If Deadly Blessing proves anything, it’s that Wes Craven could direct the phone book and still make it look creepy… especially if the phone book happens to be played by Maren Jensen. Yes, the Battlestar Galactica beauty is the real reason to watch this supernatural slasher, because while there’s a plot about religious zealots, forbidden love, and an actual demon from hell, the camera spends plenty of time reminding you that Jensen is luminous enough to make Pennsylvania farmland look like a shampoo commercial.
The Set-Up: Amish Lite, With Murder
We open on “Our Blessing,” a farm so isolated you’d expect Stephen King to be lurking in the corn. Martha Schmidt (Maren Jensen) lives here with her husband Jim (Douglas Barr), a former member of the nearby “Hittites”—a super-strict religious sect that’s basically the Amish if they swapped furniture-making for quoting The Omen. The Hittites are led by Isaiah Schmidt (Ernest Borgnine, wearing a beard you could hide farm tools in), who believes Martha is an incubus. Why? Because she had the audacity to marry his son and own a hairdryer.
Before you can say “opening kill,” Jim gets pancaked by his own tractor in a scene that makes you wonder if Craven briefly considered turning this into Maximum Overdrive: The Prequel.
Friends, Fun, and Murder in the Barn
Grieving widow Martha is soon joined by her city friends Lana (Sharon Stone, in her early “just happy to be here” phase) and Vicky (Susan Buckner). They arrive hoping to cheer her up, but instead find themselves tiptoeing around a murder mystery where the culprit is a black-cloaked figure stabbing people like it’s a competitive sport.
The Hittites keep glaring at them like they’re demon groupies, Ernest Borgnine stomps around being pious and vaguely threatening, and Michael Berryman shows up as a local with a face that’s halfway between “kind soul” and “this guy owns at least three scythes.”
The Kills and the Red Herrings
Craven fills the movie with suspicious glances, shadowy barns, and plenty of “Wait, who’s that again?” red herrings. People get stabbed, throttled, and strung up in ways that suggest the killer had time to plan but no time to tidy up. Even the chickens get involved, because apparently Deadly Blessing decided to briefly become Poultrygeist.
There’s a subplot about Vicky dating Martha’s brother-in-law John (Jeff East), which is sweet until it’s not—because romance in a Craven film has roughly the same life expectancy as a camp counselor in a Friday the 13th sequel.
Maren Jensen: The Real Blessing
Look, this movie has Ernest Borgnine delivering fire-and-brimstone speeches like he’s auditioning for The Ten Commandments 2: Amish Boogaloo, and it has Sharon Stone looking like she just wandered in from a Revlon commercial. But make no mistake—Maren Jensen is the centerpiece.
She’s luminous in every scene, managing to be both sympathetic and commanding, even when the script asks her to do things like discover her dead husband’s body stuffed in a chicken coop or run in slow motion through wheat fields while wearing an outfit that belongs in a Sears catalogue.
The Final Act: Everyone Is Nuts
When the big reveal comes, it’s not just one killer—it’s two: Louisa Stohler (Lois Nettleton) and her “daughter” Faith (Lisa Hartman), who is actually a man in disguise and hopelessly in love with Martha. Cue a final chase through the farm, where cult members, killers, and victims all cross paths like a murderous Three’s Company episode.
Just when you think Martha is safe, Wes Craven drops an ending so delightfully absurd you have to respect it: an actual incubus explodes out of the floor like the Kool-Aid Man from Hell and drags her screaming into the abyss. It’s the kind of finale that makes you yell “Wait, what?!” even if you’ve been paying attention.
Wes Craven’s Growing Pains
This was Craven’s first major studio picture, and you can tell—there’s a glossy, polished look to it, even when people are getting stabbed in barns. He stages some genuinely eerie moments (there’s a bathtub scene with Sharon Stone that’s nightmare fuel), but also indulges in enough melodrama that you half expect the Hittites to start accusing each other of infidelity between kill scenes.
Final Thoughts
Deadly Blessing is one part slasher, one part cult thriller, and one part supernatural soap opera. It’s messy, occasionally silly, but undeniably watchable—especially if you’re here for Maren Jensen, whose beauty and screen presence carry the whole enterprise. Whether she’s mourning her husband, facing down Ernest Borgnine’s beard, or battling a demon straight from the pages of Heavy Metal magazine, she’s magnetic.
Is it scary? Sometimes. Is it coherent? Not always. Is it worth watching just to see Maren Jensen command the screen while an incubus claws its way into reality? Absolutely.
