Deadly Blessing (1981)

Pray you're not blessed

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Release Date: Aug 14, 1981
Rated: R | Runtime: 100 Mins | Language: English
Director: Wes Craven
Stars: Maren Jensen, Sharon Stone, Susan Buckner, Jeff East, Ernest Borgnine, Lois Nettleton, Michael Berryman

Summary

Deadly Blessing is a 1981 American slasher film directed by Wes Craven. The film tells the story of a strange figure committing murder in a contemporary community that is not far from another community that believes in ancient evil and curses.

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What to Expect

Deadly Blessing hits you right off the bat by how tame it is. It barely touches the horror genre, it's more of a dramatic thriller, like a Halloween episode of Little House on the Prairie. But it probably only feels tame because we're talking about Wes Craven here.

The movie follows a farmer working in the middle of Amish country. One day the farmer dies, by the hand of his possessed tractor, and suddenly his wife has to run the farm on her own while being antagonized by her Amish neighbors, one of whom seems special and keeps calling her an incubus. For those of you who didn't have supernatural sex ed in school, an incubus is a demon that bangs you when you sleep. It's also used to refer to general distress or nightmares, but I guess being raped by a demon would be a little of both.

So, the widow calls her friends from the city to come stay with her. From this point on much of the movie is just a group of women in sexy lingerie lounging around drinking and wine and chatting. There's the occasional ominous religious rant by the Amish patriarch, but mostly it's just lingerie lounging and wine drinking. Not a lot of farming. Not a lot of horror.

To be fair, I went into this expecting something more intense. I found it to be strangely out of sync with other Wes Craven horrors.

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Movie Review: Deadly Blessing (1981) ReviewHorror Lists: 20 Terrible Horror Movies You Have to Watch

Critic Reviews:

There are many things done well in “Deadly Blessing” as well as some things that weren’t, but all of this is overshadowed by the biggest element missing from this early Wes Craven film; satisfaction.

– HNN

Deadly Blessing builds nicely, though a little slowly, to its conclusion with a cracking finale and some decent surprises.

– Flickering Myth

Wes Craven was still three years away from creating A Nightmare on Elm Street, but Deadly Blessing still works as an urban version of the boogeyman – one that takes place in an all too real existence. Until it doesn’t.

– Daily Dead