Hump Day Horribleness: ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’

One of the great features over at the Internet Movie Database is the Bottom 100. Based on ratings viewers of the site give to various films, the worst of the worst films get put on this list. Some of them are on and off in a matter of days. Others stick around for the long haul, showing just how much suckage they truly emit.

It’s time to look at these movies and determine where they stand. Do they deserve to be on the Bottom 100 list? Are they not as bad as everyone says? Will they be off the list any time soon?

Here’s the breakdown for this week’s film:

Title: ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’

Release Date: November 5, 1966

Ranking on Bottom 100 (as of 5/19/2009): #7 (based on 18,283 votes)

Why it’s here: One thing you will have to learn, as I learned in looking at potential films to discuss in this column, is that most of the worst movies ever made have been covered by the Mystery Science Theater 3000 people.   Joel Robinson and the gang have an uncanny knack for making any crap-laden piece of cinema almost watchable.   Almost.   There are certain cases, however, that not even MST3K can better.

‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ is one of those instances.

Harold P. Warren was a fertilizer salesman from El Paso, TX who had a dream.   Okay, maybe he didn’t exactly have a dream, but he didn’t think it was a big deal to make movies.   Thus, a bet was put in place.   Warren bet a screenwriting friend that he could self-finance, write and direct a feature film.   $19,000 later, ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ was born, and the film is complete travesty.   It’s the kind of film that seems to meander in a dream-like haze of horrid.   It goes nowhere.   Watching the actors and actresses stumble over their lines of dialogue is horrendous.   Certain aspects of the film, such as the acting by one John Reynolds, is downright cringe-inducing.

The film tells the story of a couple and their small daughter who get lost while driving cross country.   They stumble upon a small shack where a crazy man named Torgo (Reynolds, in all his horrible glory) keeps spouting out dialogue about The Master.   The Master, of course, is the leader of a group of devil-worshippers, and he has certain plans for the couple and their daughter.

‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ is unwatchable, a menagerie of pointless scenes and meaningless characters.   One woman was cast in the film only to have her leg broke early in production.   Her character was rewritten so that, now, she just sits in a car making out with her boyfriend.   It’s a character we go back to a few times, and it provides nothing to the overall film.   Most of Torgo’s screen time is spent with the character walking from one end of the frame to the other.

The Master, played with drastically over-the-top staginess by Tom Neyman, looks like Freddie Mercury in a red and black cape.   Honestly, if there is any saving grave in ‘Manos,’ it is the acting by Neyman who seems to damn the ideologies that less is more.   ‘Manos’ is a rotten ham, and Neyman is the hammiest of all.

Lowest of the low moments: The Master has eight wives who can never seem to agree about anything.   They bicker about whether or not to kill the mother of the couple, and, in the film’s lowest moment, the arguing actually turns into a half-assed cat-fight.   On paper, this would probably have been viewed as one of the film’s better moments, but its execution is atrocious.   GLOW (Glorious Ladies of Wrestling) had better choreographed fighting than this.

Will it ever get off the list: You bet your ass it won’t.   This movie has been around for more than 40 years, and it is still consistently in the bottom 10.   It might actually move up and down the list, but, unless Uwe Boll becomes the next Woody Allen (in terms of his prolific nature, that is), there will never be enough, bad movies to knock ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ off the bottom list.   It is here to stay, and it deserves to stay.