Manos: The Hands of Fate review

Is this film as bad as everyone makes it out to be? Let’s find out!

The Scores

Interest: 2/10

Acting: 1.5/10

Storyline: 2/10

Intensity: 0/10

Fights Guns or Otherwise: 5/10

Nudity: 0/10

Director Score: 2/10

Musical Score: 3/10

Dialogue: 2.5/10

Logic In The Film: 5/10

Manos: The Hands of Fate is a 1966 film. Its genre is a horror film. The run time is one hour and thirteen minutes. The three main stars of the film are Tom Neyman (Known for Manos: The Hands of Fate, Manos Returns, and Hands: The Fate of ‘Manos’), John Reynolds (Known for Manos: The Hands of Fate) and Diane Adelson (Known for Manos: The Hands of Fate, Manos Returns, and Hands: The Fate of ‘Manos’). The Director, Harold P. Warren has directed only Manos: The Hands of Fate, and also was an actor in the film. A quick summary of the film is “ A family gets lost and ends up finding a devil worshiping cult led by Master and his servant Torgo.” Let’s take a deeper look into the movie shall we?

Interest: This film is one of the least interesting films of all time. Perhaps ever. You just have this hope that something funny, or interesting will happen, and almost nothing ever does, there are tons of dialogue, but no action. Knowing fun facts about the film helps some (Like the actor playing Torgo is on acid the whole film, or That all the voices are done by a few people in post-production), but it only helps so much, it is still a lifeless shell that if you watch, must be endured.

Acting in Manos: The Hands of Fate is just bad in general, the only person that might be a “Okay” actor is actually Harold P. Warren himself. Most of these people though weren’t paid, were lied too, and many other lies as well. Everyone was an amateur in the movie, for most, if not everyone, this was their very first movie. The problem is, they had no formal training and it seems like most of them were normal people, which is fine, but it was as if they’d never seen a movie, play, or anything else and it was a complete shitshow.

Storyline: Is there an actual storyline to the movie? Maybe, but it is lost to time and anyone trying to watch. Typically I have something to put, but I started looking for the screenplay of the movie to see if I could at least read what the film was intending to do, but I could not find any mention of the screenplay online. So with all of that being said, People get lost during the night, get unknowingly stuck in the house/castle, and some strange rituals happen, some slight turmoil happens, and then we are missing a part of the movie, then the ending happens. That’s more or less it, you have now watched the movie.

Intensity: There is nearly no intensity in this movie at all besides when Torgo is on screen because honestly you have no idea what he might start doing since he’s on acid. There is perhaps one specific scene that might be intense, but that’s because an animal dies in the scene and that is unexpected and sad. Otherwise, you just wonder what the hell is going on.

Fights, Guns or Otherwise: There are a couple of fights that happen, and some light bickering happens, which sadly, might be this movies strongest category. Physical fights consist of an almost silly montage of the Masters wives fighting among each other for his love and affection, as well as ranking among being the best wife. Also The Master somehow rips off Torgos hand and catches it on fire. The Verbal lashings are really just quick quips about shutting up or stop that. Although the Master does threaten Torgo quite a bit in the film so Maybe on second thought, the verbal lashings might be the real winner.

Nudity: There is no nudity in the film. I feel like if this film had been made twenty years later, boobs would have been very prevalent in the film. It would have been a bad slasher film with a cult. Typically, nudity won’t just blatantly make a film better, but this film I think could have used it.

Director Score: Harold P. Warren supposedly did this on a bet. And on a piece of equipment that Only recorded about thirty seconds of film at a time. The actors were just random people it seems and it shows as a director he more or less didn’t do anything to help the movie be any good, Harold just wanted to make sure the film was made and finished.

Musical Score: So for something that is so bad, it does have a musical score, but it makes no sense at all with what is going on. It is almost like Harold went “I need to get rid of this silence in the movie… Wait! I have got it! Music! It shall play everywhere!”, and boy sure did he. But none of this music fits, makes sense, or even makes ambiance in the film.

Dialogue: Dialogue is a mess because of the restraint of the camera only recording thirty seconds. Even with that shortcoming though, it is still a bloody nightmare. It all makes sense in small contexts, but in a broad context of the film, almost nothing makes sense at all, no one uses inflection or a tone of voice very well at all. It just isn’t pleasant at all and personally hate it.

Logic in the Film: The logic in the film is very strange and if it does make sense, I don’t get it, mostly because so much is left out that you aren’t sure what the actual rules are of the film. What I mean by this how did Torgo lose his hand? How did it catch on fire? Did Mike actually shoot Master? Why does Mike become Torgo # 2? All things not answered no one knows about and we never really will. That all being said, physics do seem to be exhibited well in the film, nothing too crazy or weird, minus how his wives are chained to pillars, because there are no chains on them at all, so I am assuming “magic”.

Did I enjoy Manos: The Hands of Fate? No, no I didn’t like it one bit. Would I suggest watching it? Only if you like to rip on movies, or want to actually see what not to do if you are getting into the film industry. Otherwise, steer clear of this film and don’t make stumble upon this film, don’t find it on YouTube at 1080p for a fan restoration product that they wanted to happen. No matter how “restored” or “High Resolution” this film becomes just don’t watch it! My score is 23%, Not the worst percentage, but I promise, this isn’t everything. Until Next Time!