History Film / TouchOfSatan

** To be fair, the plague bacteria exists in southern California, and there have been a few isolated outbreaks. Nothing big enough to cause a witch hunt over, however.

* HeyItsThatGuy: Directed by Billy Jack and featuring the main hick from ''GiantSpiderInvasion'' in a supporting role.
** It's never been confirmed that it really was the same Tom Laughlin. This movie isn't under his filmography on [=IMDb=] and he's understandably not owning up to it if it really was him.

* [[FailedASpotCheck Failed A Listen Check]]: In the flashback scene, we hear an AngryMob marching on the house while chanting "Burn the witch!" Melissa actually asks her father "What is it?" ''multiple times'', to which Crow [[DeadpanSnarker responds]] "It's a mob chanting 'Burn the witch!' Have you no comprehension skills at all?!"

The movie begins with the murder of a farmer by an elderly insane woman with terribly burned facial features. After stabbing the farmer and accidentally setting his barn on fire, the woman stumbles home to her family. The family, an older couple and a young teenage woman, argue about the best way to handle the situation and make vague references that the elderly woman may have killed people in the past.

* StarDerailingRole: Emby Malley's career as a film actress began and ended with this film.

* RealAfterAll: A rather stupid example as the whole movie is spent making it out as if the family is just insanely religious and aren't able to realize that Lucinda is just mentally unstable. Then it's abruptly revealed that Melissa and Lucinda really are witches and ''the Devil'' gets involved out of nowhere as Melissa is being burned at the stake.

* NeverMessWithGranny: By Jodie's math (which places Melissa at 127 years old), Lucinda may be the ''oldest woman alive'', or indeed ''to ever live''. And she commits ''two'' murders over the course of the movie.

* EmbarrassingMiddleName: Jodie doesn't care for his middle name, Lee, very much, if the one time he talks about it is any indication. For some reason he's okay with his girly first name, but doesn't like his perfectly normal middle name.

'''''The Touch of Satan''''' is a 1971 horror film. It was directed by Tom Laughlin, and it starred Michael Berry and Emby Mellay in their only roles. The film was shot in 1970 in the Santa Ynez, California area and featured the early work from makeup artist Joe Blasco. The film was relatively obscure until a 1998 appearance ([[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S09E08TouchOfSatan this episode]]) on the series MysteryScienceTheater3000, where the film was mocked for its low budget and bad acting.

''The TouchOfSatan'' is a 1971 horror film. It was directed by Tom Laughlin, and it starred Michael Berry and Emby Mellay in their only roles. The film was shot in 1970 in the Santa Ynez, California area and featured the early work from makeup artist Joe Blasco. The film was relatively obscure until a 1998 appearance ([[Recap/MysteryScienceTheater3000S09E08TouchOfSatan this episode]]) on the series MysteryScienceTheater3000, where the film was mocked for its low budget and bad acting.

!!Tropes used in ''TouchOfSatan'':

* RealAllAlong: A rather stupid example as the whole movie is spent making it out as if the family is just insanely religious and aren't able to realize that Lucinda is just mentally unstable. Then it's abruptly revealed that Melissa and Lucinda really are witches and ''the Devil'' gets involved out of nowhere as Melissa is being burned at the stake.

* ProductPlacement: '''Crow''': Suddenly I feel like having some '''CARNATION ICE CREAM!'''

* ProductPlacement

* CareerKiller: Emby Malley's career as a film actress began and ended with this film.

** Just Melissa. Her "family" is actually her great-grandchildren(?). Lucinda is about 130 years old, and ''actually looks it''

* BurnTheWitch: Yup, [[DidNotDoTheResearch played straight]]. [[CriticalResearchFailure In mid-1800s California]], no less. They also seem to have the ''plague'' in these parts.

* NeverMessWithGranny: By Jodie's math (which places Melissa at 127 years old), Lucinda may be the ''oldest woman alive'', or indeed ''to ever live''. And she commits ''two'' murders over the course of the movie.

* OlderThanTheyLook: Melissa and her family.

* ShoutOut: To HPLovecraft in the IHaveManyNames speech above.

----
[[TheStinger "This is where the fish lives."]]

[[quoteright:314:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/0908_The_Touch_of_Satan_9996.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:314:Softens your hands while you do the dishes]]

''The TouchOfSatan'' is a 1971 horror film. It was directed by Tom Laughlin, and it starred Michael Berry and Emby Mellay in their only roles. The film was shot in 1970 in the Santa Ynez, California area and featured the early work from makeup artist Joe Blasco. The film was relatively obscure until a 1998 appearance on the series MysteryScienceTheater3000, where the film was mocked for its low budget and bad acting. Not to mention its bland, unimaginative, and plot hole-ridden script.
----
!!Synopsis

The scene then switches to the main character, a young man named Jodie who is on an open-ended car trip across America to find himself and discover whether or not he wishes to follow in his father's footsteps as a lawyer. Jodie stops at a small pond to have lunch and meets Melissa, the teenage girl from the previous scene. After [[{{Narm}} she tells him where the fish lives]], convinces him to come visit her family on their walnut farm, despite the intense distress this offer causes her parents. The young couple grows increasingly close, despite the frightening presence of the elderly woman and various clues dropped along the way that Melissa is, in fact, a 127-year-old witch and the birth sister of the elderly insane woman.

When the old woman murders a deputy policeman in front of Jodie, Melissa confesses that she is a cursed witch and is possessed by Satan. Jodie refuses to believe this, so Melissa reveals in a dream-sequence that her sister was burned as a witch by an angry mob of villagers in the 1800s. Melissa was so distressed by the sight of her sister being burned at the stake that she offered her soul to Satan in order to gain the power to save her. Satan agreed and allowed Melissa to save her sister. Melissa was given eternal life and youth as a result of this bargain, but the gift was a curse as she watched her now-insane sister grow old and homicidal. The old woman tries to kill Jodie, but Melissa uses her powers to stop her and her sister dies in a fire that she started. Jodie eventually believes Melissa and has sex with her, effectively "freeing" her from Satan. Unexpectedly, however, she instantly ages to her "actual" age and Jodie must sell his soul to Satan in order to restore Melissa's youth and save her life. The movie ends with the realization that each are bound to Satan and that Melissa's attempt to save herself has only managed to draw Jodie into the evil contract as well.

* AmazingFreakingGrace: A ''perfectly'' appropriate witch-burning song.
-->'''Crow:''' You can't use Amazing Grace in a devil movie!
** And note that it's used ''four times'' in total. "Public domain, we don't have to pay anyone! Hahahaha!"

* DownerEnding:
-->'''Tom:''' So in the end, Satan wins, I guess?
-->'''Mike:''' Yep, pretty much a shut-out for Satan.

* FridgeLogic: Melissa says the Devil cheated her, but technically, ''she's'' the one who broke the contract.
** Also, it's assumed at the beginning that Melissa is the daughter of the middle-aged farm couple, Luther and Molly. However, once it's revealed that Melissa is, in fact, the 127-year-old ''sister'' of the elderly woman, it begs the question, ''who the hell are Luther and Molly?''
*** Quoth Paul Chaplin: "The people who are apparently her parents? It's unclear who they are. It's never really explained. They may just be walnut farmers who happen to own a witch."
*** Could be that they are her children or grandchildren... which only raises another question: If Melissa already has children, why does having sex with ''Jodie'' oldify her?

** The last part gets a nice CallBack in the next episode where they watched ''{{Gorgo}}''.

-->'''Crow:''' And then he died!

-->'''Servo''': Is that right? Maybe I should check my ''dictionotomy''.

* {{Narm}}: "This is where the fish lives."
** ZAH!

-->'''Crow:''' Why do I suddenly feel hungry for '''''Carnation Ice Cream?'''''

-->'''Servo''': Emby Mellay? That's not a name, it's a bad Scrabble hand.
* WhatAnIdiot: "So we're both in the clutches of the Devil because you wanted seconds."
** Melissa sees the solution to people thinking there's a witch in her household as ''becoming a witch'', there's also that.

!!The ''MysteryScienceTheater3000'' presentation has examples of:

* {{Awesome McCoolname}}
-->'''Jody''': Who are you?
-->'''Mike''': My name is Margret Rawhide Chew.
* BrickJoke: Near the beginning, when Jodie first goes to the pond where he meets Melissa, Crow says "Now the credits are going to unspool backwards, right?" Guess what happens in the movie's end credits?
* DumbBlonde: Steffi, [[WeirdnessCensor who somehow fails to notice anything unusual about a talking gorilla and an "omnipotent" alien who carries his own brain around in a bowl.]] [[BabysitterFromHell On the other hand, she's]] ''[[BabysitterFromHell very]]'' [[BabysitterFromHell good at browbeating them into submission.]]
* MistakenIdentity: Crow accidentally sells his soul to a guy named ''Stan''.
* RefugeInAudacity: Making fun of the elderly is taken to the same extent in this episode as mocking Joe Don Baker for being fat is in ''FinalJustice''.
* RememberTheNewGuy: Servo's killer Grandma.
* RunningGag: Jokes about Walnuts, pauses and Jodie's Maverick. And rednecks.
* TemporarySubstitute: Steffi the babysitter.

----

[[TheStinger "This is where the fish lives."]]

* DidNotDoTheResearch: The filmmakers apparently just considered hay something that you have on a farm, not knowing its purpose as food for livestock. So it's anyone's guess what all that hay is doing on a walnut farm. Well, maybe to feed the goats we see in one scene. Wait, what are goats doing on the walnut farm?
** [[CrowningMomentOfFunny These Walnuts are TEARIN' through the hay!]]
** They also seemed to think that witch-burnings were something that happened pretty much everywhere anytime before the twentieth century. Ditto the plague.

* RunningGag: Jokes about Walnuts, pauses and Jodie's Maverick.