August 14, 1981 bestows a Deadly Blessing on movie theaters


By now, you’ve likely mainlined enough Coppola and Scorsese to give you the genuine New Yawk jitters, and the Spielbergian southern California that was all the rage. But hold on to your Giorgio Armani suspenders, my friends! Because thirty-some-odd years ago, on this very blessed (or perhaps unblessed) August 14th, 1981, a cinematic tremor shook the very foundations of the drive-in and the multiplex alike. Yes, sir! I’m talkin’ ‘bout Wes Craven’s Deadly Blessing!

Now, Craven, you see, he wasn’t content with just your run-of-the-mill slasher flick, the kind where some pimply-faced psycho with a machete chases nubile teenagers through the woods (though, Lord knows, there was plenty of that going around). No, no, no! Craven, who grew up in a very religious family, decided to inject a little…shall we say…theological unease into the whole bloody business. He took us, the oh-so-sophisticated denizens of the burgeoning Reagan religious-right era, with our preppie sweaters and our burgeoning yuppie angst, and he plunked us right down in the middle of Amish country!

Can you just imagine the cognitive dissonance, my friends? Here you had your big-haired mall rats, hopped up on Pac-Man and the latest Journey album, plunking down their hard-earned allowance (or maybe pilfered it from daddy’s golf bag) to witness…what? Not your typical urban nightmare, oh no. Craven gave ‘em the Hittites! Yes, sir! The Hittites! This stern, God-fearing sect, with their horse-drawn buggies and their beards thicker than a beatnik’s cynicism, suddenly found themselves at the epicenter of some truly Old Testament-style mayhem.

We’re talking whispers in the cornfields, folks! Ominous shadows longer than a preacher’s sermon! And a lurking evil that seemed to spring not just from some masked maniac, but from the very soil itself, steeped in generations of righteous living. It was a clash of cultures sharper than a freshly honed scythe, a juxtaposition so delicious, so utterly now, that you could practically taste the irony in the popcorn butter!

And moviegoers in search of new frights lapped it up! They understood the primal fear of the unknown, the unsettling feeling that maybe, just maybe, there were forces at play in this world that your shiny new Sony Walkman couldn’t drown out. They saw the lovely, oh-so-fragile city slickers venturing into this stark, almost medieval world, and they knew, deep down in their Jordache-clad guts, that something wicked this way comes. And they bought over $8 million-worth of tickets to receive this deadly blessing, a solid haul for the early 1980s and a $2.5 million-budget flick.

So, on this anniversary of Deadly Blessing’s arrival, let us raise a Tab (or perhaps something a little stronger) to Wes Craven for daring to ask the big questions. Not just “Who’s behind the mask?”, but “What happens when ancient beliefs collide with modern terror?” It was a slice of cinematic Americana as unsettling as a Sunday sermon gone sideways, and it all began on this very day, August 14th, nineteen eighty-one! Good heavens!

Location: Pennsylvania, USA

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