THE MANITOU: The Occult Adventure As Disaster Movie
"AsI said, everything has a manitou. Notonly trees but man-made things as well. Now, the police will come with guns. Their guns have manitous. Misquamacus will turn the guns against the police and kill them withtheir own weapons!”
That little monologue is quoted verbatim from The Manitou and it gives you a goodidea of its oddball appeal. It puts forth tantalizingly bizarre ideas in adeadpan manner, playing them so straight the whole enterprise veers into camp.It's one of those films that could have only been made in the 1970's.
The wacked-out storyline was adapted from a hitpaperback novel by Graham Masterton and begins with Karen Tandy (SusanStrasberg) noticing a fast-growing tumor on her neck. Before doctors try anoperation, she calls on her ex, a con-man psychic named Harry Erskine (TonyCurtis) to confess her fears. The operation fails due to some otherworldlyinterference and Harry turns to the occult world to find answers.
Harry discovers the tumor is the physical manifestationof Misquamacus, an ancient Indian medicine man trying to re-enter the physicalworld. Harry enlists the help of a modern-day medicine man, one John SingingRock (Michael Ansara), to take on the evil spirit. It all culminates in asurreal battle between science and mysticism, complete with all the psychedelicopticals and makeup effects that can be shoehorned into a modest budget.
If that plot summary has your mind reeling, that's onlythe beginning of the schizoid experience that is The Manitou. The plot deals in some rather unconventional plothooks - like basing itself around American Indian concepts of religion and theidea that all things living and inanimate have spirits - yet these concepts aredelivered via some clunky t.v.-style plotting and exposition. The film is fullof disturbing sights and creepy setpieces but each of these moments iscounterbalanced with moments of forced sitcom-style humor and unintentionalcampiness. By the end, it leaps headlong into bizarro-land with an ending that can'tbe described... it can only be experienced in slack-jawed awe.
Unfortunately, the film isn't always as compelling as itis strange. This problem stems mainly from the staid, pseudo-Hollywood approachthat director William Girdler takes. This b-movie vet had learned a lot aboutmaking a movie look professional by this point and puts it all to good use here- The Manitou was filmed on a budgetof $3 million and easily looks like it cost two or three times that amount.
However, Girdler had some problems figuring out how tosmoothly construct and adapt a novel into a film and that makes the middle actof The Manitou uneven and pokey inits pacing. He also allows the running time to become padded because he feelsthe need to squeeze every cent out of his resources: for instance, there's agratuitous romantic montage obviously designed to show off the film's SanFrancisco locations.
Still, the movie's dizzying and totally unself-conscioussense of eccentricity can be charming if the viewer is in the right mood. Italso benefits from an excellent cast. Tony Curtis and Michael Ansara bothdeliver surprisingly good performances given the circumstances: neithercondescends to the material, with Curtis gamely adding plenty of old-Hollywoodcharm and Ansara playing it straight in the manner of a true character-actorpro.
TheManitou also has a supporting cast to die for: among the gueststars are Stella Stevens (in a weird gypsy wig and tan makeup), Ann Sothern anda hammy Burgess Meredith. The combination of familiar faces, schlocky plottingand slick production values gives the film the feel of a vintage Irwin Allenproject gone occult-crazy.
Sadly, this was Girdler's last film as he died in ahelicopter crash before The Manitouwas released. It was a tragedy for b-movie fans because Girdler was truly oneof a kind (check out Grizzly or Day Of The Animals for further proof).One can only dream of the outlandish sights and sounds he might have unleashedhad he been given the time to keep going. That said, we'll always have the final reel of The Manitou: it unleashes pop-occult mysticism in a way that earnsa place in exploitation film history.
Blu-Ray Notes: The Manitou is long out of print on DVD but was recently reissued on blu-ray by Scream Factory. It's got a new, 4K-remaster-derived transfer that does well by the film's distinctive late-'70s look. Extras include new interviews with Masterton and producer David Sheldon as well as a commentary track from Troy Howarth.