The word “professorial” gets thrown around a lot in reference to Wes Craven, the horror specialist responsible for Last House On The Left, The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare On Elm Street, and Scream. It comes up in an interview with the writers of his 1981 curio Deadly Blessing—just released in a perversely souped-up special edition—and it’s clear enough from a commentary track that lays out his thought process with quiet articulateness. While it’s absurd to imagine a horror director as a madman foaming at the mouth, it’s fair to say that Craven has always maintained a complicated relationship between the gory and prurient aspects of genre filmmaking and his deeper rationale for indulging in it. And so it goes with Deadly Blessing, one of the sillier efforts of his career, a hysterical tale of fanatical Amish that tries to double as a portrait of the insularity and fervor of the deeply religious and a leering slasher about three beautiful woman stranded in the sticks in their negligees.
