Singer / musician Simone Maglore (Ronee Blakley) arrives back at her childhood home just in time to see her elderly mother die... and she couldn't care less! Simone doesn't shed a single tear, claims she doesn't want any of her mother's belongings, tells the strange housekeeper Miss Smith (Pol Pelletier) she never wants to see her again and also announces that she won't even be attending her own mother's funeral. So why so bitter? Well, as a child, Simone was subjected to so much strange, scary and possibly Satanic activity - including being forced to participate in séances - that she was removed from the home and raised by someone else. Now as an adult, she'd just like to put her past behind her and concentrate on her budding music career.
Soon after leaving her mother's home, strange things begin happening to Simone. She hears her mother's voice calling her name, starts suffering from disorienting dizzy spells and comes down with an excruciating pain in her back. Family physician Dr. Paul Carstairs (Cec Linder) can't find a thing wrong with her, so he refers her to pickle-eating psychiatrist Dr. David Priestly (Keir Dullea). His diagnosis? Psychosomatic pain caused by guilt. Of course, that's not what's *really* wrong with her. Instead, she's been cursed by her mother and Miss Davis and must now give birth to a little demonic minion called a "mannikin;" which will be born out of huge growth that emerges on her back.
If you've ever read the 1975 novel "The Manitou" or seen the 1978 film version from director William Girdler, you'll know just from the plot synopsis that these two stories are strikingly similar. However, "The Mannikin" is actually based on a Robert Bloch story of the same name that was first published way back in 1937 in Weird Tales magazine. For his novel, Masterson added a bunch of Indian mythology to the works to explain the growth but otherwise it's essentially the same basic idea. For this short, many changes were also made from Bloch's source story, including changing the gender of the protagonist (who was an outcast named "Simon Maglore"). While interesting, the brief running time ensures this whole thing is poorly under-developed. Simone's possession and demeanor change happen so abruptly we never have a chance to get immersed in the story. There are a couple of weird special effects eventually, including one of the creature crawling our of Blakley's back and the creature itself attacking Dullea in his car.
Not much is known about this long-forgotten production aside from the fact it debuted on Canadian TV in February 1977 as part of a short-lived series called "Classics Dark and Dangerous." I don't know whether the six shorts that played as part of that show were made specifically for it (some are British in origin) or if they were independent shorts simply shown under that label. It's really hard to tell and to my knowledge nobody has ever come forward to talk about it. Blakley had just been nominated for an Oscar a few years earlier for NASHVILLE (1975), so it's odd seeing her in a low- budget and somewhat schlocky flick like this. I'd say the draw for her was a chance to promote her song "Need a New Sun Rising," which is heard no less than three different times. Blakley even gets to perform most of the song at a piano during a party scene. The same song ended up on the soundtrack for Bob Dylan's four-hour-long flop RENALDO AND CLARA (1978) the following year.
"The Mannikin" later turned up as one of the three stories on the bogus anthology THREE DANGEROUS WOMEN, which was released in 1988 by S&B Marketing and also included the shorts "Mrs. Amworth" by Alvin Rakoff and "The Island" by Robert Fuest. To my knowledge, that's the only place you can see this one.
Soon after leaving her mother's home, strange things begin happening to Simone. She hears her mother's voice calling her name, starts suffering from disorienting dizzy spells and comes down with an excruciating pain in her back. Family physician Dr. Paul Carstairs (Cec Linder) can't find a thing wrong with her, so he refers her to pickle-eating psychiatrist Dr. David Priestly (Keir Dullea). His diagnosis? Psychosomatic pain caused by guilt. Of course, that's not what's *really* wrong with her. Instead, she's been cursed by her mother and Miss Davis and must now give birth to a little demonic minion called a "mannikin;" which will be born out of huge growth that emerges on her back.
If you've ever read the 1975 novel "The Manitou" or seen the 1978 film version from director William Girdler, you'll know just from the plot synopsis that these two stories are strikingly similar. However, "The Mannikin" is actually based on a Robert Bloch story of the same name that was first published way back in 1937 in Weird Tales magazine. For his novel, Masterson added a bunch of Indian mythology to the works to explain the growth but otherwise it's essentially the same basic idea. For this short, many changes were also made from Bloch's source story, including changing the gender of the protagonist (who was an outcast named "Simon Maglore"). While interesting, the brief running time ensures this whole thing is poorly under-developed. Simone's possession and demeanor change happen so abruptly we never have a chance to get immersed in the story. There are a couple of weird special effects eventually, including one of the creature crawling our of Blakley's back and the creature itself attacking Dullea in his car.
Not much is known about this long-forgotten production aside from the fact it debuted on Canadian TV in February 1977 as part of a short-lived series called "Classics Dark and Dangerous." I don't know whether the six shorts that played as part of that show were made specifically for it (some are British in origin) or if they were independent shorts simply shown under that label. It's really hard to tell and to my knowledge nobody has ever come forward to talk about it. Blakley had just been nominated for an Oscar a few years earlier for NASHVILLE (1975), so it's odd seeing her in a low- budget and somewhat schlocky flick like this. I'd say the draw for her was a chance to promote her song "Need a New Sun Rising," which is heard no less than three different times. Blakley even gets to perform most of the song at a piano during a party scene. The same song ended up on the soundtrack for Bob Dylan's four-hour-long flop RENALDO AND CLARA (1978) the following year.
"The Mannikin" later turned up as one of the three stories on the bogus anthology THREE DANGEROUS WOMEN, which was released in 1988 by S&B Marketing and also included the shorts "Mrs. Amworth" by Alvin Rakoff and "The Island" by Robert Fuest. To my knowledge, that's the only place you can see this one.
