By Jerry Roberts
October 30, 2002
Put your hands out in front of you, palms up. Now open your mouth. Now, squint your eyes. This was my expression during "Manos" The Hands of Fate". If you've seen the movie then you know how baffling it is, but if you sit and ponder the missteps that went into the making of this unholy mess then you understand just how this movie jostled my brain.
"Manos" The Hands of Fate is a real curiosity, a cult film that is weird in it's own way but unfortunately it's weird in a way that the audience can't quite comprehend. It's director Hal Warren (working at the time as a manure saleman!) slated this to be his cinematic opus but after it became hailed as one of the worst movies ever made, Warren couldn't get work in Hollywood (or even Salt Lake City). As a matter of fact, according to the Internet Movie Database, no one who acted in this film ever made or starred in another movie before or since.
The movie is shot on baffling film stock looking like the cinematographer was a graduate of the Abraham Zapruder School of Filmmaking. Everything is washed out and discolored and the whole thing is shot with a 16mm camera that could only film for 30 seconds at a time. It is filmed so clumsily that the close-ups often look like shots from a training film for dermetologists.
There is no soundtrack. The sound function on Warren's camera was busted so he just filmed everything and then went back into the studio and provided the dialogue with himself and his wife.
This rip-snorting adventure kicks off with a vacationing family, Mike (director Warren), Margeret (Diane Mahree), their daughter Debbie (Jackey Neyman) and her sad-excuse-for-a-dog Peppy, who are on their way . . . somewhere. Their road adventure is happily displayed with about 90,000 feet of footage of passing fields and farms, then farms and fields, then fields of fields and farms of farms. As Red Skelton put it, "all you can see are miles and miles of miles and miles". All of this recycled stock is accompanied by a lacidaisical song performed by a lounge singer obsessed with high notes.
Anyway, our weary travellers, desperately in need of a good night's rest, decide to turn off the main road where a sign helpfully points out the "Valley Lodge". Why shouldn't they question it? Aren't all respectable lodging establishments pointed out with hand-painted signs? Mike is convinced that the sign must be right so he drives for about 90 miles or so still confident that Valley Lodge is around here somewhere.
Inserted into this hotbed of action
and suspense is a bit of nonsense involving a
kissing couple who occasionally take a breath to sip on some whiskey and
get hassled by The Man. There is a reason actually, because the young
lady was promised the lead but had to give it over to another actress
when she broke her leg. Not wanting to renig on his promise, Warren wrote
the pointless scene just for her. Geez! What some guys won't do for a
pretty face!
Back with the family, they finally do find a settlement, a broken down shack cared for by an odd Jed Clampett-pigmi fellow who calls himself Torgo and says more than once that "I take care of the place while the master is away". With is sweaty hat, scraggly beard, twitchy voice and strange bulging thighs (they are goat legs but we never actually see them), Torgo looks the sort of fellow that would make you turn and run the other way but since every other move that Mike has made makes little to no sense, why shouldn't he agree to stay in this strange man's house?
This is where it gets positively weird: Peppy turns up dead, Margaret freaks out, Debbie disappears and comes back with a doberman pincer, the car won't start and Torgo shows his strange affections for Margaret by twirling her hair. All of this before we get extended scenes of a strange altar with six women in their nightgowns tied to pillars. This is where we finally meet The Master, a Frank Zappa-looking fellow wearing a caftan with huge red hands on it (it makes him really hard to take seriously). He's played by Tom Neyman who also doubled as the film's set designer.
Then there's some business about Torgo's punishment for arguing with The Master, a couple of cops, that kissing couple, cat-fights, bigamy, beatnick music, charred hands, the passing of the Torgo mantle and a surprise ending which I will not reveal but will say is more stupid then surprising.
Upon accepting the Best Picture Oscar for Dances With Wolves in 1991, Kevin Costner said "There is a time in the making of every film when those around the director is sure that he is doing it absolutely wrong". I have a feeling that those around Hal Warren were pleading with him to quit while he was ahead but some guys just have to be artists even while they shift career paths from selling manure to making it.
