Posted on 12/12/2011 8:08:48 PM PST by struggle
Manos: The Hands of Fate doesn't deserve to be called the worst movie ever made. It may not deserve to be called a movie at all.
Manos is a weird blip in film culture, the closest thing that the B-movie world's ever had to its own butterfly effect. It was made on a bet by an El Paso insurance salesman with no filmmaking experience named Harold P. Warren, screened in a few West Texas theaters in 1966, and promptly forgotten for the better part of three decades.
Then, in 1992, a couple of yahoos with a show on Comedy Central stumbled across it in a public domain catalog.
That show was called Mystery Science Theater 3000, which for ten seasons mocked exceptionally bad movies. And if MST3K spent its run scaling mountains of awfulness to hit peaks of hilarity, Manos was its Everest.
"There's a very distinct feeling in the episode of, 'What is this movie that we've discovered?'" said Ben Solovey, a 26-year-old Florida State film school grad who's behind Manos: The Restoration, a project to repair an original 16mm workprint of Manos. "Even though there's these long stretches where they're not making jokes, it doesn't matter. It feels like you're watching a film from another planet."
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Tonight, Manos gets caught in a deadly game of cat and mouse.
Actually, there wasn’t much in the way of all-out schlock in the 1930s/40s, compared to the drive-in days of the 1950s/60s and all its regionally-produced, amateurish efforts (which in their own weird ways can sometimes be fascinating little time-capsules).
However, there is a really, really rancid little b-western from 1934, entitled “The Border Menace,” which is the pits. I happened to run into it not too long ago. So, maybe there are indeed a few stinkers here and there.
Yet none truly rival Paul Newman’s “Quintet”.
It gets cold,people die, it gets colder, more people die, it gets really cold, everbody dies. What a waste of time.No redeeming features. And the writer/director was Robert Altman... does not even rise to the entertainment level of a turkey.
Victor/Victoria is worse. Manos is just boring, V/V is... there are no words.
I have a collection of 16mm films. some favorites, The truth about communism, narrator Ronald Reagan, The fanastic plastic machine-surfing in the 70’s, and Ufo, the true story of flying saucers, Maltese falcon. key largo, the wild ones, billy the kid vs dracula, blue light with robert goulet, away all boats, and the warrior empress.( also the superman movie w george reeves, a lone ranger movie, and hercules with steve reeves)
It’s great to set up outdoors and have neighborhood movie night.
However, for sheer awfulness, Manos can't hold a candle to my favorite, The Creeping Terror.
One of our favorite movies PING!
Worse than Corman?
Torgo Lives!
Torgo ping?
But this is the MST3k film to watch this time of yr
(Pt 1, Youtube then has the rest)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3yaR0qM7JE
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
(Low grade kiddie matinee—Santa seems to think one of his reindeer is named Nixon; “oh, I can’t remember”—looks at the camera==”but the kids know the names!”) complete with theme (you spell it SANTA, CLAUS, hooray for Santy Claus) by Milton Delugg who with his “Band with a thug” would later become
house band of The Gong Show). There actually was talk of
remaking it with Jim Carrey playing the goofy Martian
Droppo.
8 yr old Pia Zadora as a Martian child. 23 yrs later she would play a “beatnik chick” (along with her beau, Ric
Ocasek) in John Waters’ “Hairspray”. “I play my bongos, listen to Odetta, and then I iron my hair, dig? Let’s do some reefer. We’ll get high and then I’ll iron the chicks’ hair.
Local weed. When I’m high, I AM Odetta! Let’s get naked and smoke!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIIo3jnkgr0
Cue haunting Torgo theme...
“Child Bride” from the early 30’s was one of the worst ever, it also has several minutes of naked 12 year old girl... can you say sexploitation?
Mystery Science Theater passed on the film for that reason I think.
I am still on the edge of my seat waiting for episode 5 of “Space Balls”.
“The Search for More Money.”
I got 10 bucks. You in? LoL
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