The Touch of Satan

1971 "To Love Her Is To Be Cursed!"
2.3| 1h30m| PG| en
Details

A murderous and decrepit old woman resides on a California walnut farm with her family. On a whim, a traveler named Jodie makes a brief side trip to the farm, where he meets and falls in love with Melissa, the proverbial farmer's daughter. Jodie and Melissa grow closer as Melissa begins to reveal the strange, dark history of her family.

Director

Producted By

Stupendous Talking Pictures International

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Reviews

SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie
Chirphymium It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
Billy Ollie Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Anders Twetman Oh, the pauses, there are so many pauses in this movie. Touch of Satan is pretty much just dialog interspersed with a few scenes of action. The problem is, said dialog is exceedingly slow, and the actors keep making pauses, like they are afraid to sound rushed or something. When there is no flow in even the simplest conversation, there is really no flow in the movie. You could actually make this movie as a series of stills, and lose non of the pacing.In most other aspects, I guess this film is sort of OK, just slightly below mediocre. The slow pacing just kills it. Oh, and another thing, the music; there is an abundance of creepy music in the film, probably to heighten the tension, but when played over a scene depicting a guy skipping rocks over a pond on a sunny day, it doesn't really work, it just makes the movie makers seem slightly incompetent.
Gafke A young man named Jody drives across country and decides to stop and have lunch in a small town where, he's been told, a "chromichidal maniac" is on the loose. He meets a young pretty girl named Melissa, falls instantly love and follows her home for dinner. Dinner turns into a weekend and we slowly (very slowly) learn that Melissa is no ordinary seventeen year old girl. She's a 120 year old witch who sold her soul to Satan, and the incredibly wrinkled woman she claims is her great grandmother is actually her little sister...and a "chromichidal maniac" to boot. Seems Melissa sold her soul to save the weird old chick from being burned at the stake by an angry mob 120 years earlier. Now, it seems, nothing can save Melissa from the curse...except perhaps for Jody's love. Will he sell his own soul to save her? Who cares?This 70s effort is filled with bad acting, a terrible script and a story that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The flashbacks to the 1850s still manage to look like the 1970s and the angry mob is more of a slightly irritated gathering. Everyone looks stoned and delivers their lines in half hearted monotones, eyes glazed and faces expressionless. And Jody has got to be the stupidest kid yet to appear on screen. He hangs around even though he's clearly not wanted and continues to hang around even after things begin to get menacing. Not even the sight of Gramma-Sister eviscerating a cop with a scythe can scare him away for long. No, he's too much in love with Melissa, a drab farmgirl with minimal beauty whose claims of Witchy-ness cannot penetrate Jody's thick skull and sound any sort of alarm bells. And who the hell are those people that Melissa is living with? They're not her parents, but they're in on the Dreadful Truth, so what gives? This is just one of the many glaring plot holes that litter this lackluster film. Not even the horrific murders and the fiery finale could keep me from nodding off. This movie just kind of plods along like a cinematic sedative until it finally peters out and ends with no fanfare whatsoever. Guaranteed to cure insomnia.
Apollyon_Crash Currently over 58% of this films votes are "1", probably because it appeared on Mystery Science Theater 3000. While it was great material for the show, this movie isn't completely without merit. The core idea of the movie was interesting (although amateurishly handled), and Micheal Berry gives a decent performance as the protagonist (or maybe the worse actors in the film just made him seem better). Some of the scoring and directing here is effective, as well.Overall, this film is a 4/10. But if you see it, see it on MST3K. Not only did it make for one of the best episodes (proof that the worst movies don't make the best episodes), but it makes some of the duller parts of the film seem lively.
Diana (spoilers)Did anyone else actually enjoy the mad killer Grandma? At least she wasn't boring, and she didn't perpetually pause like the rest of the cast. Jody's a dull wuss, Melissa's a floppy vacuous Rhoda like girl, and her 'parents' aren't much either. Lucinda's actually alot of fun-from drifting into Jody's room to scare the crap out of him, to stabbing the womany cop to death with a hay hook. And heck, she even almost managed to kill the annoying Jody, so kudos to the crazed old witch for at least providing some entertainment value in this otherwise extremely slow film. And senseless, let's not forget senseless. There are so many things in this film that simply don't make any sense at all. Just who ARE the 'Stricklands'? Are they related in any way, or did Melissa simply force them to live on her ranch and pretend to be her parents? Why did Satan bother to possess Melissa at all, if he/she never intended to return? Don't you think the Devil would have found something for his servant to do in the last one hundred and twenty years besides try to corral her mad sister? Why don't the townspeople realize that Melissa never ages? How does Jody sleeping with Melissa(maybe to prove his 'love' for her was real?) help her escape from her devilish deal? And what kind of moron does it take to sell himself to the Devil just to get seconds? So they're both in the service of the Devil, and the whole beginning of the plot is negated. Melissa doesn't escape her eternal torment, Satan now has puss boy's soul as well, and nothing has been accomplished. Way to go, idiot. Besides these annoying little niggles, there's also the crappy soundtrack, the lighting that makes it appear as though the sun is going nova in every shot, and the apparent sleepiness of all of the cast members except for the dynamic but crazed Lucinda. The Touch if Satan apparently is supposed to make one fall asleep.