DEADLY BLESSING

US, 1981, 100 minutes, Colour.
Ernest Borgnine, Sharon Stone, Jeff East, Maren Jensen.
Directed by Wes Craven.

Deadly Blessing is a reasonably enjoyable scary and gory thriller. It fits into the trend of multiple killing thrillers of the late seventies and early eighties, but it is situated in the strange religious communities of the mid-western states of America. The group represents past anti-machinery and anti-almost everything of the modern world, a setting for an occult thriller.

However, there seen to be ordinary reasons for most of the killings with quite some twists of plot. The later occult theme comes in rather gratuitously at the end. In the meantime there is reasonable characterisation and basically interesting plot of murder and mistaken identity.

Ernest Borgnine enjoys his role as the religious leader and Maren Jensen is a stalwart heroine. There are elements of nightmare and symbolic evil which are played on by writer director Wes Craven, who made such thrillers as The Hills Have Eyes, Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream.

1. The impact of the horror thriller - the multiple killing genre and the influence of Halloween? The nightmare aspect of such stories? Audiences with situations and characters, facing nightmares? Symbols of evil, snakes and spiders?

2. The use of thriller techniques: shacks and editing, music and tracking, and light and atmosphere? The delineation of the characters and the atmosphere of evil? Superstition? The use of animals? Dreams? Creating an atmosphere of fear?

3. The religious background of the film with the community? Their lifestyle, hellfire religious ceremonies? Isaiah and his leadership of the community, fanaticism? Old world style and hostility to the modern world? The effect of this kind of religion on their families, on society? The possibility of the devil and the incubus taking hold of them? Law and vengeance? Overtones of witchcraft? The finale and the satanic endings?

4. The broader community and its ordinary lifestyle? Isaiah's son moving away from the community? Isaiah and his control and confrontation with his son? Jean and his rebellion and wanting to break out? The relationship of the Hittites to the ordinary life-style of the town?

5. Jim and Martha as a pleasant couple, their anniversary, the tracker sequence and Jim's death? The irony of the machine killing him? The graffiti of the incubus?

6. Martha as heroine, her strength? Her ability to cope? Of being terrorized? her girlfriends and their supporting her? Their experiences, terror? and the temptation for the Hittites? The tantalizing of the Hittites? Terror for the other girl, in the tracker shed? Her dreams especially with the man and the spider? The ugly death in the car? The terror of the spider dream, at the end?


7. William and his being retarded, deformed? His lying about the shoe? His return to the barn and his sudden death? Louisa and her disgust, horror? Neighbourliness? Intensity? Visits and hospitality? Clash? The snake in Martha's bath? Faith's art and the question of identity? The masculine feminine tension?

9. The digging up of Jim's grave and its being empty? Faith and her jealousy? The build-up to the violence?

10. Elisa and her being possessed by the Incubus? Her vengeance? Isaiah, and his relevance? and wanting to save Martha? The Incubus rising and taking? The shock of the ending?

11. How satisfying as horror? Terror set in the contemporary world of society add values?