At the time of Deadly Blessing, director Wes Craven had emerged through two acclaimed independent hits, The Last House on the Left (1972) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977), which had taken audiences aback with their uncompromising ferocity. Craven made the cinematically released tv movie Summer of Fear/Stranger in Our House (1978) (which can be seen playing in the background at the local cinema at one point), but this was his first brush with mainstream (as opposed to independent) filmmaking. Still ahead for Craven would be hits like A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and Scream (1996).

It’s a well made but rather variable effort. On the plus side it contains some of Craven’s best directorial work ever. The film is beautifully photographed, shot in faded autumnal off-colourings and the colour tinted a monochrome sepia-tone. Craven sets up a number of quite terrifying set-pieces - like the scene with the petrol-doused car trying to back away from a trail of burning fuel; or where Maren Jensen finds a poisonous snake in her bathtub (although this scene has gone onto to become rather of a classic among goof spotters as Jensen is clearly visible wearing a pair of black panties beneath the soap suds); or the sequence with Sharon Stone (well over a decade before Basic Instinct [1992]) trapped in a barn being slammed by seemingly supernatural forces of incredible power. But there is one dream sequence where Craven’s ongoing preoccupation with oneirism and reality reaches a particularly beautiful and surreal height in a scene wheretwo clawed hands reach out to a dreaming Sharon Stone as an unseen voice whispers, beckoning to open her mouth whereupon a spider drops from a strand of web down between her open lips.

But the film also has a script that leaves it tied in an unruly knot. There are too many suspects and victims - Hittites and unbelievers are butchered indiscriminately alike. The mixing of supernatural and mundane psychological attacks doesn’t quite work with neither being brought to a satisfying conclusion. The Hittites are built as villains of the piece but these only prove to be red herrings, while the dream sequences ultimately amount to nothing at all. The fact that the film had two endings - in international prints the killer is mundanely revealed to be an ordinary individual, while in many American versions of the film a demon figure bursts up from under the floorboard to snatch Jensen down to Hell - is indicative of the rather haphazard nature with which the plot was slung together.

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