Popular reviews

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  Review by James 8

  "Without Manos: The Hands of Fate there would be no 2001: A Space Oddyssey."
  -Stanley Kubrick

  "Robert Smith Jr and Russ Huddleston's score is the reason I started composing"
  -John Williams

  "I almost quit show business for good the first time I saw Manos. I mean, when a performance as brilliant as John Reynolds' Torgo already exists why would I even bother trying..."
  -Jack Nicholson

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  Review by James (Schaffrillas) ★ 2

  Manos: The Hands of Fate was praised for its visual effects, performances, production values, direction, score, cinematography, story and emotional depth. Among other awards, it was nominated for 14 Academy Awards and won 11, including Best Picture and Best Director, tying Ben-Hur (1959) for the most Academy Awards won by a film. With an initial worldwide gross of over $1.84 billion, Manos: The Hands of Fate was the first film to reach the billion-dollar mark. It was the highest-grossing film of all time until Avatar (2009) surpassed it in 2010. A number of re-releases have pushed the film's worldwide total to $2.257 billion, making it the second film to gross more than $2 billion worldwide after Avatar. It was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 2017.

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  Review by matt lynch ★★★★ 9

  Stripped of annoying wisecracking robots this is not only an inscrutable piece of anti-cinema but also a glorious piece of accidental outsider art, an unnerving, arrhythmic ocean of crummy tinkly jazz, desolate sets, murky shadows, and weird Freudian sex panic misogyny. Awkward shot lengths and jump cuts, blurred focus, and stilted out-of-sync-dialogue merge into this sustained, ugly seepage of dread, inadvertently conjured by sheer ineptitude and a spring-wound 16mm camera's operational idiosyncrasies.

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  Review by DBC ★★★★★ 2

  You people giving The Room half a star and being like "how could a movie possibly be any worse?" You haven't even begun to gaze into the abyss.

  I like my bad movies looking like they were found in a box that was home to a family of possums living under a leaky sink at a drive-in that's been closed for 40 years.

  I like my bad movies to have a musical score that sounds like a cheap bootleg of a jazz quartet playing at a small, empty coffeehouse on the outskirts of El Paso back in 1965.

  I like my bad movies to have actors who give the unmistakable impression that at any minute they were ready to quit…

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  Review by Aaron ½ 28

  “I am Torgo. I take care of the place while the Master is away.”

  It was the very witching time of night, and Hal P. Warren, heavy-hearted and crestfallen, pursued his travels homeward, alongside the barren wastelands which stretch beside El Paso, and which he had traversed so cheerily in the afternoon. It was the night of the unveiling of his masterpiece, Manos: The Hands of Fate. The air that afternoon had been heavy and humid, but it couldn’t dampen his spirits. He had won his bet—his movie was complete, ready for an unprepared world’s embrace.

  His actors arrived in the rented limousine—one carload at a time, as Warren could afford only a single rental. Spotlights lit the night sky,…

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  Review by Lou (rhymes with wow!) 27

  Manos is often considered one of the worst movies ever made.

  Is it really?

  I mean.. I don't know? I still haven't seen movies like Troll 2 or The Room to make that call.* The answer is probably still no though.

  I do agree however that this is an extremely inept piece of cinema. It was made by people who had absolutely no business making a movie. But that's what makes something like this so utterly charming: the unintentional comedy caused by its sheer incompetence. Also, to me, the worst thing a movie can be is boring, and I was honestly never bored with this one.

  I watched the normal version, none of that MST3K/Riff Trax stuff for me.

  *Yes, I am deeply ashamed.

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  Review by Branson Reese

  At some point this became a comfort watch.

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  Review by Rafael "Parker!!" Jovine ★★ 9

  Fuera de Serie: 3 Days At The Chamber Of Torture
  A Classic Kind of Awful

  You know what? Among all the films made by someone who lost a bet and had no background or interest in filmmaking – this was alright. Definitely much entertaining and less obnoxious than Black Christmas (2019) and Daisies respectively.

  Don’t get me wrong, the production was a clear failure from the most basic perspective. This film has all the huge editing problems you can think of, the acting is terrible as well, and the story is both easy to understand and simultaneously hard to follow, the background music is questionable, and the mickey mousing whenever the creepy keeper shows up just off-places the entire film.…

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  Review by Ira Brooker ★★★★ 2

  This is one that I sure do wish I could see again with fresh eyes. If I didn't know Torgo was coming, I have to believe the first emergence of Torgo would have blown me out of my damn seat. It's a perfect microcosm of why this movie works when so many other, similar productions don't -- for all of the no-budget inexperience and incompetence on display here, Manos still manages to blindside you with strokes of genuinely unsettling weirdness that throw you off your balance and leave you with a vague sick feeling.

  Wrinkles that could probably be attributed to weak storytelling wind up working in the movie's favor. Why in the hell is this depressing sex cult camped…

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  Review by {Todd} ½

  "oh no...not liturgical dance" -Tom Servo,

  - May Horror Hunt (26/31): boxd.it/5m5ve
  "Watch any horror riffed by MST3K, Rifftrax, or Cinematic Titanic. You may watch them riffed or unriffed;"

  Manos: The Hands of Fate is like the Star Wars: Christmas Special in that it is more of an endurance test than a valuable experience to have. I survived and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew helped me out. I know it's lame to only watch it via MST3K but I needed a chaser for this one sorry.

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  Review by Toing ★★★½ 4

  Lynchian, Lovecraftian, legitimately scary and wholely original. BEGS for a remake, from Carpenter or Zombie, and one that preserves its gaping black backdrops and demonic, bottom frame bubbling reds. This deserves a much better rep. Much more here worthwhile than most films, honestly, a lot of it due to its misunderstanding of verisimilitude and traditional cinematic language. One of the best arguments against competence-first criticism I've ever seen. This is what punk cinema looks like.

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  Review by 𖤐 ½

  Jerma’s Public Domain Horror Movie Night 2021: Night 1, Movie #3

  NEXT UP IN THE JERMA RUMBLE: 6-PERSON MANOS WIFE FIGHT - TORNADO MATCH