Deadly Blessing 1981
Movie - Review & Info

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Film Review:

Its fair to say that genre warrior Wes Craven is a horror film maker of extremes, his efforts range from utter dross to classic. Deadly Blessing finds him somewhere in the middle of that range. It's not a title that comes rushing to many's lips as classic horror, but it has enough winning elements to make it worth repeated viewing. However, as it's Wes Craven, its also chock full of moments that make you slap your head and go d'oh in disgust.

There film doesn't seem sure about which direction it wants to take, and its biggest crime is that of lumping together several distinctly seperate plotlines and ideas. I'm not going to even attempt to describe the different themes as I'd be here for ever. In simple terms the film is about a fallen Amish style religious sect (the Hittites) member and the community she left. There's also some gender confused slasher sub text and spooky demon stuff as well.

If you can keep up with it all, there is some competent and engaging stuff going on here. Featuring a very young and spooked Sharon Stone in a supporting role with Maren Jensen, the lady around which all the strange stuff revolves. There's subplots of members of the sect being led into sin and a batty next door neighbour and her artistic daughter. Ernest Borgnine is as watchable as ever as the hellfire elder of the group in a fetching beard and black trilby.

There are several moments which elicit genuine suspense and chills. The segment where city girl Sharon Stone is trapped in the barn that saw the death of a couple of characters is sheer excellence and extremely jarring. There is also some chilling moments of big spider scares to be had. The pacing is fairly slow, but given the breezy rural setting and long vistas, it reminds one of a low budget Days Of Heaven.

But of course, this Wes the uneven. There are a couple of moments which succeed in practically destroying the goodwill he built up with the classier scenes. In one Maren takes a slow bath with a snake, her bikini bottoms plainly visible in frame. The twist of the gender confusion just makes you scratch your head. And finally, (without going into big spoilers) when it seems everything is concluded nicely, Wes does one of his trademark fake endings which just leaves you scratching your head in disbelief. It actually spoils the film as you sit there slowly mouthing 'what the fuc...' rather than enjoying the preceding 95 minutes.

Flawed? Yes. Classic? Far from it. Worth a slot on your busy viewing schedule? I'd say yeah, enjoy the really good bits and see if I'm not wrong about that ending.

Video Capture Comments:

As this is one of my very early attempts at capturing, the colour is too saturated, the encode size is too large and as a result its very blocky looking. Other than that, its not too bad. The source tape is still good despite many plays. There seems to be a few shonky Wes Craven films still yet to grace the underside of a silver disc - this one is a surprising omission from the DVD market.

	Rating Out Of 5:
Video Quality:		2
Cheese:		3
Film:		3
Specificatons: Duration: 01:37:48 (146,689 fr) Video Codec: DivX 5.0 Resolution: 640x480 (1.33:1) [=4:3] Bitrate: 860 kb/s FPS: 25.000