I watched this for Final Girl’s film club. I had actually never heard of this movie
before, despite it being an early Wes Craven movie. This movie came out 4 years after The Hills Have Eyes and 3 years before A Nightmare on Elm Street. By looking at the cover, I didn’t know what
to expect. Something sexy with Sharon
Stone, probably.
I was even wrong on that front.
The basic story is simple.
Martha and Jim live on a farm (titled “Our Blessing”) next to an
extremely conservative religious group called the Hittites. It is said that these Hittites “make the
Amish look like swingers.” (I have been
around quite a few Amish in my day, and I don’t believe that statement to be
true. Moving on…)
One night, Jim hears a noise in his barn. He goes out to check it out, and is promptly
run over by his tractor. His death is
chalked up to an accident. Apparently
tractors often start themselves up and run people over? Like Christine,
but much slower.
The leader of the Hittites (a man named Isaiah, played with crazed
fanaticism by Ernest Borgnine) tries to buy the farm off of Martha. She says no, and he calls her “the incubus”
(which he does a lot of in this movie).
He’s very angry and pretty threatening.
It’s clear that we are to believe that he is the killer.
Martha’s city friends (Lana and Vicky) come out to visit/console
Martha. Vicky falls for one of the
Hittites (John, who is one of Isaiah’s sons), but it appears to be a lost
cause, as he is already engaged to his cousin.
Ah…young love.
El Amor Prohibido
Lana doesn’t have anywhere near as much fun. She gets trapped in the barn with the killer,
has the corpse of Jim fall on her, and has recurring nightmares of having
spiders crawl into her mouth (thus the cover, now decidedly unsexy).
Weird stuff happens around the house, and it is clear that someone (or
something) is trying to kill them. Or,
rather, trying to kill Martha.
It has the feel of a slasher movie: a shadowy figure hiding in dark
places, stalking pretty girls. A pretty
standard stalk-and-kill movie, but with a slightly different feel. For the majority of the movie, it was not
clear if the killer was an actual person or a supernatural being. That adds a bit more mystery to the events of
the movie.
Overall, I didn’t love this. It
wasn’t overly long (100 minutes), but it was really slow in parts, which made
it feel much longer than its actual running time. The story really seemed to drag at
times. I know there were multiple times
where it didn’t feel like anything was happening. I was bored quite often while watching this.
Still, it wasn’t all bad. There
were a number of entertaining parts: some intentional, some not. I laughed pretty much every time Isaiah
called someone “the incubus”. I laughed
at the ridiculously skimpy outfits that Vicky wore around the extremely
conservative Hittites (because when your friend’s husband was quite possibly
murdered by an extreme religious group, the smart thing to do is provoke them). And I laughed at the final jump scare, which
seemed out of place but also kind of fitting.
There was one scene that I found really interesting. Martha is in the bathtub, and the killer
releases a snake into the bathroom. It
finds its way into the tub, and, while Martha has her eyes closed, raises its
head above the water between her legs.
Craven would use this exact same scene 3 later in A Nightmare on Elm Street.
It is the exact same shot (with Freddy’s claw substituted for the snake,
naturally).
I guess I’m glad I watched this, but I can’t say I really enjoyed it
too much. I didn’t hate it, but I
wouldn’t choose to watch it again, and I would really recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 1.5/5
