as it’s hardly crap but then sometimes those Golden Raspberry’s just need to fill up nominations for their categories. Ernest Borgnine’s accent DOES occasionally waiver but is that such a crime?
Deadly Blessing is a rarity in that it weighs very female-centric with the male characters tending to be the victims as well as a climax that veers towards the gentler gender in a very broad way. Perhaps this is why <b>Deadly Blessing</b> failed to find a decent audience at the time and has been largely overlooked in the Wes Craven collective.
It’s nowhere near as crap as Deadly Friend was but it’s far cry from A Nightmare on Elm Street also. Flawed but interesting and worth revisiting for the way it presents women differently at a time within the genre when they were normally called upon to scream a lot and then die a quick horrible death.
