Wes Craven was attached to this project which should be enough for me to watch ...That being said its got excellent cinematography for its time, perfect music score, good acting and sexy beautiful girls ...and what do you know, an original horror plot. I found this film to have a great ambiance and artsy vibe, the location elevated the film and the death scenes were similar to those of Dario Argento .. (suspiria). The ending was a bit blotchy, but overall the film was very good with great scares, you can tell while watching it that its something created by the master behind SCREAM! It truly deserves a higher rating and more acknowledgement ... and even a remake ... (under tim burton or wan?)Ps. Be wary of the Amish lol FINAL GRADE B

Much like Cravens other film beginning with Deadly, (Deadly Friend), this is a lost gem and should be sought out by all Craven fans.Although the synopsis doesn't really give much away, the film really sticks it to minority religions, and makes the group almost seem 'children of the corn' like.Borgnine is stunning as the leader of the group, and although it connotates that it's his doing, the reality is a little more bizarre.Once the bloke from The Fall Guy gets killed, we are introduced to the main characters of the film. The lead, Sharon Stone, and some other woman, who all have different views and fears.Although she is secondary in this movie, Stone arguably has the best and most haunting scenes involving spiders and a barn.It's not a scary movie by any means, and it's a stretch to call it a Horror, but it just has this strange sense of unease throughout the whole movie.Berryman is just,in the film to pull fans in, and you can understand why Craven hates this ending, as it's just so out of context with the rest of the film.So for Craven completists, it's a must, and for anyone else, it's a good thriller, with some great lighting, set pieces, but an iffy ending.

Deadly Blessing (1981) ** (out of 4) A rather strange, lifeless and forgotten picture from Wes Craven has a woman (Maren Jensen) returning to an Amish-like community with her husband who used to be a member of them. The husband dies under strange circumstances and soon the woman finds herself under attack by someone who doesn't want her there. DEADLY BLESSING is a rather deadly weird movie. For the life of me I couldn't understand if this thing wanted to be some sort of supernatural film or a slasher. Perhaps the film started off as something more supernatural but after the success of Friday THE 13TH it had a few changes to add in some extra gore and violence. The final ten-minutes really seemed to be influence by certain aspects in Friday THE 13TH but I won't name them to avoid spoilers for those who haven't seen the film. For the most part this is a pretty weak film but I think Craven makes it a lot better than it would have been had someone else been in the director's chair. The highlight of the film is an incredibly intense sequence where our main character is taken a bath and someone puts a snake in there with her. This entire sequence is utterly creepy in the way Craven directs the build-up as well as him being able to milk every inch of tension out of it. There are also several shots here that Craven would rip-off from himself in A NIGHTMARE ONE ELM STREET during the sequence where Nancy is taking a bath. The film contains some nudity (a rare thing for Craven), some bloody violence and a nice twist ending but none of these things can completely make up for the flaws. The biggest flaw is that this thing is really dragged out at 101-minutes and the entire subplot of one of the boys from the group wanting to break free and join the real world just adds up to a lot of boring nothings. The performances are also rather hit and miss, although I did like Jensen in her lead role. It was also somewhat fun seeing Sharon Stone playing on of her friends but the performance itself isn't all that great. Former Oscar-winner Ernest Borgnine plays the leader of the group in what has to be called one of his least memorable screen roles. Michael Berryman also appears as one of the family members. DEADLY BLESSING might be of interest to fans of the cast or those wanting to see everything Craven has directed but others will want to stay clear as it just can't overcome the weak story.

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.