The film was roundly mocked by Texas audiences, despite its boasts of being an El Paso original. We defy you to guess the ending…AND ASK YOU NOT TO DIVULGE IT!” Though Manos: The Hands of Fate didn’t play very many theaters, the poster nonetheless proclaimed, “NO ONE SEATED THE LAST 10 MINUTES. This was the twist ending I have spoiled it for you. Michael and his family, meanwhile, are brainwashed by the cult even poor Debbie becomes one of the Master’s wives, while Michael takes Torgo’s place, speaking in the same stiff monotone to anyone willing to check into the hotel. He and his giant knees run off into the night. Finally, Torgo is forced to partake in a ritual which leaves him with a flaming stump for a hand. Subdued by this spell, Torgo is taken to the altar and tied to it, where he’s tortured, I guess: the Master’s wives lean over him and make massaging gestures with their hands. When Torgo confronts the Master over possession of Margaret, he’s punished by having the Manos-staff (a staff with a hand at the end) waved in front of his face multiple times. Some infighting over who really deserves the Master leads to the famed female wrestling scene, all set to that improvisational jazz score, and some tuneless piano playing which sounds like a hammer slamming into your skull. ![]() Shortly, however, the Master awakens, and after a prayer to the idol he worships (“Manos will be done!”) he shouts, “Arise, my wives, and hear the words of Manos!” Hal Warren immediately cuts to a shot of the wives all gathered in a circle, as though conducting a Tupperware party, gossiping loudly, while the Master sits on his altar, looking bored and miserable. Margaret (Diane Mahree) and Michael (Hal Warren) shrink from Torgo. She, too, is eternally trapped in the hellish quagmire that is Manos: The Hands of Fate. She looks horrified, and strikes a pose, but is, for some reason, unable to escape the frame. He also begins groping Margaret’s hair the instant Michael is out of the room. He speaks incessantly of the “Master,” who’s dead, or away, or always watching – or all of these things. It was shot on 16mm, and, as Joel observes in MST3K, “Every frame looks like someone’s last known photograph.” Warren plays Michael, a patriarch who, with wife Margaret (Diane Mahree) and daughter Debbie (Jackey Neyman), sets out on a vacation trip but somehow ends up in a cul-de-sac and a single-story, dire-looking hotel laden with strange artifacts, run by limping, Panama-hat wearing, nervous-tic-aggrieved, giant-kneed manservant Torgo (John Reynolds). Warren made Manos to win a bet with Stirling Silliphant (writer of In the Heat of the Night) although I doubt that the bet was “Make the worst film ever made.” If it were, I hope Silliphant paid up. The writer, director, producer, and star was Hal Warren of El Paso, Texas, and it’s often cited that he was a fertilizer salesman, because the irony should be obvious. It’s just so punishing, so thoroughly incompetent, so greatly misguided…so intent on your absolute destruction. But then you’re in the middle of Manos: The Hands of Fate – lost, adrift – and damn if this doesn’t feel like the worst. ![]() Narrow the standards to anything that’s seen a theatrical release, and you could still fill warehouses with unwatchable films, far worse than Gigli or Catwoman. I’ve never much liked awarded titles such as “the worst movie ever made.” I’ve made the worst movie ever made, when I was in high school, with a camera rented out from the A/V department or maybe you did. After a while, you want to crawl up the wall – anything to escape its deadly pull. At first, the film is unintentionally hysterical. It might be the light-jazz soundtrack, or the out-of-focus visuals, or the shaking camera, but there’s a too-many-Quaaludes sensation to the film that’s hard to shake. Even with the witty riffs of Joel Hodgson and the ‘Bots, you get a queasy feeling watching Manos. ![]() My strongest memory of that first viewing was of women in diaphanous gowns and giant white underwear wrestling to get the attention of their pasty-faced cult leader, The Master (Tom Neyman). Like almost everyone else, I first saw Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) on Comedy Central’s Mystery Science Theater 3000, probably on one of its reruns.
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