Manos: The Hands of Fate

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.

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.

Manos: The Hands of Fate, currently ranked #5 on IMDb's Bottom 100, is a rite of passage for serious fans of trashy horror movies, marking the transition from 'merely bad' to 'completely and utterly inept in every way imaginable. It's a test of fortitude that sees many fall by the wayside; however, those who do manage to go the distance can wear their achievement as a badge of pride, knowing that they have taken the very worst that z-grade horror can throw at them and survived the ordeal (albeit with possible mental scarring).

The one-and-only film from Harold P. Warren, who obviously realised thereafter that film directing wasn't his forté, Manos opens with a family driving through the desert on their way to Valley Lodge for a vacation. Unfortunately, father Michael (Harold P. Warren, proving that acting wasn't his forté either), his wife Margaret (Diane Adelson), and daughter Debbie (Jackey Neyman) soon find themselves lost, eventually pulling up to a strange desert hostel where they are greeted by twitchy manservant Torgo (John Reynolds), who looks like he stores bags of popcorn or cotton wool down his trousers.

Torgo warns that his master (Tom Neyman) won't be happy if they stay the night, but they won't take no for an answer; their stubborn insistence puts them in serious peril, for the master is the head of a Satanic cult and he wants to add Margaret to his collection of brides.

To list everything that is wrong with this film would take longer than it took me to watch it (including the times where I fell asleep and had to rewind), suffice to say that there are fewer examples of poor editing, dreary pacing, atrocious direction, woeful acting, and diabolical dubbing. Quite how Warren and company managed to mess up in all departments is one of the great mysteries of cinema, ranking right up there with the inexplicable popularity of Seth Rogen, but it has ensured the film a notoriety that means it will never be forgotten.

This isn't a movie. This isn't even a home video. It's a home video that aspired to be a movie but crashed somewhere in-between, and plummeted through the abyss to depths unimaginable by the mainstream. Coherence is the film's greatest foe: bizarrity and incompetence its watchwords. This is it, bad movie buffs. This is Manos: Hands of Fate.

Years ago, in the dusty desert outside El Paso, an unknown fertilizer salesman decided to craft a horror film with the assistance of friends throughout the El Paso area, and a legend was born. Armed with $19,000 dollars, a cheap 16mm camera, and absolutely no knowledge of the art of film-making whatsoever, Hal P. Warren set out upon his masterpiece.

There is absolutely no redeeming quality about Manos. There is no directing, the editing appears as if it was done by a blind member of some mud-crawling insect species, the artwork is a stain upon the name of art, the script is a poorly cluttered and illogical joke masking the director's fantasies, the dialog will have you tear out your eardrums with your fingernails, and the acting is so atrocious you will feel as if the movie has violated you. It isn't as bad as Monster-a-Go-Go, but it almost manages to snatch the sorry laurels of worst movie ever made from that Lovecraftian abomination.

Manos must have put good directors like Kubrick or Capra in convulsions during its production: so powerful is the elemental force of badness flowing from every stinking pore of its perverse form. It is the polar opposite to the good movie, the parameters of its illogicity and non-acting existing to defy the borders of taste, and ultimately, sanity. Every grainy, scratchy, blurry frame of the muddy color palette and every sound byte of the poorly synchronized and terribly dubbed dialog offers an entrancing glance into a deeper, darker world of madness that is Manos the Hands of Fate. It is not of this earth. It is not of our dimension. Surely Hal P. Warren was some malfeasant alien god from a realm far removed from our own, hurtling across the icy chasms of space with a vile mission in store for the unsuspecting members of the cinematic world.

Its legacy, however, lives on in the form of Mystery Science Theater. The acid-tipped barbs flew fast and furiously, striking the venerable beast in its countless weak points, crafting from the chaos a comedic gem that approaches cinematic perfection stamped into the world of movies in its own stinking ichor. This is Manos: Hands of Fate. This is the purifying baptism of fire that scourges the detestable vestiges of mediocrity and normalcy from the mainstream viewer and forever makes them a member of the cult world, the world of bad movies and weirdness that cannot be imagined. It is the cornerstone, the figurehead, the mighty totem representing everything that Mystery Science Theater and the legions of bad movie sites across the Web hold dear to their hearts.

Rejoice, connoisseurs of bad movies! Fall upon the dark altar of Manos to pay homage to Torgo and the Master, and forever remember the twisted legacy they wrought from the tangled celluoid! Imitate Torgo's stumbling walk and high-brained drawl, until it fuses with the very core of your being!

I watched Manos last night.

Oh, I was the cocky one, intrigued by all the attention Manos receives, even though it is, after all, 40 years old. Sure, I thought, it'll be a laugh to investigate the claim that this might be the worst film ever made. Why, if its that bad, there must at least be comedy value in its awfulness? And in consolation, it is only an hour long.

No, the warnings are true and serious, this is bloody terrible.

After twenty minutes, I had stopped sniggering at the unimaginable ineptitude. I only realised that twenty minutes had passed when i flicked on the timer on the DVD; I honestly thought it was closer to forty-five.

After forty minutes I was shifting uncomfortably in my chair and I wanted to cry.

After an hour, I was submerged in despairing, pointless anger. I was angry with everyone involved in the film, angry with my cup of tea, my flat, the world, even God Himself (or Herself).

You will lose faith in humanity watching this film.

Imagine any conceivable measure for any possible aspect of film-making, and Manos still gets zero out of whatever. This "film" fails so utterly in every way, you'll wonder if anyone involved in its creation had ever seen or even heard of films or television. No, more than that, you'll wonder if they'd ever even spent a day on this planet. There isn't one single moment that you forget that these people are standing in front of a camera, ineptly executing one of the most awful scripts ever imagined.

I've never been so insulted by any form of "entertainment". I lost count of the number of times I was beaten over the head with a totally obvious point. I lost count of the number of times completely random stuff just *happened* with no genesis or consequence. I certainly didn't lose count of the number of locations used, or the number of musical cues, you could count those on one hand, after a circular saw accident. It baffled me that they never realised that you can't shoot film at night without some form of lighting. And the music itself... oh God.

I don't need to warn you about spoilers, there's plenty to complain about without resorting to inconsequential detail. Like the way that every time it cuts to the family, they're just standing, for no reason, in the same spot, waiting to talk to the camera. Like the absolutely shocking and disgraceful editing. People jump from awake to asleep and back, from one spot to another, from happy to sad, instantaneously. The awful acting... I don't know, its like everyone was given a piece of paper with some emoticons for happy, sad, scared and angry, and told to learn them off. The dialogue... well, technically it *is* dialogue, in the same way that McDonalds is food. Well, some people might enjoy McDonalds. See, I can't think of a parallel awfulness; "Manos" is to "bad" as... you can't finish that sentence.

Good Lord, I could go on, and on, and on, but I won't. This film cannot warrant anything but a 1/10 on IMDb. I haven't seen any of the other bottom 100 as of today, but i'm willing to bet that they are at least a rough approximation to what we call a "film". This is not.

Seriously, you really, really need to be in a masochistic kinda mood to see this out. I had to leave the screen timer on after 45 minutes just so I could keep reminding myself that, second by second, it *would* end. Because Hell itself might just be never-ending Manos.