Deadly Blessing

 

We take a look at the Hittite culture in this unique horror film from Wes Craven, a departure of sorts for him. It concerns a “gruesome secret” a certain farming community (untouched by the modern times) has kept. This secret could be unearthed thanks to an "outsider" who own a home/land in their world. Any outsider, according to the Hittites in this community in the area, is associated with the Incubus, attributable to the devil.

Douglas Barr I know from The Fall Guy, and he doesn’t last past the first fifteen minutes. His wife, played by Maren Jensen, is left pregnant and alone surrounded by a culture that wants her far removed from them. Whatever Barr and Jensen “brought forth”, it seems to have made the Hittite restless.  Barr and Jensen shag, and when he hears a noise from his barn, investigating it, the John Deere tractor seems to all of a sudden turn on and he’s crushed by it when the machine pins him against the wall. Jensen discovers him much to her horror, and the rest of the film follows how she will have to deal with the pressures of the Hittites.

What I did find interesting was how Barr doesn’t make it past those first fifteen minutes. He seems like more than a capable enough actor to advance the character a little bit longer, but I guess he services the film merely as a plot device than a truly developed person we grow to know and like. It is a testament to Barr’s likability that he leaves the film with me (at least, how about you?) feeling a bit saddened he was so quickly disposed of. This is more, I felt, about Jensen’s interaction and difficulty with those around her, getting rid of that man who could serve as a strength, a rock, and a support system she could lean on. Instead, he’s been rid of, and she must endure the obstacles of her environment on her own.

While I realize there wouldn’t be a movie if this was the case, I was baffled at the logic of Jensen not returning to LA after the death of her husband. Really, nothing is left for her in the area besides bad memories and the Hittite community’s constant shunning of her as the “incubus”. She’s considered the enemy because her “devilish ways” seduced a member of the Hittite community into falling in love with her and going against his religious practices to marry an outsider of their faith. She has two friends (including Sharon Stone, who is absolutely gorgeous) from LA showing up at Jensen’s home as emotional support. Agreeing to stay a week, the two friends give Jensen people she can rely on when others outside her home would hope she’d just leave. I guess one way to look at the evil’s appearance is that Jensen’s emergence as the wife of Barr (once linked to the Hittites, having went off to college and embraced modern age reliance and technology (and a relationship not within his kind)) provoked/antagonized it (whatever that is) to re-awaken.

You see, the problem I have with this film is that every reason imaginable cries aloud that Jensen should get the hell out of there. She’s not welcome, an evil presence seems to be in her midst, and murder becomes a bedfellow. Being told you are an incubus, seeing your friends reduced to fear and trembling, and other emerging developments (a man-hating neighbor who also detests the Hittites and her androgynous daughter (a painter with a fixation for Jensen), are also characters that soon give Jensen problems), you’d think Jensen would get the point. Ultimately, her husband’s spirit (returning in the form of his decaying corpse shortly after death) telling Jensen to beware of the incubus can’t even urge the girl to leave the fucking house and get back to LA, it’s hard for me to sympathize with her most-unusual final fate; this is that long-discussed twist ending, regarding a manifesting demon from perdition that bursts from the floorboards as a hole opens in the floor of the Our Blessing home, to snatch Jensen away to its domain. I think most of us would take a hint that this place is just all kinds of bad and should be left behind her, but Jensen just can’t get a fucking clue.

There are some great faces in the film. While the plot kind of delivers a multitude of absurdities (the incubus and the aforementioned inability of Jensen to get the point that her presence in the area will always welcome complications) and theatrical characters (Borgnine as the vocal leader of the Hittites, Lori Nettleton as the outsider mother trying to protect her conflicted daughter from heartbreak, Michael Berryman as the peeping Hittite with a lust for Jensen and always bothersome towards Hartman (Lori’s troubled daughter), Hartman as the character raised to be one way while her nature prefers another, and Stone with a face and body deserved of constant ogling), there are some fun actors in the film. Jensen, much to my surprise, hasn’t worked since 1981 in film, although she had (and I figure still has) striking beauty. Maren was saddled with an idiot in the film, but nonetheless I had no problems remaining on her side (that was until the very end when credibility in her character’s intelligence took a major hit) maybe contributable to the actress’ ability to appeal to my sensibilities.

I was kind of smiling to myself as Craven’s camera can’t resist shooting his lovely leads as much as possible. Sure, that marvelous expressive face of Borgnine begs for as many close-ups as possible, but I can speak for myself in saying that shooting Sharon Stone up close would be hard not to waste plenty of film. I would sometimes get lost in her seductive beauty. After her character suffers a harrowing experience in the damned accursed barn (when all its doors and windows close on their own, it seems, and she must face cob webs, spiders, hay, and shadows in order to look for an exit, with someone in the dark scaring her, and later Berryman’s body, hung from a rope, dropping down before her), Jensen delicately pets Stone’s face, and tears settle slightly under her eyes (mascara just slightly out of place), I was lost in her beauty. Transfixed. I couldn’t be able to withhold my camera from enrapturing her as much as possible. It would be impulsive—no, compulsive—on my part to take this moment with a camera in my possession and treat my audience to ravage her with our eyes (and libido).

Lisa Hartman (prior to Knot’s Landing) is given the dumb-as-a-stick painter part that isn’t necessarily flattering as she speaks hick and seems trapped in a state of aloofness. Lori Nettleton is a hoot as her overbearingly protective mother with an obvious undercurrent of unsettled rage just needing the slightest trigger to motivate her to pick up a shotgun and kill somebody. Early in the film, it isn’t so obvious because Douglas Barr seems to be a trusting friend she has no real qualms with, although Borgnine’s antagonist spurns her anger. And when she’s asked to be a mid-wife for him and Jensen, Lori seems particularly elated to be considered for the role. But when Lisa starts forging her way into Jensen’s life and seemingly unhealthily becoming obsessive with her, Lori’s barely-contained-under-the-surface anxieties uncoil and violence could very well soon result.

Regarding the discovery of Berryman’s dead body, again it is a call to arms that Jensen should leave the area. The sheriff tells her it would be best (he’d even help her move) for her to get out of town, but she just can’t do it. The film would end—I’m fully aware of this—but it is hard for me to just let this illogic slide and not focus on it. How many times should things happen to a person before she realizes that the place is dangerous to her health?