HORROR BUSINESS Episode 81: DEADLY BLESSING & THE SLAYER

Greetings and welcome back to Horror Business. We have one awesome episode in store for you guys. In this episode we’re talking about 1981’s Deadly Blessing and 1982’s The Slayer First and foremost, we want to give a shoutout to our sponsors over at Lehigh Valley Apparel Creations, the premiere screen-printing company of the Lehigh Valley. Chris Reject and his merry band of miscreants are ready to work with you to bring to life your vision of a t-shirt for your business, band, project, or whatever else it is you need represented by a shirt, sweater, pin, or coozy. Head on over to www.xlvacx.com to check them out. Also, thank you to our Patreon subscribers. Your support means the world to us and we are eternally grateful for that support. Thanks! We start by briefly discussing what we’ve done lately involving horror. We talk about Wes Craven’s career for a bit.  Liam talks about watching the documentary Scream, Queen! and Justin talks about the Netflix series Bataal and Ghoul. Up first is Deadly Blessing. We give a brief summary of the film, which sticks with being a slasher film up until the very end. We discuss the lack of tension and “fear of stalking” in the film. We talk about how the film is largely not exciting until the very end when it kind of switches genres to exploitation shootout, as well as the inexplicable and almost nonsensical reveal about the gender of one of the characters. We talk about how the film is a reflection of Craven’s fear of religion and his upbringing and how they might actually be right when it comes to morality. We discuss how the film touches upon the secular fear that maybe religion is right, a theme similar to folk/pastoral horror themes. We talk about the lack of creative kills and creepiness. Up next is The Slayer. We give a brief summary of the film, and how the film doesn’t really push the sparseness that it hints at. We talk about how the unfocused the film is, and how it kind of spreads it bets by trying to incorporate elements of different horror subgenre films. We discuss how the film does a lot of work suggesting that the main character is losing her mind but then just devolves into a boring slasher film. The nonsensical ending is touched upon as is the fact that the ending was obviously written as a way out beforehand. We conclude by talking about the how the entire movie is worth it for the skeleton monster at the end, but how the actual ending of it all being a dream is bullshit. Thank you for listening. Thank you to everyone and anyone who donated on Patreon, checked this episode out, or shared a tweet/shared a post on FB/gave us love by recommending us to someone. We love you forever for listening and donating. Any questions, comments, suggestions for movies and guests, or if you yourself want to join us for a movie viewing or even an episode, can be sent to [email protected]. We would love to hear from you! Thanks always to Justin Miller, Jacob Roberts, and Doug Tilley for their technical contributions and fliers, Mike Smaczylo for the shirts and fliers (you can check more of his work out at here), and also thanks to Josh Alvarez for the theme song, Chris, Brad, Alexis, and LVAC for the support and buttons (check them out at www.xlvacx.com and on Twitter), and a HUGE thank you to anyone who retweeted us or shared something on Facebook that we posted. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @thehorrorbiz666, like us on Facebook at facebook.com/thehorrorbiz666, check out our Spotify account at Cinepunx, and remember to rate, review, and subscribe to us on iTunes. In fact, if you write us a review, email us with your mailing address and we’ll send you some free pins and stickers!  Check out www.cinepunx.com for more info on some of our other podcasts, some ultra stylish Cinepunx related merchandise, and how you can donate to our Patreon! Until next time…thanks!