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Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

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577 comments in total

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175 out of 203 people found the following comment useful :-
AAAAHHHH!!!!!!, 29 March 1999

Author: Mike Sh. (michaelshannon123@comcast.net) from Lowell MA

After seeing this movie I ran through the house screaming at the top of my lungs for several hours pausing occasionally only to bang my head repeatedly on the floor. And that was the MST3K version!! Imagine seeing this movie pure and undiluted! It's too horrible to conceive!

Seriously, this movie is not only the worst movie I've ever seen; it's the worst movie I can imagine being made! How could any be worse! Could Ed Wood make such a movie? Arch Hall Sr.? Ray Dennis Steckler? Phil Tucker? I don't think so. None can approach Hal P. Warren, sometime fertilizer salesman and would-be auteur, for producing total cinematic crap!

Now excuse me, I must go wash up. Just thinking of this movie makes me feel filthy all over...

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157 out of 168 people found the following comment useful :-
Your eyes and ears will BLEED!, 14 October 2004

Author: mr_sboub from Switzerland

Some films are so bad, they're good. Meaning "fun" or "entertaining" or at least "interesting"... But few films can claim to be so dreadful, you actually feel physical pain while viewing them. So bad are these damned few that you don't experience them or watch them: you "endure" them. This is the mother of all such films!

"Manos the hands of fate" is without a doubt the most inept and atrociously awful film ever made. Its poorness is so extreme that of itself it is the film's strongest selling emphasis. The script is non-existent, the acting makes Steven Seagal look like a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and the editing could have less horrendously botched by a blind Eskimo with no arms. It is also painfully slow. this film makes its approximately 70 minute running time and make you feel like you've aged ten years. That's what makes a film truly bad: the fact that despite its overbearing weaknesses it isn't even entertaining!

Many people look back at the sixties and think, with obvious resentment for today's cinematic output, that "they don't make them like this anymore!". Watching "Manos..." would cure any breed of hardcore nostalgia.

In the end I can not advise against this strongly enough. This is for the sadist in you. Any other part of your person can only feel pained or offended by such extreme trash!

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147 out of 160 people found the following comment useful :-
"Mike I'm scared." "Of WHAT?", 8 December 2004
Author: harricklomax

Okay. This is officially the worst movie ever made. Not because it's poorly done, because there are movies, like "Monster A-Go-Go", that are more poorly conceived, acted, directed, filmed, and edited. But "Manos" stands out because it is so incomprehensibly bad. It is SO bad that it is hard to imagine it was done by accident. It often seems like they film is supposed to be bad, and that the director is actually brilliantly creating a horrible film, because this kind of badness doesn't usually come from apathy or a lack of talent and money. This is worse.

The film is also very icky and very dull. Almost nothing happens (certainly not anything interesting) and if you survive the first ten minutes of driving around the countryside you'll just want everyone in the film to die.

However, because this movie is so brilliantly and incredibly bad, I suggest everyone watch it just to know it. Everyone should see "Citizen Kane" because it is the watermark for all good movies. Everyone should see "Manos" for the same reason. It puts all other bad movies to shame. I do suggest though, that it be watched ONLY as the MST3K version, since the team does a good job riffing the film. Even they seem to be too caught up in the film's reeking badness at times that they are just stunned, but they still do a good job. I also doubt you would find a regular version of this movie, since I doubt anyone would be crazy enough to have one.

Interestingly, the guy who plays the mean, stupid, and totally useless husband wrote, directed, and produced the film, and the guy who plays "The Master" did the art direction. They both failed in all their work. No one in this movie has ever done anything else. Thank God.

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140 out of 149 people found the following comment useful :-
Look no further--this is the worst, 20 January 2005
Author: divaclv

Every so often, someone comes onto IMDb (or a similar forum) and declares that such-and-such a film is, and I quote, "THE WORST MOVIE EVER!!!" Usually the culprit is the latest big-budget, little-story extravaganza, or some popular work receiving its expected share of backlash. I always laugh a bit when people do this. Clearly, these innocent souls have never seen an episode of "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Specifically, they have never been exposed to the horror that is "Manos: The Hands of Fate." Sure, plenty of movies are bad, but usually if you look hard enough, you can see some evidence that someone on board had at least a vague idea of how to make a film work. Not "Manos." There is not a single shred of competence to be found anywhere in it. It fails on every conceivable level: direction, acting, script, cinematography, sets, costumes, effects, sound, music. Throw in some of the most irritating and idiotic characters you'll ever see, a lot of disturbing sexual subtext, and the result is this pile of cinematic excrement.

The story...well, I guess it's supposed to be one of those "innocents get lost and stumble upon supernatural evil" deals. Actually, it's more like an "irritating family gets lost and stumbles upon a group of vague cultists and their creepy hired hand Torgo" deal. Anyway, things happen, arguments go in circles, the mom of the family yells for her husband so much you wonder how she ties her shoes in the morning without him, the husband makes so many wrong decisions you wonder if he'd be any help with the shoe-tying thing, and the female cultists get into an extended wrestling match, revealing that under their diaphanous Grecian robes they're wearing modern bras and underwear.

There's much more, of course, but "Manos" is like a train wreck, or a natural disaster: I could describe it to you, but you'd never understand the full level of horror unless you witness it for yourself. So go ahead, watch it, I dare you. At least you can take comfort in the knowledge that, after you've seen it, nothing else you watch will be quite so bad.

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102 out of 121 people found the following comment useful :-
Keep Manos at #1 (of the bottom heap, of course)!!!, 26 October 2004

Author: XIOMANGER from Serbia

Frankly, I am outraged to see so many 10s for this movie, being that no sane person would ever give such a grade to this unrelentinly boring piece of ... (man, it's quite hard not to use profanity with a movie like this). If people were giving Manos 10s just so that some rival could snatch the #1 worst movie title then that is truly sad. Manos is morally the true winner here in that respect.

Not much can be said that has not been said already about this movie. I would know, since reading the IMDb comments, getting a load of laughs from them and feeling a complete sense of empathy with other poor souls who dared to watch this movie, knowing exactly where they are coming from, is just about the only good thing I have gotten out of MTHOF.

Yes, the movie was an eyeopener. I had no idea how bad movies could be before Manos. Ed Wood movies at least provide laughs and something coherent to look at, even though the realization is shoddy to a humorous magnitude. A so-bad-it's-traumatizing movie is an entirely different league from a so-bad-it's-good movie.

In Manos we basically have: driving; boredom; more driving; more boredom; a feeling of being mentally raped within the first 15 minutes (not many movies can do that, you know!); more driving; some rather purposeless necking; (did I mention the driving?); Torgo, our favorite strange person with deformed knees; a family, in whose creation Darwin's laws of natural selection seem to have been completely ignored, gladly deciding to spend the night in "the master's" house; a touching display of affection through holding hands (or is it?); a bored kid; a dead dog, i think; some melodramatic "hand-waving"; a puzzlingly out-of-the-blue all-out wrestling match amongst the ladies, thoroughly making me question my previous enjoyment in watching such activities; how massaging someone to death would look like and last, but quite least, the absolutely tasteless ending, complete with a subsequent cast introduction to give it a "campy" feel. Oh, humanity.

It is a sheer hilarity people bought into the hype and actually came in doves to see the premiere. The movie poster that advertized MTHOF is just precious.

This stinker is the kind of movie you just can't help but love to hate.

Rating 1/10 (so far only 5 movies have ever received this dubious grade in my book)

Scale:

Positive opinion of a movie: 10 MASTERPIECE, 9 Excellent, 8 Good, 7 OK

Neutral opinion of a movie: 6 Adequate, 5 Average, 4 Mediocre

Negative opinion of a movie: 3 Poor, 2 Bad, 1 HORRIBLE

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76 out of 91 people found the following comment useful :-
A $300 refrigerator , and I am still waiting for the sequel, 21 April 2005

Author: mstomaso from Vulcan

Upon release, Manos: The Hands of Fate swept theaters throughout the world, causing mass hysteria, panic, and power outages as theater-owners tried to keep up withe the endless demands for more power to power more projectors and sound equipment. Concerns for the general health of the world's population kept it shelved for several years, but now, finally, the greatest film of all time has been unleashed upon the public. With a score by John Coltrane and Frank Zappa (who also appears as "The Master"), direction by Martin Coppolla (illegitimate son of Mr. Scorses and Francis Ford...), and a script written by Stephen King (at the age of 14), Manos is as legendary as it is brilliant.

Not.

There really is no sense in beating this poor film into the ground any more than it already has been. What I find sort of amusing is that after a third or fourth viewing (yes, I admit it, I'm a masochist), is that it's sort of grown on me a bit. Like a fungus!

Manos is about a small family of yankees who get lost in the southwestern US and end up in a place from which nobody can leave, in an Inn overseen by a twitching human-goat hybrid named Torgo (who steals the show) and owned by the enigmatic "Master" - a worshipper of Manos who collects wives through trapping them at his inn. I guess you can figure the rest of the film out pretty easily. This ends up being a horror film with virtually no horror, an action film with the most poorly shot action sequences I've ever seen, and an artsy jazz vehicle with such poor acoustic sound quality that it would have been much better with just the groovy soundtrack and no dialog.

The biggest problem with Manos is what we call "Production values". To cut to the chase, there are none.

There is too much wrong with this film to list it all out, so instead I will list what's right with it. The acting is not entirely awful - but the sound, editing, pacing and camera work are so bad that the actors all look totally ridiculous at all times. The script is not the worst I've seen, but it is lost in the jerks and irks of the pace (dramamine recommended), and finally, the plot is no worse than some of the recent Hollywood horror catastrophes I have seen, but it to is swept up in the maelstrom of maleficence emanating from the director's chair.

The result would make a great object example for a film production class in "what not to do". Most people will find this film tedious, idiotic, and unwatchable. The average person, I think will turn it off after the first 5 minutes of countryside pans during the opening driving scenes.

Some would argue that my rating of 2 is too high. I won't argue that point but I will explain that I reserve "1" for those truly aggravating films which do more harm then good, serve no purpose, and do nothing to expand the boundaries of contemporary film-makers' and cinema-goers imaginations. Most of these are commercial Hollywood romantic and sex comedies and horror films. Manos, at least, occupies an important place in film-making history, and should really be seen by would-be film-makers and participants. At least it didn't cost much to make, and at least it does no real long lasting harm. Can't say the same for, for example, "American Pie". For these reasons, I reserve the rating "1" for such truly harmful films. The distinction is best made through an analogy. If you buy a refrigerator for $3000, and it breaks down immediately upon the expiration of the warranty, that refrigerator has done you some harm. If you buy one for $300, and it does the same, you should count yourself lucky.

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67 out of 78 people found the following comment useful :-
Amazingly Awful!, 22 June 1999

Author: mst-2 from New Jersey

The leading man is a Frank Zappa lookalike with only a fraction of the talent Zappa (being dead) has.

However, the real star of the film, Torgo (a goat-man), performed in some of the best walking-from-one-end-of-the-set-to-another scenes I have seen since 1950s Corman films.

Finally, the fights (or are they orgies?) between Manos' wives, which we are asked to believe to be deadly, are utterly hilarious.

The MST3K version of this incredibly dreadful bit of late 60s trashola is one of Joel and the Bots' best, but even their antics fail to make this movie wholly tolerable.

Rated: For Insomniacs Only.

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56 out of 79 people found the following comment useful :-
Manos is Manless, 26 October 2005

Author: gaylord_small from United States

The sad story of a philandering master and his spurned male companion...

Tall, dark and handsome Manos is the satanic version of Hugh Hefner complete with the ever-present robe and scantily-clad harem of interchangeable women of low morals... he flaunts his cheap, gullible trophy wives in the face of his lovable sidekick.

He is a cruel and unfit master; abusive! Belittling!

Why does Manos continue to court susceptible ingenues when he has a perfectly good ManSlave at home?

One cannot help but feel sympathy and a freakish attraction to the exotic yet subtle Torgo. The big knees, the stuttering voice, the floppy hat, and the utter eroticism of his manservant status...

When I found out he was actually supposed to be a SATYR (insert squeal of delight here!), I wept at the yummy thought of brushing his furry goat-like legs, polishing his hooves, trimming his beard, even flea-dipping him if necessary...

But instead, our godly goat is led like a lamb to the slaughter :(

Curse you Manos Hnds of Fate for robbing me of this fantasy!

WHY, MANOS? WHY?

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38 out of 52 people found the following comment useful :-
Bad Movie Makes Good MST3K, 4 April 2001

Author: William C. Uchtman (aesgaard41@hotmail.com) from Hendersonville, TN

This movie should serve as warning to anyone who tries to make up a movie as you go along. An overused concept (family gets lost) meets a cliche (wierd guy who talks of a master)and then degrades into one big mess. The couple's little girl vanishes during filming or seems to be and a wierdo shows off his girl collection; they may or not be vampires or zombies, you never know. The story is missing, the flow is ambigous and it moves like words in an alphabet soup. Nonsense and confusion are the result. Thank you, but no thank you, Doctor Forrester.

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32 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :-
More deserving of a Zero rating if they had one available, 15 May 2005

Author: dinobrya from Lubbock, texas

There are not words that can describe how bad that movie was. Luckily we watched the MST 3000 version. I honestly do not know if I could survived it otherwise. That was without question the movie I have ever seen. The plot was horrendously constructed. Without the possible exception of the family, the writer poorly conceived his characters. I think many people gave it a 10 for its vintage quality. For some including myself, bad movies (particularly during the sixties and seventies)have more aesthetic quality than many good movies. Make no bones about it, however, anything more than a 1 is too much and is quite deceiving. Having said that, Please watch it.

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