I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

SWING AND A MISS...






Deadly Blessings (1981)

This early Wes Craven film had the look and feel of a TV Movie-Of-The-Week. I guess it would be hard to make a horror film based on Hittites, a group of several distinctions and not a lot of modern information. The movie intimates that they are a sterner form of an Amish-type community. Not a lot of action there - unless you include the (according to this film) shunning of anything outside their community, the beatings, the one unquestioned patriarch, the lack of tolerance for any other faiths... yeah, that's about it. So I guess Wes had to come up with some groovy twists in order to keep this movie interesting. It didn't work.

Damn those Cylons... err I mean Hittites!

Martha and Jim live on a farm called Our Blessing (duh) and are happy, despite he being a former and therefore shunned Hittite. They have a couple of nice neighbors, Louisa and Faith (Lisa Hartman in her first and most puzzling role). Faith is... a little different and spends her time painting some pretty warped pictures. Jim tells Louisa they'll need her midwifing in the spring since Martha is pregnant. But not all is well in their pretty little community. 

As stated at least in this movie the Hittites are very intolerant of their neighbors and forbid any contact with them. But they do seemed to be consumed with the thought of all those outside their faith being 'incubi'. An incubus is a male demon who has sex with females, so calling all the women incubi is just wrong, wrong wrong. A resulting female from a union between an incubus and a woman is a succubus. So we have a lot of massive duhs right at the start.

There's 1/3 a brain each so...

So to get the story going, Jim is mysteriously killed by someone running his tractor - squished against a wall. No gore, and only a bit of blood. So Martha gets two of her friends to stay a bit, Lana (way overplayed by Sharon Stone) and Vicky. 

I won't tolerate those without SAG cards...

And the story just goes plbbbbt. Things that are supposed to be spooky aren't, Ernest Borgnine in his fake beard is about as scary as a cold. They dole out murders very very slowly and the plot doesn't get any clearer and the whole succubus (or incubus, whatever) angle is never explored. 

I think my panties are bunching up...

There are spiders aplenty, and a snake in my favorite scene when Martha takes a bath. Ever seen a snake go willingly into hot water and soap? Nope? Didn't think so. Ever see a woman take a bath in black panties? Nope? Geez, if they were going for the lack of frontal nudity (lower anyway) you'd think they'd at least one, try to make more bubbles or two, give her some flesh colored panties for crying out loud. I mean really. THREE TIMES they show the black underwear. It was the only laugh I got in this boring thing.

Prettiest boy I've ever seen...

Lisa Hartman as Faith really overdoes it as a massive weirdo who gets even more weird at the end of the movie. Meanwhile Sharon Stone's character keeps getting 'visited' in her dreams by what she perceives to be a demon and, yes, more spiders. Jeez. 

Eventually her friend Vicky gets flamed out while making out with Jim's brother who's rebelling against his dad because he doesn't want to marry his cousin and have more inbred Hittites I guess (somebody dumped gas on the car and lit it and she was too stupid to just open the door and get out).

Just. Get. Out. DUH!!!

Finally (and I do mean FINALLY) it is revealed that all this weirdness has been done, not by the Hittites but Louisa and Faith who are both seriously off their nut. Faith even digs up Jim and props him up in the barn, also painting a picture of Martha in her wedding dress, as she is in love with her. No no, no lesbian action in this one (sort of), during a struggle conveniently Faith's shirt opens, revealing she is actually a boy and has been in love with Martha. Umm, eww. For her very first role she sure got a gem of one. 

Why am I here? I don't have to tell you...

Martha has taught herself to shoot which is good timing because both mom and daughter/son come after her and there is a shootout of sorts. Just as Faith gets the upper hand and is ready to kill her/his beloved, a psycho Hittite (yeah, they had those) shows up with a knife, seemingly in a daze, and stabs Faith. Isaiah (Ernest Borgnine) shows up saying the incubus is dead. Why the hell didn't he tell her... never mind. The story is over, Lana goes home, forgetting all that incubus dream nonsense (how convenient) and we are done.

But no - this is Wes Craven, even if watered down horribly. She stands alone in her house when it all goes dark, her dead husband appears warning her of the incubus, and the floor splits open and a true incubus, huge and nasty but you only see it for a couple of seconds comes up and grabs her and drags her down into ???. Okay, NOW you can go.