Manos: The Hands of Fate

If it wasn't for MST3K, I wouldn't have seen Manos: The Hands of Fate. I knew I had to see it to see if it really was that bad. The negative criticisms and those slamming it as the worst movie ever do not lie, Manos: The Hands of Fate is as bad as all that. There is such thing as a terrible movie that has novelty comic value, but there is also such thing as a movie that is too inept to take that into consideration. Some will disagree, but I consider Manos: The Hands of Fate as a good example of the latter. To call the way the movie is made amateurish is being too kind, the camera work and editing are all over the place and makes anything that happens incomprehensible. The visual effects are dated and make everything even more artificial than it already is, while the bizarre and often out of sync sound effects and a score that is shrill and monotonous are enough to make your ears bleed. And even when your poor ears are suffering enough, they are assaulted even more by dialogue that is stilted, insultingly cheesy and too talky and some of the worst and annoying acting ever in film history. The villain is quite possibly the most laughable and underwhelming villain ever and you'd be hard pressed to find one that is worse-acted than here. Torga is the best thing about Manos: The Hands of Fate, but that's saying nothing as he's still irritating. The direction is so flat that you have to look hard to find evidence of any direction at all, while the story is incredibly thin and is so plodding that you're dying of boredom. In conclusion, hopelessly inept. 0/10 Bethany Cox

I should note here that I sort of like bad movies. If it's amusing and campy, I'll cut it a break.

But Manos is different.

My god. What can I say about a movie so bad that it makes Plan 9 From Outer Space look like Casablanca? What can I say about a movie that has endless looped scenes of driving, the worst evil henchman in movie history, the lamest dialouge this side of my first grade hebrew school play, a movie that seems to have put together by people with utter contempt for the audience's intelligence? All I can say is this: it seems The Master's prayers to Satan have been answered. This movie is pure hell.

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Upon starting this DVD entitled "Manos:The Hands of Fate" I was immediately impressed by the sincere tackiness during the intro sequence. The inappropriate music, voice overdub and the poor color quality and graininess of the film do create an atmosphere.

Perhaps the most striking first impression is the illogical use of a grown woman's voice to overdub the little girl's voice. It cuts to the heart of the production values and most importantly post production technique. The use of the adult's voice for the little girl immediately tells us that the film will be asking a lot from the audience-perhaps too much. It is beyond reason that a editor would use this technique unless as an absolute last resort. The use of this voice for dubbing the little girl's lines is way beyond our expectations of even very problematic editing. It immediately tells us there are real problems with this film. It also tells us that we are going to see and hear something which we will not see very often on video.

For this reason we must continue to watch the movie. We must see how intense this technique will become. We must see what the next mistake is and how it will happen and what the film will ask us to accept next.

This is one of the keys to watching "Manos". We want to see the mistakes, the poor editing, amateur acting errors (the actors overall were good in this film-they only made the mistakes of beginning actors) the inappropriate music and improperly timed sound edits, the incredibly long pauses and illogical cut aways.

The use of a silent camera may have actually influenced the actors and directing on this movie. They may have began acting as if they were in a silent movie ( making gestures, over expression of the face was often used to communicate in silent films).

The actor John Reynolds gives a most inventive, quirky and yet sincere interpretation of the Igor type character. He is actually very good in several scenes-both comic and serious. The scene where he is deciding whether to allow the family into the "Master's" house is very intensely acted. The First Bride also gives a good performance. She is relaxed, comfortable and yet concentrated.

The filmmaker/lead actor Hal Warren gives the impression he's in a hurry to get film finished. The film ends with his image greeting the next group of visitors.

There is no question that Warren was out to get the job done-the movie made. He accomplished this but in the post production it seems stopped "putting a film together" and truly just did a rough assembly of scenes and sound track.

Unlike Herk Harvey (Carnival of Souls)who had tremendous experience in film-making, and Ed Wood Jr.(Plan 9 From Outer Space) who evidently had professionals working on his productions and post productions- Hal Warren had no funding for post nor experience.

He seems to have relied on rough, haphazard and truly mistaken editing and thus cinematic storytelling. For this reason we must watch. Because after awhile of watching this movie we begin see what is happening occasionally is that our perspectives and paradigms of what is expected in film are not only being broken and disregarded; they are being smashed apart. This is a common goal of the experimental film.

Although this is most assuredly not what Warren intended, he accidentally did create a film to watched and appreciated for its often illogical sights and sounds.

The leading man is a Frank Zappa lookalike with only a fraction of the talent Zappa (being dead) has.

However, the real star of the film, Torgo (a goat-man), performed in some of the best walking-from-one-end-of-the-set-to-another scenes I have seen since 1950s Corman films.

Finally, the fights (or are they orgies?) between Manos' wives, which we are asked to believe to be deadly, are utterly hilarious.

The MST3K version of this incredibly dreadful bit of late 60s trashola is one of Joel and the Bots' best, but even their antics fail to make this movie wholly tolerable.

Rated: For Insomniacs Only.

Equaled in clarity of vision and flawless execution only by the greater works of Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, brilliant independent film auteur Hal Warren's ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate' transcends its genre to do everything that it should and even more. Not only is it riveting edge of your seat entertainment, it also boasts a psychological depth unequaled by any other horror movie, achieved mostly through John Reynold's Oscar-worthy, divinely subtle performance as the tormented, tragically misshapen caretaker Torgo. Part Quasimodo, part Hamlet, this gentle soul's noble end, in which he is massaged to death by a group of terrifying succubae in luscious robes, is unarguable one of the most poignant in motion picture history – it is both a tragedy and a triumph of the human spirit. Oh, was I alone with a tear in the eye at the end!

Indeed, Hal Warren's masterpiece achieves the perfect balance between the heartrendingly sad, the refreshingly sardonic, and the chillingly satanic. The Master and his hellbeast are as much evil personified as Margaret is the embodiment of goodness and chastity. In a way, this is the definitive modern-day equivalent of Goethe's Faust, though even more sublime in the simple poetry of its dialogue. When Torgo describes his master as being `not dead the way you know it' and `with us always' he is speaking for all of us, how we truly live on through the memory of our words and deeds in the minds of those who follow us, be they righteous or malevolent.

Hal Warran not only changed the face of the Texan film industry by encapsulating such a grand story in less than 75 minutes, it also helped usher in a whole new perspective of looking at film, discovering different forms which never would have been conceived. Also, it's obviously a very personal film for Warren, who allows us to share his love and devotion to the project, and it is a truly moving, cathartic experience.

It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, and maybe – just maybe – you'll learn a little bit about yourself.