Actors look awkwardly right into the camera with obviously zero instructions from the director as the camera just rolls. It’s so incompetent in every single aspect, from the first frame to the last, in such a unique way you’ve probably never seen before. The editing and pacing is completely off the rails, the acting is completely absurd with lines that hardly could be written by a sober person. There’s so much eye-rolling and what-the-fuck-moments here that it is hard to keep track. Where to even begin… the fact that the film was shot with a rotten potato of a camera that was able to just film 32 seconds at a time, is just the top of it. Here’s a drinking game: take a shot for every technical flaw and fuck-up that pops on screen, and you’ll be dead of alcohol poisoning just after the ten first minutes or less. But since The Master already has a dozen of wives in his harem, Torgo wants her for himself. But we soon learn that he loves beautiful women and The Master wants her. The wife finds the painting very unsettling and says with the most monotone-dubbed voice: “ He looks so sinister… oh, Mike, I’m scared…he has the meanest look…” And most of all, as Torgo said, he doesn’t like children.
Torgo lets them stay for the night, even though he gives a warning with “ The MASTER would be very DISTURBED! “ As they settles in they see a painting of the master, who looks more like a Mexican drug lord. Anyway, they ask him for some directions, but Torgo says that there isn’t any way out of here, and it will be dark soon. While they have some kind of a staring contest, Torgo finally delivers one of the greatest lines in the history of cinema: “ I am TORGO! I take CARE of the place, while the MASTER is away! “ And he then says “ But the CHILD, I’m not sure the MASTER would approve, or the dog. And one can see right away that this man has some serious issues as he’s twitching, barely able to walk, completely zoned-out and disorientated with a hopeless expression on his face that screams: Kill me now, please! Well, he wasn’t acting, more on that sad story later. He’s half-human and half-satyr, with big knees and dressed as a homeless man from a western movie.
As they continue to drive through the deserted countryside, in a driving-segment that seems to last forever while the soundtrack is consisting of elevator music, they arrives to a place which is guarded by Torgo. And forget about any sound, all dialogues were horribly dubbed, assumingly in his henhouse or something, by three persons in post-production.Ī family of three, the husband Mike, wife Margaret, their daughter Debbie her little dog (which of course is soon to be killed) is on a road-trip on a desert place where they seem to be lost. He then gathered some amateur actors, a budget of $19,000 and a 16 millimeter camera from the stone-age that could take only 32 seconds of footage at a time. Warren had no time to waste and scribbled the outline for his horror film on a napkin, a film in which he would write, direct, produce and be the star in. Anyway, one day he had a coffee with a screenwriter where he claimed that it wasn’t so hard to make a horror film, and made a bet with the screenwriter that he could make en entire film on his own. Yeah, we’re talking about an Ed Wood here. But while the passion was there, the talent was not. Warren was a middle-aged man who worked as a fertilizer salesman for a living, but had a certain passion for film and was also a member of the local theatre.
#Hand of fate moonlit horror movie#
A movie so hilariously, mind-boggling bad that hardly any words from this universe would make it justice. In the summer of 1966 in El Paso, Texas, something really magical happened: Manos: The Hands of Fate was made.