Touch of Death
"Dim mak" has become a kind of camp pop culture item which is recognized also outside the genre of martial arts films. In Thomas Pynchon's novel "Vineland", one of the protagonists uses the "Quivering Palm Death Touch", which kills the opponent one year after it is used. In the TV series "Quincy, M.E.", a 1977 episode entitled "Touch of Death" features a martial-arts movie star whose mysterious death is found to be a result of a "dim mak" attack against him ten days earlier. The lead character of the British TV series "Gangsters" (1978) is murdered by hired assassin "The White Devil" using a similar attack, with death occurring four days after he is touched. Dan Brown's novel "Inferno" depicts a character incapacitating a guard by putting pressure on his wrist, explaining the technique as "Dim Mak". In the comedy film "The Men Who Stare at Goats", George Clooney's character claims to have been hit with the Touch of Death, a "light tap" that causes death at an unknown point in the future, in one case "about eighteen years later".