The Amish community is one of clandestine rituals and Rumspringa alone could be converted into a feasible horror film. On the other hand, Deadly Blessing scrutinizes the borderline cult aspects of the luddite lifestyle as if it were a pagan subculture summoning the arrival of the incubus. With that in mind, I could corroborate the furor the Amish might expectorate on this with precious images of Hittite field tilling and diurnal chores over ominous Gregorian chants.

Without the additives of demonic makeup, Michael Berryman and Ernest Borgnine are already accursed, spectral voices of doom. One moment of surprisingly subtle despair from Berryman is when he peeping on Martha (Maren Jensen) in her negligee and he looks genuinely crestfallen over his sheltered existence. The subtext about proselytizing from the ascetic community to a more “worldly” relationship with a woman is vapidly skimmed with intermittent scenes of Isaiah (Borgnine) scolding his kin not to “covet” tractors and the other luxuries of their infidel neighbors.

In lieu of that incendiary topic, Deadly Blessing is mostly tethered to an overblown slasher film. Sharon Stone’s nightmare about a salacious killer who preys on her spider phobia might be Wes Craven’s epiphany for dream stalker Freddy Krueger. Also bridging the gap between this and A Nightmare on Elm Street is the POV of a snake slithering between Martha’s legs in the tub.

Those who avidly anticipate an underrated installment from the late Craven will be sorely dispirited that Deadly Blessing is a torpid, rustic Sleepaway Camp clone. The car explosion is decently suspenseful though.

Rating: 2.25 out of 5

Horace Pinker (Mitch Pileggi) was meant to be the next evolution in Wes Craven’s horror odyssey. A bald serial killer who worships at the throne of channel-surfing, Pileggi hops right on board the gargantuan overacting inherent in the role. In a sidenote, it’s an amusing nuance that Pileggi had to mimic the limp of a prepubescent girl who was possessed by Pinker later in the film because she filmed her scene before he arrived on set. However, Shocker nosedived at the box office and Craven couldn’t capitalize on another Freddy Krueger. For what it’s worth, Shocker is a rollicking, albeit cynically synthesized horror-comedy.

The boob-tube hypnosis and desensitization to cathode-ray-tube violence would’ve been a viable outlet for satire but Craven presumably abstains from social commentary for once. Craven plunders wholesale from his Nightmare on Elm Street template. The opening is precisely identical to his aforementioned franchise with a repair shop instead of a boiler room. The lines between reality and REM sleep are blurred. Pinker spews sound bytes that could’ve been pun-intended catchphrases (“Take a ride in my Volts-wagen”).

Moreso than his other films, rationalization and logic hold no sway over the far-fetched writing in Shocker. Jonathan Parker (a vanilla Peter Berg) is a foster child who practically lives in an expensive suburban house all by himself like a Nickelodeon sitcom. A necklace imbued with the omnipotent power of “love” is the only object that can defeat the electrified Pinker.

It might seem that I’m deriding this film but actually I wholeheartedly recommend it. The flickering, low-res pixel version of Pinker was quite innovative for the time. The magnum opus is a gonzo sequence where Pinker and Jonathan hopscotch through different programs from a Leave it to Beaver to a John Tesh newscast to a televangelist set.

Obviously, Shocker should be evaluated with a macabre sense of humor. The Dudes of Wrath and Alice Cooper soundtrack guarantees the film is a heavy-metal guilty pleasure for headbangers and any opportunity to hear a tongue-wagging Michael Murphy shriek “eat shit and die you little fucker” is a succulent treat. If nothing else, it is superior to both The First Power and The Horror Show which overlapped the same premise.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Like a neophyte, blunderbuss George Romero, Wes Craven often merged social commentary into his macabre tales. The difference is Romero never forgot to also be suspenseful and not veer to far from the intent of terror. In the frustratingly dawdling horror-comedy People Under The Stairs, he deconstructs the Reagan-Era fantasy of the nuclear family with Everett McGill and Wendy Robie as facsimiles of Ronald and Nancy (especially disciplinarian McGill’s oil-slick black hair). It’s a bit of a muddled stretch (with night-vision air raid footage from the Persian Gulf) but Craven is more incisive with the racial gentrification and ghettoized motif.

It’s Stygian circumstances that coerce the main character to align himself with Leroy (Ving Rhames). It might seem incendiary to postulate that because the characters are black, they are disregarded by the landlord and verging on eviction, but there is a ring of truth to Craven’s urban portrait in the vein of Spike Lee. It’s a skin-crawling anti-yuppie nightmare with the minorities literally being enslaved by the WASP-y blue-bloods.

One of my pet peeves is overly resourceful, feisty children and Brandon Adams’ jive-talking Poindexter “Fool” Williams is a nuisance with the attitude of a miniaturized Richard Roundtree. For his role, Craven manipulates us with the ill-advised child-in-peril ploy but “Daddy” and “Mommy” are bumbling ignoramuses for the most part so they barely pose a threat since they don’t eliminate him when they have a chance.

Meanwhile, Everett and Robie are the possibly incestuous showstoppers. In his introduction, Everett is gnashing on a mound of meat while spitting out the buckshot shells which is suggestive of trespasser cannibalism. The gimp mask rampage is another gonzo set piece but the repetition with the Rottweiler chases rapidly wear thin our patience.

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre quest is fatuous and once Rhames is ejected from the movie, it devolves into a geek show with another one of my debilitating issues: inbred, freakish cellar-dwellers who are secretly sidekicks to the protagonist (ex. The tongue-less Roach who prowls through the walls’ crawlspace). The music sounds like low-grade Bernard Hermann reinterpreted for a Lifetime movie. Ving enlivens the film’s booby-trapped first half (“Maybe the president will make me Secretary of Pussy”) but his early departure bodes a glossy do-over of The Hills Have Eyes.

Rating: 2.25 out of 5