Beware:Manos!

Anyway, here's my super long review of perhaps the worst movie ever made!



MANOS-HANDS OF FATE-This notorious cult film (which gained a new audience when the late lamented MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 used it in an episode) is a virtual handbook on how to make a movie wrong! Budget constrictions are one thing but in MANOS the budget seems nearly non-existent! Everything in this movie is executed badly. The acting, direction, pacing, lighting, photography, editing fail in every frame. Long shots and close-ups of the same scene are repeated one after each other with the same exact dialogue! In one scene you can see the director’s clapboard for a second!



Michael, a middle age dimwit, his wife, their daughter and pet poodle are on vacation. They drive endlessly trying to get to the ‘valley lodge”. The scenic landscape around El Paso, Texas breezes before our eyes while strange ‘60’s ‘mood musik” plays in the background and characters speak to each other in overdubbed voices. The police pull the car over and Michael manages to talk his way out of a parking ticket for a damaged rear light. And then WHAMMO! The car once again drones endlessly onward! Soon we are introduced to a hip teenage couple boozing and making out in a dune buggy who conveniently tell us there’s “nothing” up the road where Michael has just driven. The road becomes a maze. The family drives in circles. The teenage couple is warned to move on by the same cops who harassed Michael earlier.



Eventually, the family happens upon a shack where they (and we too) meet the unforgettable Torgo, a dirty, bearded mumbler in Panama hat and rags who carries a staff with a claw on top of it and has the biggest thighs ever seen! I mean, this guy is packing melons down there! And if that’s not enough he has a dizzying alcoholic like shuffle that’s preceded by a minimal piece of music on a loop that always announces his entrance. He speaks in riddles. The trio can’t stay. They can stay but “The Master” won’t like it. He likes the wife but not the daughter. “The Master” isn’t here but is “always with us”. Despite the pleas of his wife, Michael (a real dullard it would appear) insists everything is cool to stay the night, suggesting they ignore the portrait of The Master that hangs menacingly over the fireplace inside the tumbledown shack (he looks like a bizarre cross between Adolph Hitler & Frank Zappa!).



Their poodle runs away and is devoured by wolves (?). The daughter disappears but is eventually found in the company of The Master’s large black hound. Torgo makes his move on the wife and after her rejection (much to our relief) he goes out behind the shack somewhere and we meet The Master and his wives. For some reason they are asleep (vampires?) and this gives Torgo the opportunity to yell at and fondle one of the wives (one suspects he does more when the camera is not around). Meanwhile, after discovering the creepy crew out back, Michael finally decides it’s time to leave…but wouldn’t ya know it? The car won’t start. He goes out into the desert to find a phone (?) leaving his wife alone. She takes off her dress as Torgo peeps through the window. He also finds time to clout Michael on the head (probably his least vulnerable body part) and tie him to a tree.







Finally The Master (who looks like John Cleese doing a bad Hitler impersonation) awakes! So do the girls. They bicker over Michael’s wife and daughter and say things like “the woman yes, the daughter no” when the question of killing them arises. The Master prays to “the great god” Manos and goes after Torgo to chastise him for his transgressions. “You must die!” he declares. An all out catfight in the dirt erupts between the wives! When one “Mrs. Manos” finds the unconscious Michael tied to the tree she begins to kiss him but ends up slapping him!!



In the meantime, The Master of this disaster commands that his first wife and Torgo must perish. “Well done, my wives”, he says when wife number one is tied to a stake. She taunts him about his power growing weaker but it doesn’t help her cause. A gaggle of the wives roughs up Torgo and he has his hand burned off in a hilarious scene. Exit: Torgo….






Mike and family high tail it to the desert with The Master and his menagerie in hot pursuit. The cops hear some shots from Michael’s gun but decide it’s too dark to investigate and instead pick on the horny teens again. After some running in the dark and listening to his wife’s constant whining that she’s tired and can’t go on, Michael comes to the conclusion that they would all be better off going back to the shack!



There they find The Master and his hellhound. Michael fires his gun point blank to no avail. Fade to black….



But wait! It ain’t over ‘til it’s over! Enter two bee-hived bimbos on their way to a weekend “blast”. Surprise! They follow the same “valley lodge” sign and once again we are treated to scenic glimpses of El Paso while that weird mood music plays! And the horny hot rod couple is still at it! The two “blasters” come upon a strange shack and the audience is shown The Master fast asleep as are his wives and their 2 newest members: Michael’s wife and child!



As for dad, he stands in for Torgo and says: “I’m Michael. I take care of the place while The Master is away”.



An out of place “cocktail bar” type love song plays while the credits and cast are shown…



MANOS is bad but on another level it’s a little disturbing. What exactly is going on here? What’s not said in a movie is something that can be as intriguing as what is said. Not much is said in MANOS once the very thin plot is established and that may be due the director’s incompetence…. but I wonder….



Director/producer/writer/star Hal P. Warren was a fertilizer salesmen from El Paso, Texas who one day caught the film bug. He concocted MANOS and bad movie viewing has never been the same. I once read an interview with someone associated with the production that claimed that after an initial viewing Warren wondered if he should re-dub it as a comedy!



John Reynolds who played Torgo died soon after production was completed of a drug overdose (or suicide depending...). There were also rumors that many of the other cast members were victims of suicide but this can’t really be established. Well, every movie has it’s “folklore”!






Thanks for reading!