REWATCH: Manos: The Hands Of Fate [1966]

The first and only time we've watched "Manos: Hands of Fate" was in 2013, fairly early in the nearly eight year life of Bad Movie Night. Because it was so long ago, we never gave it a proper spoon rating so we decided to give it a rewatch.

The plot is basic for horror. A family gets lost on a desert vacation and ends up staying at an inn with a fawn-like porter named Torgo who keeps talking about "the master." The mother and father of the family spend a lot time staring at an ominous painting of the master and his dog who Torgo seems to imply is both dead and alive. Turns out there's a secret closet-cave-thing for a cult consisting of The Master and his many brides who mostly just stay in some kind of catatonic state but arise to worship their god, Manos. The family's dog dies, possibly by the Master's dog. Torgo ties up the father outside seemingly in part because he wants the mother to be his. The wives wake up and debate whether to kill the daughter or perserve her because she's female and have a brawl over it. Torgo gets punished by the Master by being massaged to death by the wives, but then he arises and the Master lights his hand on fire. The father escapes after one of the brides untied him and pulls a gun on the Master, but it seemed to be for nothing. We get a hard cut to a couple arriving at the inn with the father replacing Torgo and the mother and daughter in the garb of the wives, now under the Master's control.

This movie is bad but what makes it notorious is really how strange the aura of this movie is. None of us could quite put our finger on it. Erik mentioned that it feels kind of like a hazy dream. Adam said that it feels something like a silent movie that happens to have dialogue. This aura is created through really long sequences that move very slowly, repetitive and simplistic dialogue, background music that resembles improvisational jazz (with the exception of Torgo's theme), and a lot of moments that contribute to a sort of unreality: the fact that the daughter's few lines of dialogue are barely audible when everyone else is, the occasional cuts to this couple making out in a car who literally never move over what is at least 24 hours, the Master's lair being a room in the inn that seems to not exist all the time, the reoccuring hand motifs, and even the lack of a real climax as if that moment was cut from the film. It's fascinating enough to watch once, but maybe not engaging enough for a second time, I mean, unless maybe you wait seven years like we did.

Spoon Rating: 6