It's the Amish!: Deadly Blessing (1981)

Deadly Blessing (1981)
Rating:***
Starring: Maren Jensen, Sharon Stone and Susan Buckner

Truth be told, I know very little of the Amish community other than the fact that they all dress alike, sports groovy side-burns, and for some reason hates anything with cogs, clockwork and runs on electricity. Basically, just the cartoon caricatures. Here's hoping I can correct that soon, but until then, here's a slasher film directed by Wes Craven taking place in an Amish community. Just when thought this sub-genre couldn't get any weirder...

Jim, a former Hittite, and his big city wife, Martha, live a peaceful farming life among a strict Amish community who rejects them for bringing technology unto their land, as well as for being neighbors to an estranged mother and her daughter, who the latter they believe is an incubus. Martha and Jim put all of this down as just the old folks being, well, old and superstitious. One night, sadly, tragedy strikes as Jim gets crushed to death by his own tractor. His death gets ruled out as an accident the next day and, to make it worse, the Hittites want to purchase the land from Martha seeing that its true owner, her late husband, is gone. Suspicious? Definitely.

Thankfully, coming to visit and to keep Martha's spirit alive are her friends from LA (one being Sharon Stone (?!)), but it seems that someone- or something- isn't finished with their killing spree yet. Something that might be responsible for Jim's apparent accident and is continuing to knife away anyone that gets in its way.

Deadly Blessing (1981) is a mystery-structured slasher film with an added touch of the supernatural and social commentary. The Amish here are placed in a position of either friends or foes to the main casts, and the movie's examination to the community's lifestyle and beliefs brings as much consideration to think whether who's right or wrong. Martha, skeptical of the Amish's supernatural ramblings and strict rules, tries to bring rationality and openness to the town, while on the other hand the Amish tries their best to preserve their way of life, shutting themselves from any possible source of the evil. Craven seems to be practicing the same thematic tone of diversity as of his The Last House in the Left (1973) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), though it this one is more open to play with fantastical and outlandish concepts, mainly the ambiguous nature of the attacks, hinting the possibility of the otherworldly. 

As the story progresses, we can soon tell which side of the coin is no more than a big red herring from the beginning. Throughout this, Deadly Blessing (1981) plays it mostly with a straight face, while practicing some of the usual slasher tropes such as the killer's POV shots, giallo-esque black gloves, and, yes, practical murders done away with a simple kitchen knife. It even surprises us with not one, but two shockingly sensational twist reveals, each made to fit a specific taste for a win-win situation for fans alike. 

Some nifty suspense scenes also grant this film an atmospheric flair, including a moment a barn seemingly becomes alive with windows shutting and closing by themselves, as well as the now infamous spider scene where a live (and de-fanged) spider plops down into Sharon Stone's gaping mouth. It's a sweet practice on nightmarish imagery, with Craven himself even recycling one scene where a snake attacks Martha, all done in a shot between her legs, to his magnus opus, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), where its heroine gets menaced by that film's villain in a now infamous bath tub scene in the same manner.  

With scenes like this, Deadly Blessing (1981) makes the country side as eerie and mysterious as it is beautiful. A solid shocker with a partially convulsed story and a ridiculous finale, Craven shows here that he got the skills to make a silly plot worthwhile. Not particularly his finest, but entertaining nonetheless!

Bodycount:
1 male crushed to death by a tractor
1 male knifed on the back
1 male repeatedly knifed on the back
1 female immolated in car explosion
1 female shot
1 male knifed on the back
1 female killed
Total: 7