The Manitou

The Manitou

I first saw this movie visiting my uncle in Florida for the summer when I was 10 years old. I'm sure I watched a fair number of TV shows and movies that summer. I remember none of the shows or movies - save this one. Unfortunately, I saw this and have remembered it these nearly 30 years - but only because it was so God awful. It started out weird enough and got my attention. A lady develops a tumor like bulge on her neck, a shrink's patients start freaking out, surgeons and doctors can't treat the woman but it just got weirder and weirder while the actors tried to keep a straight face. Over the top acting, bad special affects and a bizarre plot that just not translate to the screen make this watchable only if you also enjoy seeing car wrecks. The finale was pure 1970's cheesy special effects that make the old Star Trek sets look high brow in comparison. I have been haunted by this horrible piece of film making for most of my life and fear that the memories will remain with me forever. If you have not yet experienced the crappiness that is the Manitou - save yourself - and rent anything else.

How am I going to fill ten lines about this movie? Here goes: There was a time that Tony Curtis was a serious player in movies, he did the one with Sidney Poitier--for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it--and there's Spartacus and a couple of others that showcased some talent, even with a toupee that looks like a . . . toupee. Susan Strasberg, a hormone-flooding beauty who I remember from Toma on ABC back in 1973, was also a serious performer. If you go down the cast list for The Manitou, you see a lot of good A and B grade actors and actresses who must have really needed some quick cash or were possessed--in and out of the movie--as a group by some sort of Native American evil spirit thing that, at one point, I kid you not, manifests itself in a tumor-like blob of ecto-oogy on somebody's neck. Yech. That's all I can remember about this movie. I saw it on HBO in 1979 and after thousands of hours of therapy, I recovered. Unfortunately, somewhere during the courtship of my future wife, I discovered that she had a rather large mole on her neck, right under her hairline. I called it Manitou. She didn't get it. And I'm not ordering the movie from Amazon just to show her why I named her mole!

Dreadful! I remember seeing this film like it was yesterday, not 20 years ago. It was 1978, John Carpenter's "Halloween" had just come out and my friends and I were feeling that horror films were entering a new, fresh beginning, a renaissance. We were awaiting each new horror film with giddy anticipation. Then "The Manitou" came out! This has got to be Tony Curtis's worst performance ever. I remember the whole audience laughing at certain scenes. Not that it is all Tony's fault, the writing induces most of the laughs all on its own. There is a scene late in the movie where Curtis talks about the "Manitou" or Indian spirit in a typewriter(!!!) that sent the theater into hysterics. If you want to know just how bad a horror film can be, rent "The Manitou" and you'll find out!

Absurd movie features an evil presence growing out of Susan Strasberg's neck...just sort of because, the presence revealing itself as a nearsighted naked midget, Tony Curtis aging badly in Seventies wear, Burgess Meredith in a stupid cameo, Stella Stevens in an equally bad cameo, and Michael Ansarra as an unconvincing medicine man who clicks a couple of sticks together when he's not talking haughtily about how his ways are better than the white man's. All of this equals INCREDIBLY AWESOME, of course. The climax features bad special effects, even for this period; Tony Curtis yelling, some kind of Native American version of Cthululu, computer manitous (don't ask) and Susan Strasberg topless. All that's pretty AWESOME as well.

Awful(and I mean AWFUL)horror flick using Native American folklore and undermining it for unintentional laughs is an embarrassing statement about Tony Curtis' career(this is the same actor who starred in SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS & SOME LIKE IT HOT). He plays a supposed fortune teller named Erskine(mostly working cash from wealthy old widows)whose lady love Karen(Susan Strasberg)has a growing fetus on her back(!). Come to find out the fetus(which is growing at an alarming rate)is actually the spirit of a powerful medicine man, Misquamacas! During a séance thanks in part to orchestrator, mystic Amelia(Stella Stevens, dressed in blackened face paint with gypsy garb)who was Erskine's teacher in the Tarot arts, the spirit of Misquamacas reveals himself which leads them to the home of Dr. Snow(Burgess Meredith, playing this doctor very quirky and evading with a sense of senility)who wrote a book on Native American folklore which mentions spirits invading the body of innocents so that could emerge into reality. Snow tells Erskine their only possible route to saving Susan is fighting fire with fire by calling on a living Native American medicine man. Erskine, after being rejected by other medicine men, gets deep-voiced John Singing Rock(..out of all the names the filmmakers could've come up with actor Michael Ansara is stuck with this one)to lend him a hand. We are informed through Singing Rock that Manitous(those spirits)can manifest themselves in anybody or thing. So even X-Ray machines have manitous(I kid you not). After, Singing Rock calls on the spirits of wind, trees, and just nature in general, his circle of dust surrounding Karen's bed seems destined for crossing since that thing growing in her back emerges from the skin as a Native American midget with a vile visage. Misquamacas calls on various demons to kill hospital personnel, makes the hospital operation room floor into an icy fortress, shakes Dr. Hughes'(Jon Cedar)room with Erskine, Singing Rock and others resembling lottery balls ready for plucking, and turns Karen's room into a place of stars with only her bed & Misquamacas visible. In a major climactic battle, when Misquamacas calls on the main Satanic demon to assist him, Erskine's love will help the computers' manitou spirits(!) within the entire hospital send volts through Karen's fingers(with her naked body exposed)with mankind's possible existence hanging in the balance. Whatever. The absolutely preposterous premise and horrendously awful special effects sequence in the major battle towards the end will surely make this a cult classic. No matter how terrible any film is, it's sure to find an audience willing to accept it into their arms with love. Not me. It's terrible in every conceivable way imaginable. I can not, for the life of me, understand why Curtis and Meredith would step foot in such a things as this. Using Native American folklore can certainly work in the horror genre, but in this flick it's embarrassingly over-the-top. I mean the scene where the midget Misquamacas spirit "exits" Strasberg's back I couldn't help but laugh..it's supposed to be horrifying, but winds up being jaw-droppingly hilarious. The scene where one of Curtis' clients is lifted off the floor, by Misquamacas, and sent down a flight of stairs while spouting Native American gibberish has to be seen to be believed. The effects sequence in Cedar's office where the floors twist is a show-stopping highlight because it is just so eye-openingly farcical. But the ending takes the cake..Strasberg firing bolts from over-powered computers possessed with spirits shooting at a midget Indian with scary eyes and a nasty cackle. The whole flick is played so straight, I just felt pity for all involved. How does a cast "get up" for a film like this? I think all who participated in this should have had electro-shock therapy, because they were certifiably insane.

Cast of giants appears in this ridiculous mixture of the Exorcist, Godzilla, Little Big Man, and Leprechaun. There is nothing good in the movie at all, except that it is so stinking bad. The greasy little monster that crawls out of Susan Strasberg's back is a powerful shrimp (shrunken and disfigured because of the multiple X-Rays done when trying to figure out what was going on with this goiter gone bad). This evil manitou means to destroy the world. It is a native American Monster, and therefore, only a Native American medicine man can stop it. Chief Bromden from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" is willing to take on the challenge. I saw this movie with a friend of mine about 20 years ago and we still laugh about it. I also saw "Ordinary People" about the same time. It won the academy award for best picture and is a good movie. I can hardly remember the movie now. There is a place for bad movies. I give this a ranking of 2 out of ten because of the fact that it offers a lot of unintentional laughs. Otherwise it would definitely be a zero. It's not "Plan Nine From Outer Space," or "Robot Monster," but it isn't bad for a horrible, but memorable poor flick.

I found The Manitou to be quite an interesting, if not cheesy film. It starts off quite well and the pace moves along nicely as the story draws you in. The first half is dedicated to the story and what happens before the demon is born. The second half deals with what occurs after he is born and climaxes with a cheesy sci-fi ending. The acting is very solid throughout and the characters believable. The highlight of the film is supposedly when the demon is born, as he breaks out of the "fetus" attached to the woman's back. I didn't find it particularly impressive though. I did however enjoy the story about the Indian spirit and how this would be his fourth or fifth incarnation. I've always had a soft spot for mythology and "demon births", probably from watching too many Xena: Warrior Princess episodes. The film is spoilt mainly by the ultra cheesy ending, that looks like something out of an old Star Trek episode. Up until that point I thought the story worked well as a serious film, but the ending brought it into cheese territory and ruined it for me. It's not that I don't like cheese, but you can't just introduce it in the last 10 minutes of a film and get away with it!

Prolific 70's drive-in horror hack William ("Grizzly," "Day of the Animals") Girdler really outdoes himself with this delightfully berserk Native American variant on "The Exorcist," which Girdler had previously done a lowdown funky blaxploitation spin on with "Abby." Sweet young Karen Tandy (the ever lovely and beguiling Susan Strasberg, the daughter of legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg) has a large mysterious tumor growing on her neck. Said tumor turns out to be the rapidly developing fetus of evil and all-powerful Indian medicine man Misquamacus, who's using Karen as an unwitting host so he can be reborn into our dimension after a 400 year dormancy. It's up to blithely bogus charlatan psychic Harry Erskine (an admirably sincere Tony Curtis) and good-hearted modern-day Native American medicine man John Singing Rock (an engaging performance by Michael Ansara) to stop the wicked otherworldly entity before it's too late. William Girdler directs this divinely absurd, energetic and slickly mounted mystical supernatural horror demonic possession mumbo jumbo with galvanizing panache and self-assurance, maintaining a constant brisk pace throughout, relating the wonderfully wacky story in a taut, involving manner, and staging the shock set pieces with considerable go-for-it gusto. Michael Hugo's glossy cinematography, Lalo Schifrin's stirring full-bore orchestral score, and the dazzling special effects by Tom Burman, Frank Van Der Veer and Dick Tate are all likewise excellent and impressive. Moreover, the cast seriously smokes in no uncertain terms: Burgess Meredith as a flaky old anthropologist, Stella Stevens and Ann Southern as helpful mediums, Jon Cedar and Paul Mantee as concerned doctors, Lurene Tuttle as a wizened old bag Misquamacus throws down a flight of stairs, and midget actor Felix Silla (Cousin It on "The Adams Family") as the hideously ugly and malformed Misquamacus. WARNING: Possible *SPOILERS* ahead. And the crazed pull-out-all-the-stops shoot-the-fireworks over-the-top last third is an absolute corker: Misquamacus tears his way out of Karen's back, an enormous lethal lizard materializes in Karen's hospital room, Misquamacus turns an entire hospital floor into what looks like a giant meat locker, and for the boffo climactic confrontation with Erskine and Singing Rock the nasty little bugger sends Karen's hospital room into a remote corner of the universe complete with stars, lasers and asteroids (!). This fabulously flipped-out freaky flick unquestionably qualifies as William Girdler's schlock horror masterpiece and serves as a worthy closer for Girdler's sometimes erratic, but often immensely entertaining trash exploitation cinema career.

This is a lost 70's horror classic. The whole idea itself was great. Although the whole 'growing on her back' bit was a tinge too dodgy. Tony Curtis basically played a comedy role for the first half, then showed how good he can be. Michael Ansara did an excellent job playing the medicine man as well. And I liked his mention of how the Indians were treated. The best part of this film was the monster. A great ugly Indian demon. Scary looking with that whole 'you can't stop me' glare. The final scene in the hospital almost got betrayed by its low budget. And why so many outer space backgrounds? But the look on the Manitou's face when Singing Rock figured it out was priceless. This one's worth remembering.