MST3K: MANOS — THE HANDS OF FATE: How To Survive A Bad Movie

The often over­looked part of Mystery Science Theater 3000’s appeal is that the show can teach you the skills you need to watch the unwatch­able.  Though the group could enhance the joys of films like the Gamera series, those films didn’t need much help to be enter­tain­ing in a weird way.  The crew at the Satellite Of Love really earned their pay when they turned their atten­tion to films that were truly dev­as­tat­ing in their awful­ness.  A prime exam­ple of this kind of film is Manos: The Hands Of Fate.  It was a big test of the MST3K crew’s abil­i­ties –and the result was one of their finest moments.

For those who haven’t heard it, Manos: The Hands Of Fate can hon­estly lay claim to being one of the worst movies ever made.  The brain­child of fer­til­izer sales­man and com­mu­nity the­ater actor Hal Warren, it tells the tale of fam­ily on vaca­tion who wan­der down the wrong El Paso back road and end up meta­phys­i­cally impris­oned by Torgo, the wobble-legged assis­tant of “the mas­ter.” It is even­tu­ally revealed that this “mas­ter” runs some sort of cult that involves tak­ing women as his wives.  There’s a lot of aim­less dri­ving footage, a cou­ple that seems to spend hours mak­ing out in a car, an epic cat fight between sev­eral women in diaphanous gowns, a twist end­ing and tons of cocktail-jazz noodling on the soundtrack.

Manos: The Hands Of Fate is the kind of film that sep­a­rates the bad movie buffs from the gen­eral view­ers.  Any fan of main­stream movies will be baf­fled by its indif­fer­ence to the lan­guage of film: the pac­ing makes 70 min­utes feel like 700, it’s shot with all the finesse of secu­rity cam­era footage, there’s plenty of post-dubbed sound and the level of sto­ry­telling skill is so raw it qual­i­fies as “pre­his­toric.”  That said, a cer­tain kind of viewer will get sucked in by the film’s outsider-art qual­ity: it gen­uinely seems to have no idea how weird it actu­ally is and it has a vaguely per­verse sex­ual under­cur­rent fur­ther ups the ante.

The folks behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 clearly picked up on the push-pull appeal this film has for the bad movie buff and their Manos: The Hands Of Fate episode really plays on it.  In fact, the show’s cast embody that feel­ing as they try to cope with watch­ing the movie: a sketch between film seg­ments falls apart when the bots are reduced to hys­ter­i­cal tears by think­ing about the film and Frank and Dr. Forrester actu­ally sneak onto the cam­era at sep­a­rate times to apol­o­gize to the Satellite crew for how incred­i­bly awful the film is.

The riff­ing on the film itself is just as funny.  The crew’s exas­per­a­tion with the inter­minably lengthy dri­ving scenes that open Manos is pretty hilar­i­ous as well as the way that they punc­tu­ate the film’s many stretches of noth­ing­ness by say­ing “yeah, this is Manos: The Hands Of Fate.”  There are tons of great one-off riffs, too, Your Humble Reviewer’s favorite being Joel’s obser­va­tion that each frame of the film looks like “someone’s last-known pho­to­graph.”  That said, the best gag of the episode might be its closer, which involves Mike Nelson imper­son­at­ing Torgo as a pizza deliv­ery boy (com­plete with his bizarre “repeated horn riff” theme music).

It’s also worth not­ing that Manos is pre­ceded by “Hired, part II,” one of the many edu­ca­tional short films that MST3K sent up dur­ing their run.  The crew has a lot of fun with this short, which is designed to teach car com­pany man­agers how to train their staff.  The riffs are pretty wild here, includ­ing some mon­tages that over­flow with great one-liners about the unpleas­ant nature of buy­ing a car.

To sum up, if you’re deter­mined to sol­dier your way through Manos: The Hands Of Fate then this is the way to do it.  Not only does the MST3K treat­ment sub­stan­tially up the level of enter­tain­ment value here, the way they deal with the film offers the viewer a good crash course in how to cope with the worst of bad cinema.

MST3K: ”Manos” The Hands Of Fate [Special Edition] MST3K: “Manos” The Hands Of Fate [Special Edition]      ***All orders of“Manos” The Hands Of Fatecome with a free MST stress ballavail­able nowhere else!Order your copy todayto guar­an­tee deliv­ery of yours!***Newton’s Third Law of Motion states that for every action, there is an equal and oppo­site reac­tion. Sure, there’s math to back that up, but the far more com­pelling proof is in the treat­ment accorded “Manos” The Hands Of Fate by those physi­cists of com­edy at Mystery Science Theater 3000. Consider this leg­endary low point in film his­tory, which depicts a fam­ily that gets lost en route to a vaca­tion and stum­bles into the lair of a cult. Since SoL cap­tive Joel Robinson and his robot side­kicks Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot react to movies, it fol­lows that this par­tic­u­lar episode must be a glo­ri­ous high point in MST3K history.This 2-DVD set cel­e­brates a spe­cial film and the spe­cial TV show that made the film even more spe­cial. That’s why we’re call­ing this a spe­cial edition.DISC ONE: Mystery Science Theater 3000 Presents: “Manos” The Hands Of FateBonus Features:Group Therapy: Wherein Joel, Frank and Mary Jo relive the hor­rorMST Hour WrapsExclusive Mini-Poster By Artist Steve VanceDISC TWO: “Manos” The Hands Of Fate (orig­i­nal feature)Bonus Features:Hotel Torgo: A doc­u­men­tary on the mak­ing of “Manos” The Hands Of FateJam Handy To The Rescue!: A Ballyhoo ProductionHired!: Parts 1 & 2 together again … just because we could.And More!