Verdict
Summary
Fans of Craven in general should take a look here. While it’s not one of his better-known films or a “classic,” it’s still a solid slow burner.Kino Lorber brings Deadly Blessing to 4K Ultra HD in a two-disc combo pack, upgrading the film in a 4K scan, looking even better than the previous Blu-ray from Shout Factory. With multiple audio commentaries, interviews, and promotional material, plus a slipcover, this is a stacked edition that outdoes itself.
Plot:
A woman living on a farm by herself after her husband was killed is terrorized by a religious cult.
Review:
Sprawling countryside and farms in every direction should indicate tranquility and harmony, but where Martha (Maren Jeensen) lives, danger lurks. When her husband – an excommunicated member of a religious sect that lives on the next farmstead over – is murdered in their barn, but looks like an accident, she invites her closest friends (played by Sharon Stone in an early role and Susan Buckner in a perpetually braless outfit) to console her for a few weeks. When her friends arrive, the three of them are terrorized by a stalker who drops spiders into their beds, peeps in on them taking showers, and does their best to drive them away for being spawn of an incubus. At first, we think it might be one of the creepy cult members (played by Michael Berryman), but when he’s hung and killed in the barn (made to look like suicide, but he was murdered), the suspected guilty party shifts to perhaps being the leader of the cult, a surly, no-fun kind of guy (played by Ernest Borgnine). Meanwhile, as Martha and her friends are trying to make peace with the cult, the killer continues to make mischief … and kill.
Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing feels very much like a step up from his grungier early efforts as a horror filmmaker with more resources and bigger names in his cast, and while he uses some motifs here that became his signature later on, namely the naked girl in the bathtub stuff that would become iconic in A Nightmare on Elm Street in a few years later. This time, a snake slithers in in almost the exact same way as Freddy’s glove, and there’s some other stuff in this film that feels like a training ground for Craven to use in future films. The score by James Horner is very good, and fans of Craven in general should take a look here. While it’s not one of his better-known films or a “classic,” it’s still a solid slow burner.
Kino Lorber brings Deadly Blessing to 4K Ultra HD in a two-disc combo pack, upgrading the film in a 4K scan, looking even better than the previous Blu-ray from Shout Factory. With multiple audio commentaries, interviews, and promotional material, plus a slipcover, this is a stacked edition that outdoes itself.
