HALLOWEEN HORROR CHALLENGE Movie #27 - DEADLY BLESSING (1981)

DEADLY BLESSING (1981)
D. WES CRAVEN
AVCO EMBASSY
1.33 (Netflix)

Surprisingly enough I had never seen this extremely mild Wes Craven shocker. Everyone remembers the infamous cover art of a busty woman with a spider dropping into her mouth. But for reasons I do not know I never bothered with the movie. I suppose I had heard it was too tame or not very good and just passed it over for meatier fare. Now that I have seen it, I can safely say the film IS too tame for it's own good, but there is some god stuff to offer anyway. 

Maren Jensen stars as a young, pregnant woman living in Mennonite country. The late, great Earnest Borgnine stars as the head of the local chapter of the Mennonite's who disprove of her and her husband (who is also Borgnine's fallen away son).  Michael Berryman is the semi retarded guy living with the Mennonites who chases around anyone who he thinks are evil, including the teenage artist who lives in a farm down the way. In fact he is constantly harassing her, calling her an Incubus and the whore of the devil. The husband is found killed, so our heroine calls in two former her girlfriends to stay with her for moral support including a very young Sharon Stone and Susan Buckner. Soon all three women are being tormented by things like snakes in the bathtub and spiders. 

This is certainly not the first film written and directed by Craven that attacks religious structures and family values. Three fourths of the film make the Mennonites out to be the bad guys. Their repression being the true root of the evil they are so terrified of. But the movie takes a turn in the final reel, delivering us information that was previously not revealed which changes everything. This final bit of action, though nothing new all there years later is certainly groundbreaking for 1981. It really makes the movie feel like there are layers there that very well may not be.

Not a groundbreaking film, too slow moving and staid for it's own good, but still worth a look. Especially for fans of the troubled creator. Rumor has it that Sharon Stone was having an affair with the director's wife during production. But that is certainly not verifiable. 

Review © Andrew Copp

Halloween Horror Challenge Oct 10: The Akwekning (2010)

THE AWAKENING (2010)
D. Vince Totenda
Blind Eye Films
DV

Boy if there ever was a bait and switch this is it. Just check the reviews on IMDB and they tell the story. We got suckered too. On Netflix streaming this has FOUR AND A HALF listed and the write up sounds like it COULD potentially be alright. So we added to the cue and watched what turned out to be the biggest piece of shit we have watched so far in the October Halloween Horror challenge this year. The four and a half star rating is clearly bogus, friends of the filmmakers jamming the star rating on Netflix (the film is also on Play Station and other streaming services so watch out for such jamming on those services too). Hey I don't blame them, I have myself have done it with movies I have out there on various places and every indie filmmaker has doesn't the same. Though I doubt any of us have gone to quite that extreme. But it doesn't change the fact that THE AWAKENING is a turkey of epic proportions.

It isn't that the story is super horrible, well it isn't good, but it isn't the worst. A group of annoying hipsters get an invite to a rave out in the middle of nowhere from some bimbo they meet in a bar. They set out to go to this expecting to find the greatest weekend long rave in history but find that a Mexican demon has possessed people and killed off everyone there, and in turn started killing off their annoying shit group of friends. Along the way they pick up an extremely cute archeology student who is studying the legends of the area so we can some insight on what is going on.

What we end up with is an endless confused mess of a movie that can't figure out if it wants to be a slapstick comedy for the first half, a ridiculous idie rock rave movie, or a road horror film. What it ends up being is a mess where nothing meshes, and most of it just comes off as laughable at best. This is the kind of movie where you sit watching it wondering if the people involved have actually seen other horror films or if this is just some sort of weird vanity project. There is a few almost workable moments in the final reel, but everything is completely telegraphed. I will say the movie is rather well edited, it does have that going for it.

Review © Andrew Copp