Review – Deadly Blessing

Hey, here’s a minority group we can pick on with impunity: Amish-esque, traditional, closed religious communities. I mean, it’s not like they’ve got TVs or VCRs. And even if they did, they’d probably mostly rent Disney cartoons rather than the likes of Deadly Blessing. So director Wes Craven (and this is way back in the pre-Elm Street days) is pretty safe in casting them as the bad guys. Of course, this particular set of religious fanatics must be especially backward, because they constantly refer to all the nubile young 20th century women as “incubus,” whereas if memory serves me right generally incubi are male demons that sexually corrupt women. Unless the whole thing is some ultra-clever twist on the gender bending turn of the screw toward the end or Craven knows something about newcomer Sharon Stone that he isn’t sharing with the rest of us (and both scenarios are about equally unlikely), they probably actually meant to use the term “succubus.” The first time I saw this masterpiece was in a motel room in the middle of Nowhere Kansas on the way back from about two solid weeks of camping in Colorado. I was in my early teens back then, and at the time this was a sweet taste of badly-missed civilization. Less desperate times have led me to a much lower opinion. See if desperate