FANTASIA FILM FESTIVAL
“Plan Nine” is often cited as the worst film of all time, but I tend to disagree. Say what you want about Ed Wood’s schlock disaster, but it at least has a narrative to it. It’s a pitiful narrative, it’s unnecessarily convoluted, but it’s something. Hell, even “The Room” has some kind of narrative to it that resembles the worst romance melodrama seemingly derived from a Spanish novella. “Manos The Hands of Fate” (or in English: Hands The Hands of Fate?) is the template of how not to make a movie.
It’s not even a movie; it’s barely a time killer. It’s more of a soul killer. It’s been repeated a billion times by now, but this film should not be viewed unless it’s with “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” The episode that played “Manos” stands out as a classic and as one of the funniest of all time. “Manos” is just a mind numbing piece of tripe that transcends bad movies. It’s beyond bad, it’s just so painfully surreal and beyond bad that you have to wonder if it’s some kind of endurance experiment. But it’s not, it was made with as much sincerity as the aforementioned schlock films.
They meant “Manos” to be a movie, and they delivered on just drivel. Nothing about the movie makes sense, the dialogue is painfully awful, and there are literally long stretches of time without anything happening. Seriously, it’s mostly just driving in the first twenty minutes. Nothing happens! Well not nothing, there is an odd running gag where a young couple sits in a car kissing for literally hours, until they’re broken up by a police officer. This gag runs again later on in the movie inexplicably. And to its credit there is a ten minute sequence of women wrestling in negligees, so there’s that small consolation. In “Manos,” there’s a family, and they’re on vacation.
They drive and drive until they end up at a lodge. The lodge is taken care of by the hoof footed knobby kneed acid head Torgo, who looks like a prospector, and stutters uncontrollably. They soon find out they’re being victimized by the Master, a man with many wives who wears a large dress with a giant red hand plastered on it. He wants to do something to the family. I presume use the wife as one of his own… or something. It’s foggy. Truth be told the story behind the film is much better and more compelling than the film ever hopes to be. Especially the technical limitations which doomed the movie from the beginning, and transformed it in to an endurance test of the worst kind. I think even without the obstacles, “Manos” would still be an abysmal mess without rhyme or reason. It’s the very definition of nonsense.