Review: Manos: The Hands of Fate
A vacationing family (headed by Harold P. Warren) gets
lost somewhere out in El Paso, Texas. They stop at an inn manned by an oddly misshapen
creep named Torgo (an addled John Reynolds) who offers them a room for the
night. Turns out that pervy Torgo serves a sinister fella named The Master (Tom
Neyman, probably the best of a very bunch of actors) who is looking for a new
addition to his harem of zombified women.
Every now and then someone seems to want to dethrone “Plan
9 From Outer Space” as the Worst Movie Ever Made. More often than not, the
results are just tedious and annoying (“Showgirls” and “The Room” spring
to mind), though “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians”, “Terror of Tiny
Town”, and “Troll 2” are at least viable contenders in my opinion.
This 1966 low-budget oddity from writer/producer/director/star Harold P. Warren
has been heralded as a bad movie classic by movie geeks for a couple of decades
now. I first became aware of it on IMDb’s Bottom 100 list years ago. Having
finally viewed it, I think it’s sadly in the tedious bad movie category and not
remotely ‘special’ enough to be a true bad movie classic. The post-production
dubbing is often hilariously inappropriate and the film is weird as hell. For
the most part though, it’s a low entry on my Worst Films of All-Time list and
has very little replay value.
The first thing one notices here is the awful
post-production dubbing, which is appallingly sloppy. You just can’t get past
it, it’s the worst dubbing/looping job you’ll see outside of a re-dubbed
martial arts film or “Godzilla” movie. Sometimes you’ll get voice-over,
sometimes it’ll be the post-production looping, and other times the music will
just play over the dialogue scenes. None of the dialogue we hear was recorded
while filming on location. Not one bit, and it’s blatantly obvious – just look
at the inept dubbing of the little girl by someone who doesn’t sound remotely
like a little girl. Almost as bad, the cheap-arse music score by Russ
Huddleston & Robert Smith Jr is horrible and constantly intrusive.
Apparently actor John Reynolds was on LSD at the time
of shooting and is supposedly playing a half-man half-goat Satyr named Torgo.
All this results in is a gigantic knee-cap, a shitty beard, and presumably
LSD-derived shakes. It’s a bizarre and somewhat fascinating, but dreadful
performance from a man who sadly died by his own hand the same year the film
was released. Honestly, Reynolds’ weird performance and visage, and the truly
awesome cloak actor Tom Neyman wears are the only interest points in a weird,
but fairly eventless film. Barely a damn thing happens throughout, very little
of it remotely interesting. It’s not really about anything at all, and most
scenes run a good goddamn five minutes too long. 75 minutes long and about 65
of those minutes are eventless padding.
I don’t regret seeing this infamous bad movie
‘classic’, but I must say it’s pretty uneventful and the guilty pleasures are
minimal. It sure is weird, though and John Reynolds’ oddly affected performance
might hold your interest for a few minutes. Otherwise, this is the wrong kind
of bad movie, even if it ultimately gets the same rating as say “Plan 9 From
Outer Space” (the right kind of bad movie). Cool cloak, though.
Something tells me the inspiration for the entire film started with that cloak.
NB: Fans of “Troll 2” should listen out for a
particular song being sung here, which also appears in that later film. Surely
not a coincidence.
Rating: F
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