DEADLY BLESSING

    

STATS:

Deadly Blessing
Directed by Wes Craven
      
WHA’ HAPPENED?
You thought Amish people were bad. (Wait. Did you?) Just wait till you meet the Hittites, these crazy farmers that get caught up in a slow-moving horror mystery involving tractors, snakes, and someone dropping a live tarantula into Sharon Stone's mouth.
     
FAVORITE QUOTE:
A poor manchild has been killed.
     

ISN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Why did I watch this movie? Well, it was directly by Wes Craven. And I’m a completist. I was sure it couldn’t be worse than My Soul to Take. But the fact that this is mostly known as the movie where Sharon Stone got a live tarantula in her mouth tells me that it wasn’t exactly one of Craven's top tier movies.
          

SHIRTS AND SKINS:

Some PG female nudity. Including a bathtub scene with an overly curious snake. Similar to Nancy’s bathtub scene in the first Nightmare on Elm Street. If Mr. Craven has to rip off other movies, they might as well be his own.
    

BLOOD AND GUTS:

Nothing particularly memorably. Most deaths occur in shadowy barns and whatnot, so there isn’t a lot to see. Apparently, Amish country isn’t very well-lit. Who knew! But that guy from The Hills Have Eyes gets probably the longest death scene. So there’s that.
    

PLOT HOLES AND CRAZINESS:

The reveal of the killer is sudden and kind of dumb, but holy crap does the film have an awesome ending. Think Drag Me to Hell, but completely unearned. Like, if Freddy Krueger showed up at the end of Scream. It makes no damn sense, but it is probably the only thing I will remember about this movie in a month. That and the scene where Sharon Stone gets a tarantula in her mouth. Now that’s the stuff that dreams are made of.
           

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Ernest Borgnine was born to play a crazy Hittite farmer. Forget his Oscar-winning role in Marty. THIS is his legacy. Aside from him, though, everyone else is pretty much sleeping through this film, especially Martha, the main girl, who goes from constipated to dizzy without ever registering terror. All-in-all, a forgetting slog of a film, even for its short run-time, but be sure to stay for that cuckoo-bananas ending. You will not regret it.