The Legendary Manos

One day while I was finishing up a post I thought, you know this site is good and all but the majority of the posts are all positive reviews. Well to make up for it I took it upon myself to find the worst movie regarded among horror fanatics and take one for the team. That movie which fully lived up to its name was Manos: The Hands of Fate, translated for those who didn't take high school Spanish, Hands: The Hands of Fate. An early indication of what's to come for sure.

I had read that watching the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of this was the only way to watch this and retain your sanity. After watching it, I'd have to agree. The jokes, as a standard in MTS3K, are great and the only thing keeping me going. I can't remember a time where Tom Servo and Crow cried before.



First off it really takes nearly twenty minutes for anything of any interest to happen. It features a family of three driving in the countryside, perfectly simulating the boredom of a road trip through Kansas but making it even more unbearable by adding elevator music. They get lost and find a house to ask for directions. They're met by the charismatic Torgo, he "take[s] care of the place while the Master is away." The intelligent father decides to stay at the house for the night, to everyone's objection. Seriously, he won't listen to his wife or Torgo. I don't get it. So Torgo shuffles to get their luggage. I say shuffle because his legs are huge. He's supposed to be a satyr but it looks more like elephantiasis. They enter and see a portrait of the Master, comically I.D.ed by MST3K as Frank Zappa. Later in the night, after some strange howling and their dog being eaten, the family decides to leave just as the Master and all of his wives wake up in the chamber. All of the wives argue then literally wrestle for about ten minutes on what do to with the daughter in the family. The Master and his obeying wives eventually go up and turn the father into another Torgo and make the mother and daughter each a wife. Sigh, that was tougher than I thought it would be recapping that atrocity.



Ignoring the plot, what else out of the many things wrong with this film should I tell? I quickly name the ones that bothered me the most: Torgo's hobble is always accompanied by this annoying music number. You can see the Master's zipper. The cops that hear about the lost family take a total of four steps outside of their car to look for them. Some scenes have characters just standing, which made Joel of MST3K yell, "Do something! God..." Torgo is sacrificed by the Master's wives rubbing him to death. And worse of all it gave me a headache and nausea, possibly my body's way of punishing me for watching this.

Alright, more has been said than needed. Check the Bad Movies review. And the best(?) quotes are below.