History Film / TheThingThatCouldntDie

* DawsonCasting: Jessica is clearly meant to be 18 or so but is played by 27 year old Carolyn Kearney. The result: instead of being a spooky young girl, Jessica comes off as being...not all there in the head.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Gideon Drew is based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Doughty_(explorer) Thomas Doughty]], a nobleman sailor executed for witchcraft by Sir Francis Drake. Unlike Drew, Doughty was beheaded in Argentina in 1578, a few months before Drake's voyage to circumnavigate the globe reached California.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Gideon Drew is based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Doughty_(explorer) Thomas Doughty]], a nobleman sailor executed for witchcraft by Sir Francis Drake in 1578. Unlike Drew, Doughty was beheaded in Argentina in 1578, a few months before Drake's voyage to circumnavigate the globe reached California.

* WhereTheHellIsSpringfield: Gordon mentions that Gideon Drew's casket would be a very important find in the history of California; however, the flashback to Gideon's execution was populated by what appeared to be [=16th/17th=] Century British-American colonists, which were presumably in fairly short supply on the West Coast in those days.
** Drew and his executioners are stated to be part of Sir Francis Drake's crew, presumably having stopped for water on the California coast during their voyage. They are not permanent residents of what was at the time a Spanish colony.

Whilst digging a new irrigation line for a well, aided by Jessica's dowsing ability, a fieldhand finds a chest. Due to the {{greed}} of the ObviouslyEvil fieldhand, the chest is opened...and it contains not gold, but [[LosingYourHead the severed head]] of a Very Evil Englishman. It turns out the NotQuiteDead Englishman, Gideon Drew (Robin Hughes), was beheaded for witchcraft during the expedition of Sir Francis Drake--but as part of his punishment, he's still alive. Can the Very Evil Englishman retrieve his body and live fully again? Better yet, can he pull it off for longer than thirty seconds?

* BlackMagic: An early debate on whether Jessica's ability to find things is this. She insists it isn't, since it can only be done of her own free will and she can't do it for payment or any other personal gain.

* ArbitrarySkepticism: Aunt Flavia trusts her psychic niece to dowse for water, but when she starts screaming about evil then apparently she's just being silly.

* BlackMagic: An early debate on whether Jessica's ability to find things is this. She insists it can only be done of her own free will and she can't accept payment.
* CassandraTruth[=/=]YouHaveToBelieveMe: Jessica's increasingly hysterical warnings to leave the chest alone go unheeded.

* NonindicativeName: Once reunited with his body, Gideon dies just fine. Hell, he's even better at dying than your average villain.

* SealedEvilInACan: Two cans, actually. The plot is set off by finding the chest that contains the head of Gideon Drew, and the film climaxes when they open his casket, allowing both halves to re-merge.

* ReasonYouSuckSpeech: After Gideon's head and body are reunited, he "thirst[s] for human blood". He goes around the room, rejecting each person's blood in turn and giving an insulting reason why ("your blood has dried up, and yours has turned to water", etc).

[[caption-width-right:326:[[CoversAlwaysLie If only the movie were as entertaining as the poster.]]]]

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[[caption-width-right:300:[[CoversAlwaysLie If only the movie were as entertaining as the poster.]]]]