908 - THE TOUCH OF SATAN

Genre:  Dated late ’60s/early ’70s Psychological Horror (1970, Color)

Memorable Movie Line: “Zah!”

Synopsis:  In this old and rather dull horror film directed by Tom Laughlin (yep, Billy Jack himself – I know that the credits say Don Henderson but that’s just a pseudonym, just like Alan Smithee is a pseudonym), a guy named Jody is driving to San Fran alone when he, for no reason besides creating what little plot there is, decides to drive down a dirt road to have a picnic lunch next to a pond.  While he’s sitting there with his lunch, an odd-acting girl named Melissa approaches him and they have a really weird conversation that basically consists of one person saying a few words... then a long pause... the other person saying something... another long pause... etc., etc.  –  a “pause” pattern that will soon dominated everything said in this movie (all of the conversations in this movie have so many long pauses in them that the filmmakers must have taken the Meet Joe Black course on how to stretch out a movie to twice its actual length).  Melissa invites Jody to stay at the walnut farm with her and her weird family – an offer that, given the fact Melissa doesn’t look too bad (particularly for her age), Jody immediately accepts.  Back at the house, Jody first meets Melissa’s conversation-impaired, but pause-enhanced, relatives Luther and Molly.  Later he meets Melissa’s leather-bag faced “great-grandma” Lucinda.  Well, soon it appears that Lucinda is a bit on the insane side and apparently gets a big kick out of impaling people with any sharp instrument lying around.  After Lucinda kills a police deputy in front of Jody, Luther locks him in the barn.  (Yeah – HE’S the dangerous one!)   Melissa releases him and then, somehow in a dream, let’s Jody see her past when she and her SISTER Lucinda were dragged out to be burned as witches about 150 years ago.  In the dream, Lucinda is busy roasting away when Melissa – all of a sudden – holds her fist in the air, hears a voice (apparently Satan), and can instantly put out the fire... and then live forever looking young and beautiful (not a bad deal, when you think about it).  The rest of the movie is them dealing with the Lucinda problem and Jody doing a predictable act to keep Melissa young.

Don’s Review:  Dull film that apparently was trying to be like a Rosemary’s Baby type of Psychological Horror movie – but so utterly fails on all counts, that it, instead, only makes for pretty good riffing material.  The first half riffing by M&tBs was some of the best riffing of the Sci-Fi era.  This episode started off so well, that I was going to give it the highest rating of Season Nine – but, about halfway through, the quality of the riffing died down quite a bit.  So, except for a few highlights, the riffing during the second half of this movie was only okay.  Still, this is one of the funnier episodes in quite a while.  And the host segments are also pretty amusing as Beez McKeever does a funny turn as a tyrannical babysitter for Brain Guy and Bobo while Pearl is away.  This one is definitely worth-seeing. 

Don’s Rating: