The Coming

Bert I. Gordon – 1981 – USA 

Also known as Burned at the Stake, this is a very interesting TV movie with a new twist on the oft-used trope concerning a condemned witch in the 17th century putting a curse on the descendants of her accusers, or even the entire town of Salem itself. A young girl in present day Salem seems to be possessed by Ann Putnam, the girl who initiated the original Salem trials with her wild stories created to shirk responsibility for her own misbehavior. The drama is interspersed with flashbacks to old Salem’s heyday of witch-hunting. The film is timely as well, appearing a couple years before the McMartin Preschool case and the height of hysteria about ritual abuse and devil worship in the United States. It’s probably unlikely that writer-director Gordon was mindful of overt social commentary, but it was just after the publication of Michelle Remembers, and early rumblings of “Satanic Panic” were certainly in the air.