Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Rainey Dawn For a long time, I've remembered a film where someone was asleep with their mouth wide-opened and a spider goes from the ceiling into their mouth... this is that film! Now I know which film I was trying to remember. -- Warning if spiders and snakes bother you in a film then you might want to pass this one up!! This isn't a bad film... rather fun to watch. There is a group of Hittites (Amish like-community) that live near the modern people. Some of the moderns are afraid of the Hittites - especially when the Hittites call some of them an Incubus and refuse to let their kin speak to them. People end up with strange deaths. The questions: Is it the Hittites? Is it the strange Christian family? Is it some of the other moderns? Or is it an Incubus? There is great casting this film. Suspenseful, scary at times and a lot of fun to watch.8/10

Predrag "Deadly Blessing" is a surprisingly good horror movie from Wes Craven. It has Ernest Borgnine (Marty (1954)), Maren Jensen, otherwise known as Athena on Battlestar Galactica - The Complete Epic Series, and a young Sharon Stone (Basic Instinct). The Hittites (loosely based on the Hutterites/Amish) are an enclosed community, shunning modern technology. One of their own has left the fold to marry Maren. He suffers deadly consequences. As a widow, Maren is comforted by her friends. There's plenty of craziness, a questioning of societal mores. The Hittites somehow to manage to blend Eastern Orthodox sacred music with Catholic practices all the while being good Bible-quoting Protestants. The ending fight scenes are all between women, and the proper young lady Faith (Lisa Hartman) turns out to be androgynous. For some in the audience, Maren's frequent nudity is satisfying in its own way. The climactic scene... well, it makes no sense.Director Wes Craven obviously used "Deadly Blessing" as practicing grounds for his future horror exploits. One example is a very familiar camera angle used in "Deadly Blessing" that he re-used in the original "A Nightmare on Elm Street." It left me smiling throughout the entire sequence. One thing I'll give Craven is he knows how to drum up enough suspense to make you nervously bite your fingernails through pacing and editing alone. There are some genuinely nerve-wracking moments in "Deadly Blessing." The movie boasts an interesting variety of cast members at various times in their careers. "Deadly Blessing" is Maren Jensen's ("Battlestar Galactica") last big-screen role. It features Sharon Stone in one of her first film appearances. Genre-favorite Michael Berryman ("The Hills Have Eyes") appears as a creepy mentally handicapped Hittite. Ernest Borgnine had already won Academy and Golden Globe Awards before taking the role of cult leader Isaiah. Any other actor of his caliber probably would've stuck his nose up in the air and walked away when offered this role in a low-budget horror film. Borgnine instead throws himself into the character and adds a level of class to the movie that takes it to a whole new level.Overall rating: 8 out of 10.

Mr_Ectoplasma "Deadly Blessing" is a film I'd heard a lot about but not had the chance to see until it was finally released on DVD for the first time this past year. One of Wes Craven's earlier endeavors, the film takes place in a rural farming community that is home to the Hittites, a religious sect in the vein of the Amish but much more extreme. In it, Martha (Maren Jensen) lives with her husband, who is an ex-Hittite himself. After he mysteriously dies in a tractor accident, Martha's two female friends (including a young Sharon Stone) come to stay with her, and they are targeted by the strange religious group who comes to believe Martha to be an incubus.A far cry from Craven's grindhouse exercises in brutality, "The Last House on the Left" and "The Hills Have Eyes", "Deadly Blessing" takes a more accessible direction, and the conventional filmmaking techniques at work here illustrate Craven's aim for a more mainstream audience. Trading in the gritty 6mm feel that punctuated the aforementioned films, "Deadly Blessing" is surprisingly glossy, and plays out like a made-for-television horror movie (albeit a tad bit more gratuitous).Conceptually, the film has an interesting premise— after all, who doesn't like a good old fashioned horror flick about religious maniacs inflicting horror on innocent citizens? Predating "Children of the Corn", the film's rural farmland setting lends an ominous atmosphere and adds to the sense of dread that pervades the narrative, albeit in a bit of a wonky manner. The film treads the line between the realms of the supernatural and the slasher rather awkwardly, but the quirkiness this creates almost makes the film charming. It channels the religious ostracism and wonderful weirdness of films like "The Wicker Man", but also follows in line with the slasher tropes of films like "Friday the 13th" and the like.A lot of people have booed the ending of the film, which accords to its supernatural subtext, and I can see both sides of the argument; that said, for the sake of the film's innate quirkiness, I think that it fits just fine. As far as the performances in the film go, well... they're pretty bad, even by '80s horror standards. Maren Jensen gives a decent performance, but the supporting female cast is weak— Sharon Stone is even shoddy in this early supporting role, but she's known for being a bit hit-and-miss. Ernest Borgnine does give a hammy and entertaining life to the role of the religious leader, and Michael Berryman's presence in the film is welcome.Overall, I found "Deadly Blessing" hard to like or dislike with any passion. Its rural farmland setting gives it a thick atmosphere, and the premise of the film is at least interesting. The performances are overall pretty poor, but if you can get past hokey acting (which isn't terribly difficult if you're accustomed to '80s horror), there's fun to be had. If nothing else, "Deadly Blessing" stands as a monument of Craven's transitory period between grindhouse horror and mainstream genre audiences. Not a total waste of time, but not a success either. I rate it slightly above average just for the brilliant snake scene, and Sharon Stone's disgusting eight-legged dream sequence. 6/10.

Scott LeBrun A sadly overlooked item on director Wes Craven's resume, the rural horror flick "Deadly Blessing" benefits from its rustic setting, its spooky atmosphere, its show stopping shocks, and a fine cast. It stars Maren Jensen of the original 'Battlestar Galactica' as Martha, who's married to Jim (Douglas Barr), a former member of the Hittites, a strict religious sect who are described as "making the Amish look like swingers". Jim is killed in a mysterious incident involving his tractor, and when soon after Martha is visited by friends Lana (Sharon Stone) and Vicky (Susan Buckner), they all begin to be terrorized. Could the Hittites be responsible, or is there some real evil at work here? Location filming in Ohio and Texas adds a lot to this fairly creepy film, with Craven and a capable cast & crew making the most of the material. It's certainly an interesting enough look into a different culture, and of course prefigures the Harrison Ford vehicle "Witness" by a few years. It's got some nicely freaky twists and turns as it nears its end, and has an effective "anything goes" attitude. The best moments revolve around incidents with animals, one with a snake in the bathtub (some of the shots in this sequence would be revisited by Craven in "A Nightmare on Elm Street"), and another with a spider on the ceiling. James Horner composed the eerie music score that on occasion sounds somewhat like his "Humanoids from the Deep" score. The production design (by Jack Marty) and cinematography (by Robert C. Jessup) are first rate. The actors are all entertaining to watch, especially veterans Ernest Borgnine as domineering Hittite leader Isaiah and Lois Nettleton as friendly local Louisa Stohler. The three leading ladies are just gorgeous to look at. Also appearing are the always likable Jeff East ("Pumpkinhead") as Borgnines' son who ultimately defies the old man, Lisa Hartman (in the role that officially introduced her) as Louisas' daughter Faith, and Michael Berryman ("The Hills Have Eyes"), who's lots of fun as the trouble making William Gluntz; Percy Rodrigues, whose rich voice has graced many a trailer for a genre film, does the opening and closing narration. The ending may seem to come out of nowhere (and in fact the producers insisted on it, after the fact, claiming that the original ending wasn't punchy enough), but it does make some sense to this viewer. Some trivia worth noting is that the title 'Summer of Fear' (named after a TV movie Craven had done previously) appears on a theatre marquee. This film has been MIA on DVD & Blu-ray for so long that it's nice that Scream Factory finally stepped up to the plate to give it the respectful presentation that it deserves. Seven out of 10.