Reviewed by Jerry Saravia
Wes Craven's "Deadly Blessing" appears to be about a religious community in rural Pennsylvania who have strict rules, namely they do not consort or conversate with non-religious members. In this world, the group are the Hittites who, in one hilarious dialogue bit, "make the Amish look like swingers." The Hittites refer to women outside their group as the incubus. Ouch. Might have been better off calling this devout religious group the Hutterites who, unlike the Hittites, actually live in some U.S. states but I digress.
I had a jolly good time at first seeing Michael Berryman ("The Hills Have Eyes") appear as some man-child of the Hittites who is something of a pervert, looking into a woman's bedroom window and watching her disrobe. In fact, I wondered if this movie would become a psychological portrait of how religion bleeds in a community where some members become curious of those who do not follow any sect - people living by their rules and moral code. I digress again because, before you figure out how to pronounce Hittite, there is a murder by a John Deere tractor! The male character killed is Jim (Douglas Barr), an ex-Hittite, living with his wife Martha, in a house with an outside sign that reads "Our Blessing." When Martha finds her husband dead, she is the sole person to attend the funeral with the Hittites observing on a farm hill. Ernest Borgnine plays the patriarch and sermonizer of the Hittites who hates and demonizes anyone who leaves the group and consorts with non-members. That still leaves Berryman as the man-child who is killed not even halfway through the film, though he's not denounced but there is the matter of his missing shoe. We are saddled with Maren Jensen (in her last film role) as Martha who doesn't seem to grieve much - she invites her old pals for a week to her home. One of them is Sharon Stone, in her stunningly sultry debut, who has a sleepy gaze throughout that is rather enthralling to me because it is, well, Sharon Stone. Jeff East is also on hand as a blonde Hittite who starts to cast doubts about religion infecting his life and his potential new bride and seeking, you know, intimate relations.
"Deadly Blessing" has a good story that is lost in translation. The film is far too inert and even in scare sequences where there is a hooded killer in a barn or elsewhere, it falls short of thrills or anything menacing. That is surprising coming from horror director Wes Craven who can rattle the nerves at his best and make you quake your boots. "Deadly Blessing's" horror is muted at best making one wish Craven made an entirely different, more dramatic movie. The religious fervor of the Hittites is personal for Craven but even the staging of said sermons and Borgnine's imposing presence are flat and insipid. The movie was shot in relatively one month and there is a studio-imposed supernatural finish that is plain dumb and counterproductive to what we have seen. It will be one more blessing in my moviegoing experiences if I never have to sit through this movie again.
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