31 Days of Cheese: Day 30 - Manos The Hands of Fate

First a true story:

Some many years ago, back when cable TV showed movies late at night I caught about the last 2/3^rd’s of a film (I think it was on TBS but I can’t remember for sure). It was horrible, bad, ghastly, worse than anything I could imagine. It was such a train wreck I couldn’t look away. I just had to stay to the end (which was about 3 am if memory serves). Then I dragged myself to bed and when I woke up I discovered I had forgotten the name of the film – my brain was trying to defend itself I guess. The name was forgotten but the images stayed in my head.

The years pass. A show called Mystery Science Theater 3000 comes on the air and makes fun of bad films. I am captivated and a little scared as the first six times I see the show, I had already seen the film. I see more shows, and learn that they said worst film they ever did was something called Manos the hands of fate. I had not seen that episode but oh man I had too, like a junkie needs a fix. So when it came out on VHS, I dashed to the store, bought the tape, went home made myself a sandwich, popped the tape in, turned on the set and damn near did a spit take.

Manos, the Hands of Fate, the film MS3K said was the worst one they ever did…it was the same film that I had seen all those years ago.

And it is awful. The brain child of one Hal Warren in 1966 (he wrote, directed and starred in the film. Just so you know who’s to blame), and filmed near Houston over the course of several weekends, it is cosmically awful in all phases of moviedom reaching a near perfect black hole effect of ghastly hideous suck.

The camera was a hand held silent job that you wound up, so no shot was longer than 35 seconds (although some seem a lot longer) and the dialogue (which is bad) was dubbed in later in what sounds like someone’s echo filled basement. The music is either a weird lady lounge singer song or annoying sax solos or piano chords or almost new agey flute music none of which really fit the story.

Briefly, the story is that Mike (Hal) and his wife, child and daughter stumble onto the lair of the master, who serves Manos and wears a robe with big red hands on it (yes – Manos). He is dead but not so dead and there are women, his wives, who stand next poles while he’s dead. They wear flimsy gauzy garments and what looks like 1950’s style underwear. They fight later. For a long time they fight. I think the entire film was made to have women in their underwear wrestling. Before the internet people had to do things like that. The Master also has a dog and a servant Torgo who looks after the place.

Torgo’s a bit different. He’s got big knees and he walks funny. The idea was that he was supposed to be a satyr (man top half, goat legs and feet bottom half ) but the brace didn’t work well and caused the actor a lot of pain and they never got around to doing the money shot were we see the goat feet. The dubbed voice for Torgo is weirdly synched and matches the weird twitchiness of the actor. Sadly John Reynolds who played Torgo killed himself some time later. It had nothing to do with how bad this film was, despite rumors to that effect (the most recent body count was that three actors offed themselves over this film which seems a bit much to me. After all, really it’s just a movie).

Nobody can act for example Hal as Mike comes across as unlikeable, angry and useless – and nobody can set up a shot either. And nobody could keep the moths away from the lights when they were filming at night.

And then there is the big twist ending that made one woman at the premier slap Hal and has left a bad taste in everybody’s mouth since then. But the whole film has such a slimy sleazy undertone you want to take a shower after you’ve seen it.

This is not the bottom of the barrel. This is where stuff has seeped out of the bottom of the barrel and is soaking the ground below the barrel.

Manos by the way is Spanish for Hands so the title means: Hands, the Hands of Fate.

Enjoy with crackers and goat cheese.