Sunday, October 4, 2020

The Manitou (1978)

 October Challenge Day 4: 

Every once in a while you come across a film that's so blatantly absurd you actually have some respect for it. According to IMDB's trivia, when this film was debuted in South Africa invitations were printed on vomit bags. I love hate this, and I'm not the slightest bit surprised all of it comes from the bowels of:

The Manitou


Tony Curtis stars in a film about a woman who discovers the lump on her back is not a cyst or a tumor. It's a 400 year old medicine man (in fetus form) that's trying to be reborn.

Here's about the time that I take my glasses off and rub my eyes and face in exhaustion. This absolutely ridiculous premise is also the only reason I wanted to check the film out. I watched The Manitou with my brother (another hardened horror fan), and folks, we were beside ourselves. 

Is the film insane? Yes. Is it interesting and engaging? Yes. Is it good or bad? Yes. 

I legitimately was struggling with how best to describe this movie - then I realized I might need to invoke some Joe Bob Brigg's tally skills to best present viewers with what to expect. So here we go, Horror Habit's Terror Totals - we have:

Two breasts

One frozen nurse

One skinless medical professional

One tarot reader

Two possessions

Gratuitous use of cultural and racial ignorance

Gratuitous use of lasers

Gratuitous use of finger lasers

Computers roll

People roll (down the stairs and I'm a horrible person for laughing so hard)

Buildings roll

Ancient demon fu

South Dakota wisdom fu

Love conquers all fu

False history fu

Space fu


And that's about all I got folks - except one last Joe Bob invocation: Four Stars, Horror Habit says "Check it out". 

I rented this film from Scarecrow Video, or use the Find It! Watch It! links on Horror Habit's side bar to see where else you can find this insane feature. 

No comments:

Post a Comment