All about Manos: The Hands of Fate

By Steve D. Stones

Anyone who proclaims Plan 9 From Outer Space or The Creeping Terror to be one the "worst movies of all time" obviously has never seen this film. In fact, it’s a film that is rarely even discussed in many film encyclopedias, including the Medved brothers’ "The Golden Turkey Awards." That may be because the film is just now surfacing as a cult item in recent years due to it being spoofed on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television show in the early 1990s. The show has given Manos a whole new generation of cult fans.

An El Paso fertilizer salesman named Harold Warren directed Manos: The Hands of Fate. Warren also served as producer and screenwriter of the film, and cast himself in the role of the husband and father named Mike. Not surprisingly, Warren never went on to make or act in another full-length feature film. His role in Manos seems a bit out of place because the woman who plays his wife in the film, Diane Mahree, looks old enough to be his daughter.

The film opens with Warren and family sitting in a convertible on the side of the road contemplating where to go. They are on a family vacation and lost somewhere in the Texas countryside. To alleviate the stress of being lost, they begin to sing: "Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream . . ." This reminds me of the times I’ve been to Disneyland with my family and they force me to ride the "It’s a small world" ride. By the time I get off the ride, I want to pull out all my hair from being knocked over the head so many times with the "It’s a small world" song heard in several different languages. A root canal procedure from my dentist would be less painful.

If you haven’t lost interest in the film by now, you may very soon as the opening sequence continues with long and boring panning shots of the family driving in the countryside in all directions. The camera never shows the moving car itself, just shots of the moving countryside. The cinematographer should have been shot for these sequences. After driving all over the place, the family decides to stop at an old worn down shack to ask for directions to the nearest motel. They are greeted by Torgo, played by John Reynolds, who walks funny, carries a charred stick, and looks as if pillows are stuffed in the knees of his pants. Torgo insists, "The Master wouldn’t approve" of the family staying overnight in the shack. He repeats this line over and over again.

We soon discover whom "The Master" is that Torgo keeps referring to as the couple becomes intrigued with a sinister looking painting hanging on the wall near the fireplace. The painting depicts The Master in a black and red robe and an evil looking dog beside him. The family becomes frightened as they hear the sound of howling wolves and barking dogs outside. They soon notice their family poodle is missing. Mike, the father, steps outside to find the poodle, where he finds him lying dead on the ground. Mike picks him up, and the dog is already as rigid as a piece of plywood. Although it may have been unintentional, I found this scene to be very funny. Why an animal would be stiff with rigor mortis so quickly seems very odd to me.

The most effective sequences in the film show The Master and his voluptuous maidens in a Pagan cult ritual. The maidens are said to be the wives of The Master, and they are dressed in see through white gowns that reveal their sexy, curvaceous bodies. Apparently the maidens shop at Victoria’s Secret for their undergarments.

The Master, who looks like singer Freddie Mercury of the British rock group Queen, commands the maidens to sacrifice Debbie, the young child of the family. The maidens cannot agree on this, so they wrestle and fight each other on the desert sand, while slapping and pulling each other’s hair.

When Torgo is placed on the altar of sacrifice to be killed for his disobedience, the camera shows an interesting close up of the maiden’s hands reaching in towards him. The Master forces Torgo’s hand into the ritualistic fire where it severs from his arm as a burning effigy.

Like so many cult films, Manos: The Hands of Fate actually does improve with each viewing, believe it or not. As with other cult films, you may find yourself wanting to take Manos home with you like an ugly lost puppy and nurse it back to health, even if your friends tell you to kick it out into the street and let it die a slow death.

The cult of Manos has been a long time coming, but fans are now beginning to open up to the film and appreciate it for what it is. This sick puppy may take lots of nursing to get it back to health, but if you keep an open mind to it, you may actually find yourself enjoying the film after several viewings, if you first don’t pull out all your hair!!!

An homage to the drive-in theater

This essay originally appeared in the Oct. 31, 2007, Standard-Examiner newspaper.

By Doug Gibson

This month Turner Classic Movies has been offering Halloween-appropriate films that used to chill our parents and even our grandparents. From Ed Wood to William Castle to Roger Corman, "Bride of the Monster," "Homicidal," "The Tingler," "A Bucket of Blood," "Pit and the Pendulum," "The Terror" and other fright films flickered on TV screens this month.

I love those old movies, with Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and even a very young Jack Nicholson working to induce frights and chills. If I had a time machine, I would head back to these films' release dates, pay four bits or a dollar, and enjoy a Castle, Corman or a Wood first release.

Chances are I'd have headed to a drive-in theater to see the film. Today, drive-ins are scarce, and moonlight as swap meets. There was a time, though, when drive-in theaters were ubiquitous.

Drive-ins played most film genres, but specialties were the horror or exploitation film. When Ed Wood made his cheapie, "Jail Bait," the negative and prints headed straight to the deep South, distributed by a film company that owned 50 or so cow pastures-turned drive-in theaters.
Of course, the Corman, Castle and Hitchcock films were often shown indoors, but business was always big on the weekend, when harried parents would hustle sleepy kids into the station wagon, park it, stick the speaker into the car and wait for the kids to fall asleep.

Steve Stones, a Weber State University art professor and cult film collector, remembers when the drive-in competed with the multiplex. "It was appealing to me when I did go because there was something out of the ordinary in being able to sit on the bumper or tail gate of your vehicle and see a movie with the stars and night sky above," he recalls.

I read a book, "Cinema Under the Stars: America's Love Affair with the Drive-In Movie Theater." It's a bittersweet read. The 1950s were the heyday of drive-ins. There were more than 4,600 then. There are only several hundred left. Only one remains in the Ogden area.
"Cinema Under the Stars" is full of photographs and drawings of old drive-ins and the screen ads — trailers, local business, public service announcements and concessions — that were part of the drive-in experience. The ads were so much fun you can buy them on DVD now: dancing snacks, Bernz-O-Matic In-Car Heaters or Drizzle Guards to put on your windshield ... all on sale at the snack bar!

What separates the drive-in from today's indoor theater is the drive-in was a community experience. Talk at the multiplex and you get shushed. But at the old drive-in there were playgrounds, bleachers, truck beds and privacy when the car door closed. The film was talked about as much as it was seen.

Stones recalls, "the sound coming out of those bulky grey speakers ... was not so great, but I think most people really didn't care because they were either going to make out in their car with their date that night, or discuss the movie as it was playing on the screen with their friends."
Drive-ins were where the blood 'n' gore craze began. Herschell Gordon Lewis' "Blood Feast" was a huge hit down South in 1963. In the late '60s and early '70s, as drive-ins started their slow decline, exploitation films became steady grossers. Ultra-low budget fare such as "Dracula vs. Frankenstein," "Brides of Blood," "Cain's Cutthroats," "Horrors of the Blood Planet," "A Taste of Blood," "Satan's Sadists," "Blood of Ghastly Horror" and "Don't Go in the Woods ... Alone" (filmed near Ogden) were standard drive-in offerings across America.

Purists still loved these films, cult items today, but, not surprisingly, many couples who parked to see "Blood of Ghastly Horror" found each other more interesting than the film on the screen. Many of today's Gen-Xers were conceived after mom and dad turned the sound off at the drive-in movie.

The drive-in theater turned 74 this year. Those films that made the drive-in so popular are preserved on cable channels and DVDs. A few drive-ins are still around, but evidence of their waning status is seen today, on Halloween, when the films that once shined outdoors are now only viewed within walls.

Ogden's own: Don't Go In the Woods ... Alone!

By Steve D. Stones

This film is of particular interest to me because it was filmed in my native state of Utah. The composer who created the music, H. Kingsley Thurber, is a resident of my hometown of Ogden City. Thurber is responsible for composing music tracks for popular video games of the 1990s. With the exception of the four main actors in the film who play the young campers, most of the cast members were from Salt Lake City. Many scenes in this film were shot at Bridal Veil Falls, a beautiful mountainous location up Provo Canyon here in Utah. The film was banned in the U.K. in the 1980s as a "video nasty," and remains banned in that country to this day. Unlike many cult films, I actually loved this film the first time I viewed it. It usually takes me several viewings to appreciate a cult film.

There are many interesting "point of view" shots in the film. One shows the camper Joanie, played by actress Angie Brown, tearing through a sleeping bag after she has been strung up in a tree inside the bag as a prank from her boyfriend. As she tries to tear through the bag to get out, she witnesses the murderer of the film through a hole in the bag as he runs down a mountain trail and stabs her boyfriend in the stomach with a knife tied to a long tree branch. The murderer is similar to the maniac Jupiter in Wes Craven’s 1977 classic "The Hills Have Eyes." On the audio commentary for the film, director James Bryan describes the maniac-murderer as a Siberian-Shaman looking character.

One very creative murder sequence shows a young mother painting on canvas outdoors in the mountains as her infant is bouncing up and down in a baby swing. The canvas she is painting on has only been painted with green strokes of paint. Suddenly she is murdered and gushes of red blood splatter across the canvas, making an interesting use of complementary colors together. I don’t know how intentional this was in the film. For those of us who paint frequently and know about color schemes, it is an interesting sequence. There are also many "fake scares" in the film that set the audience up for thinking they may see the murderer attack a character in the film. Many of these sequences turn out to be a "fake scare" to add to the black humor of the film.
Although the humor sequences outweigh the serious ones, it is often hard to tell whether the film wants to be a full-blown black comedy, or a serious horror film, This may be one of the biggest reasons why I enjoyed the film the first time I viewed it, and continue to enjoy it with each viewing. If you pay careful attention to the film, you will notice that every time a new character is shown on screen in an awful costume, you can guarantee that this person will be the next to be killed. This is part of the black humor director Bryan is trying to get across in the film. Death comes to those with a horrible fashion sense.

A particularly tacky scene shows Cheri and Dick making out in the back of a Volkswagen Van on their honeymoon night. Dick repeats: "Cheri, Cheri, you’re the most beautiful thing that has ever come into my life." This is pretty bad dialogue to say the least. The director once worked in the porno business before he worked on the Grizzly Adams television show of the 1970s, so this may be why he intentionally gave these two characters the tacky names that he did and their poor dialogue. To add to the tackiness, the interior of the van is designed with a poster of Farrah Fawcett plastered to the ceiling with gold trim, red shag carpet, and heart-shaped pillows. Perhaps the interior of the van was once used as a set for a porno film? The awfulness of the van’s décor would lead us to believe so.

It seems like such a cliché to have an overweight, soft-spoken sheriff of a small town in a low-budget horror film, but this may be the most convincing character in the entire film. The sheriff, played by Texan Ken Carter, flies a small plane into the skies in search of a missing person reported lost. This sequence seems like homage to Coleman Francis’ plane scenes in "The Beast of Yucca Flats" with the sheriff fulfilling the role of Tor Johnson. Another scene shows Carter helping a pretty young roller skater from falling to the ground as she runs into him getting out of his police vehicle. The sheriff frequently wipes his brow from sweating profusely, which has also become another cliché in low-budget horror films.

If you are a fan of low-budget horror films and a native of Utah, I highly recommend that you view this film. The 25th Anniversary Edition DVD distributed by Media Blasters is full of extra features, such as a short featurette made by director James Bryan with cast and crew members, two audio commentaries and a poster and production still gallery of the film. You are guaranteed to get your money’s worth if you purchase this DVD. It is one of the most cherished DVDs in my collection.

All about Mario Bava's Black Sunday

By Doug Gibson

Black Sunday, 1960, Italy, 83 minutes, B&W. Directed by Mario Bava. Starring Barbara Steele as Princess Asa Vajda/Katia Vajda, John Richardson as Dr. Adrej Gorobec, Andrea Checchi as Dr. Tomas Kruvajan, Arturo Dominici as Javutich, Ivo Garrani as Prince Vajda. Released in the U.S. by American International Pictures. Schlock-Meter rating: 9 1/2 stars out of 10.

Black Sunday drips in atmosphere, creating a dark, brooding tale of slain advocates of Satan rising from the grave 200 years after being executed in Moldavia and trying to exact revenge on their descendants. Director Bava uses images, sounds and nature to exact mood from his first (and some argue best) chiller. Cobwebs, dark shadows, fog, hanging branches, dense forests, decaying graves, spiked masks being driven into faces, a decayed face infested by bugs, stakes being driven in eyes, death by fire, dark nights with sound trailing away, and always the wind blowing ominously in the background, exploit our senses while watching Black Sunday.

Another example: Bava manages to produce chills by shooting a horse carriage in slow motion and soft focus. It creates a ghostly image. Later, after a hapless doctor is carried in the carriage, it rides faster than is humanly possible, adding a contrast just as creepy as the first glimpse of the carriage.

The plot involves a beautiful princess/witch named Asa (Steele), and her demonic assistant, Javutich (Dominici), who are executed early in the 17th century. Asa utters a curse against her brother (who is overseeing the execution) and his family. Asa and Javutich are executed by having iron, spiked “masks of Satan” driven into their face, a striking image. They are set to be burned, but heavy rain prevents that, and instead Asa is put in a crypt, and Javutich buried.
Two hundred years later, and Asa’s descendants still live on the land. They are a depressed, but still noble lot: Prince Vajda, his son Constantin and beautiful daughter Katia (Steele) who looks just like Asa. The Prince is worried, because it’s Black Sunday, the one day where evil spirits are allowed a chance to wreck havoc. He fears Asa and Javutich will try to avenge themselves on his family. As the plot unfolds, he has good reason to be worried.

Two doctors, one old (Checchi), one young (Richardson) are sidetracked on a journey to a medical convention when their carriage breaks down. They stumble upon the crypt with Asa in it, and the skeptical Checchi tears off her mask, revealing a rotted face infested with bugs. A bat attacks the doctor. Before killing it, he cuts his hand, dripping blood into Asa’s face. That revives her, and she calls Javutich from the grave. The pair then plot the death of the noble family, and Asa is determined to possess Katia’s youth.

This film -- with its gruesome images and tale of disciples of Satan rising from the dead -- must have been quite daring for 1960s audiences. There are still scenes that shock. A couple include Javutich rising from his grave, and a resurrected Asa’s cloak being torn from her body, revealing a decaying skeleton underneath. I was chilled by the scene where Katia’s father, possessed by Satan, matter-of-factly tells her that her being his daughter is of no relevance any more, and his only desire now is to eat her blood! Also, despite that much of the last half of the film takes place in the Vajda castle, Bava doesn’t neglect the countryside or its inhabitants. There are scenes of locals in an inn and another creepily amusing scene of a teenage girl milking a cow. In the final scene, hundreds of locals in pursuit of Asa are led by a priest.

This version is the U.S. American International Pictures release, which reportedly is inferior to the European release. Also, the dubbing by most of the cast is flat and annoying at times. I would love to see the uncut Italian version with English subtitles. Also, the plot development appears a bit thinner in the U.S. version, and some shock scenes last only a split second, which means perhaps AIP censors trimmed the violence and gore a little. Nevertheless, Black Sunday -- in any version -- is an above-average shocker that deserves its cult status.