Manos: The Hands of Fate

"Manos" The Hands of Fate is a film written, directed, and produced by American fertilizer salesman Hal Warren in 1966, as a result of a bet. He intended to make a successful horror film on a very small budget (reportedly $19,000). The result was a movie considered perhaps the worst ever made. The movie laid in almost complete obscurity until 1992 when it was featured in an episode of the television comedy series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

While many today have seen the Mystery Science Theater version, the film as it was originally presented is also available on DVD through on-line stores such as Amazon.com.

In 2004, a group of Canadian filmmakers made a short documentary named Hotel Torgo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422433/). In this short film they interviewed Bernie Rosemblum, who worked on the crew as well as showing up on the film as the man who spent the entire film making out with his girlfriend in his car.

Contents

1 Plot 2 Trivia and Errors 3 Quotes 4 Memorable MST3K Commentary 5 External links

Plot

The story is about a vacationing couple, Michael and Margaret, their little daughter Debbie, and their dog, Peppy, who find themselves stranded at a lodge that turns out to be the headquarters of a nefarious pagan cult.

They first encounter a bizarre, satyr-like person named Torgo who speaks haltingly and frequently repeats himself. Michael tries to convince Torgo to let them stay the night. Torgo is insistent that "the Master would not approve," but finally relents. Margaret is very concerned about staying, but Michael assures her she's just imagining things. The walls of the lodge are decorated with a couple of disturbing paintings: one of a dark, malevolent looking person Torgo identifies as "The Master," and one of The Master's dog. Torgo tells the couple that the Master was away, but that he was "not dead in the way they understood."

Peppy then runs outside and is quickly killed by some creature - most likely the Master's dog. Michael tells Margaret of Peppy's death, at which point she insists on leaving - even though it's dark outside. Michael orders Torgo to put the luggage back in the car, and he goes out to get the car started. Torgo soon finds himself alone with Margaret, and crudely gropes her, promising that thought she is doomed to become yet another bride of the Master, Torgo would instead keep her for himself. Margaret threatens to tell Michael, but Torgo convinces her not to say anything to her husband. However, the car won't start, and Torgo says that there are no phones because the Master didn't approve of such devices. With the family stranded, Torgo brings the luggage back into the room.

Debbie soon decides to run off and search for her dog. She stumbles upon the Master, his dog, and his wives - all dressed in translucent night gowns - at a place later revealed to be the tomb. Debbie's parents realize that she's missing, and frantically begin searching for her. Debbie returns to the house with the Master's dog. When the parents see the dog, the dog runs off and Debbie runs back to her parents. After telling her to never run away from them again, Michael and Margaret ask where Debbie where she found the dog. Debbie leads them back to the tomb. In horror, the family runs back to the house, and Michael goes off to demand an explanation from Torgo.

Meanwhile, Torgo is seen at some sort of ritual site (the tomb) nearby, where the Master and his undead wives lie in slumber. Torgo begins fondling the wives and berating the sleeping Master, then returns to the house to sleep. The Master soon awakens, and wakes his wives. The wives begin arguing about the family Torgo has allowed to stay. The Master angrily stops the argument, and enraged at Torgo's insolent behavior and for allowing the family to stay decides to sacrifice Torgo to the film's mysterious deity and namesake, Manos. The Master makes his way back to the house to find Torgo.

While the Master is gone, the women continue arguing over the new family. Some of the wives want to kill the child, but others do not want to. They also argue over who has the Master's favor. The argument soon degenerates into a fight, with the women wrestling in the sand for about ten minutes. Some have speculated that this was Hal Warren's personal fantasy.

The Master takes Torgo back to the tomb. He makes a weak effort to escape, as the Master commands his wives to kill Torgo. They surround him and give him what one El Paso reviewer likened to "Torgo being massaged to death." That in itself does not prove lethal. The Master then evokes some mysterious power, severing and horribly burning one of Torgo's hands. Torgo runs off into the darkness, his fate unknown. In the original version of the movie, the Master first beats and then sacrifices his first wife.

Michael, Margaret, and Debbie try to escape, but are unable to do so. After an encounter with stock footage of a rattlesnake they decide to go back to the home and barricade themselves in one of the rooms. With their attempt to escape apparently foiled, Michael, Margaret and Debbie return to the lodge and confront the Master. Michael fires several point-blank shots from his pistol into the Master's face, but the Master is unharmed - the first sign we have seen of the Master possessing actual supernatural power.

The film ends with a coda in which two girls (never before seen in the movie) are driving in a convertible, get lost, and stop at the lodge to ask directions. They are greeted by an entranced Michael, then a number of jump cuts show us the fate of Margaret and Debbie: like the other wives of the Master, they sleep in the tomb, dressed in flowing white robes. The film concludes with Michael saying "I take care of the place while the Master is away," and the words "The End?" on the screen before the end credits, done in the style of outtakes from the film with the production credits superimposed over them, roll.

Trivia and Errors

Due to a lack of both budget and, some might say, competence, Torgo's goat legs were conveyed by dressing actor John Reynolds in overlarge pants and stuffing them full of padding and having Reynolds walk with a strange and slow gait. Fake cloven hooves were also made by Reynolds for his costume, but they are difficult to see on screen, especially on the Mystery Science Theater version.

A number of people found the fact that Debbie was dressed up as one of the Master's wives at the end of the film to be disturbing because of the implications. The crew of Mystery Science Theater 3000 included it in the list of the ten most disturbing things they seen.

Warren forgot to add the film's opening credits in post-production, thus the movie opens with an absurdly long (nine minutes) driving sequence through the west Texas countryside while a tinny jazz soundtrack plays.

All the voices in the movie are dubbed by Warren, his wife, and a couple of friends. As a result, there are many points in the film where the dialog isn't synchronized with the actor's lip movements.

Reportedly, Warren's small crew became so bemused by his amateurishness and irascibility that they derisively called the movie Mangoes, Cans of Fruit behind his back.

The film's premiere at the Capri Theater in Warren's hometown of El Paso, Texas, is a tale unto itself. Heavily promoted, it was attended by numerous local dignitaries and media. Warren rented a limousine to deliver himself and his cast to the theater; the limo would drop off one group, then drive around the block and pick up another. Only minutes into the screening, the audience began laughing and heckling the movie, and soon were in open hysterics. Humiliated, Warren and the rest of his cast made a hasty exit before the film had ended.

Reynolds committed suicide not long after the movie was made - though, despite some people's grim sense of humor, this act was probably not motivated by his affiliation with "Manos". Reynolds, it seems, had emotional issues concerning his parents and had experimented with LSD. According to Jackey Neyman Jones, Reynolds was usually quite stoned during filming.[1] (http://jophan.org/mimosa/m30/brandt.htm) Rumours long claimed that other cast members had also killed themselves shortly after the release of the movie: Diane Mahree, the female lead; Sherry Proctor, one of The Master's wives; and Joyce Molleur, the female half of the "make-out couple". However, the makers of Hotel Torgo, a 2005 documentary about "Manos", researched these rumours and found no obituaries or any other evidence to confirm them. Only one member of the cast went on to work on other films, Mary Robin Redd, who played one of the Master's wives. She appeared in a steady stream of B-movies up until her death in the early 1990s. The rest faded promptly back into obscurity.

Hal Warren returned to selling fertilizer following Manos. He attempted to pitch the idea of making a sequel to Manos, and tried to pitch another script he'd written called Wild Desert Bikers. But with the failure of Manos, no one he approached showed any interest in making these ideas into movies. Warren died in 1986.

Users of the Internet Movie Database have consistently voted the film a position on the site's list of the 100 worst films ever made (http://imdb.com/chart/bottom). It is usually near the very bottom of the list. Sometimes it even appears as #1 in the list.

Quotes

• "I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away!"
• "The master would not approve."
• "You have failed us Torgo. For this you must die."
• (Last line of the movie.) "I am Michael. I take care of the place while the Master is away."

Memorable MST3K Commentary

• Servo: (Watching The Master's wives wrestle in the dirt) "I'm guessing this is the whole reason this movie was made."
• Joel: (Upon seeing Torgo's unusal gait)"Ah...that's not how you wear your Depends, Torgo."
• Crow: "Been hitting the thighmaster, Torgo?"
• Crow: "Joel, this is gonna turn into a snuff film."
• Joel: "Every frame of this movie looks like someone's last known photograph."

External links

• Template:Imdb title
• Hotel Torgo (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0422433/) at the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com) web site.