Films That Witness Madness

review

THE MANITOU

A couple of years back, two of my old childhood favorites came out on DVD. THE MANITOU and LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH were two movies that seemed to be playing every other Saturday afternoon on one of the major television networks as minor time wasters between game shows and new programs. I must have watched both films dozens of times through the years but nearly a decade had passed between the DVD releases and my last viewing of either film. So it is with a great sense of shame that I now admit that I have not watched either DVD since I purchased them all those months ago. Why, you ask? Because my track record of reliving childhood memories has not been so great as of late and I wanted my old, warm, kiddy memories to remain intact. But I had nothing better to do this weekend so I decided to crack the plastic and toss them in.

LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH remained a superior little film, tense, creepy, weirdly sexy and just a bit strange. Would THE MANITOU live up to the memories?

Unfortunately, no. It doesn't. At all.

Susan Strasberg stars as Karen, a 28 year old (HA!) woman who has begun to grow what appears to be a tumor on her back. Her doctors are baffled so Karen turns to her old lover Harry for support. Harry is a charlatan who reads Tarot cards for rich, stupid old women - and dances to disco music while drinking beer out of wine glasses, facts that should surprise no one as he's played by Tony Curtis. As the tumor grows by the minute and the doctors still can't find any answers - it's also resistant to surgery, a doctor who tries to remove it has his scalpel turn against him - Harry decides to do some digging. It turns out that some black magic is involved and after a seance with some old friends, Harry turns to an Indian medicine man for help. Poor Karen's tumor turns out to be much worse than cancer. It's a cocoon of sorts and soon an ancient, reincarnated medicine man will emerge from her back to bring about the end of the world.

With the help of Satan.

Sound dumb? It IS dumb but it's also strangely amusing in that Ed Wood kinda way. The whole film is a mess of plot holes and inconsistencies. Characters double back on their decisions left and right, people's motives change by the minute and nothing much happens according to simple logic. The inclusion of Native American folklore helps THE MANITOU seem fresh but it's little more than a Demon Possession film tarted up with some lousy special effects and second-rate set design. By the time Karen gives birth (?) to the little Indian with a name I'm not even gonna try to spell, the entire film has gone so incredibly gonzo that trying to maintain any sense of direction is difficult if not impossible. You just have to sit back and try to hold on to your sanity as the little bastard freezes an entire hospital wing, summons plastic demon lizard puppets and teams up with Satan to fight a lazer battle with our heroes.

In terms of casting, the film is a genuine mixed bag. Strasberg, still yummy at 40, manages to do a somewhat decent job but all she really has to do is lie on her back in a hospital room for 80% of the film's running time. A brief guest spot by Burgess Meredith provides a nice change of pace but the majority of the film's running time is spent with the terribly miscast Tony Curits. Say what you will about Curtis but he definitely had a great deal of charm that made him an interesting actor to watch throughout the years. Here, however, that charm is like poison to the proceedings. He veers so hard and so fast between camp and serious that his character appears more mentally unbalanced than believable. At the mid-way point, Curtis is teamed up with Michael Ansara, playing Singingrock the medcine man, and the film becomes something of a buddy movie as the two get down to business fighting the forces of evil while tossing zingers back and forth with reckless abandon. This relationship might have worked in Graham Masterton's novel - I don't know, never read it - but it doesn't quite work here. That's the problem with the entire casting of the film. Individually, they're passable. Together, they're a mess. Nothing gels and nothing seems to work. There is simply no chemistry.

THE MANITOU was unfortunately the swan song of director William Girdler, an ex-AIP director whose previous films included the surprise box office hit GRIZZLY, another Nature Gone Wild shocker DAY OF THE ANIMALS, ABBY, the Pam Grier vehicle SHEBA, BABY and the cult slasher favorite THREE ON A MEATHOOK. Girdler was one of those directors you knew could do much better work if he was simply given much better material. He had that William Castle ability to entertain through simple scares and one-liners but he also had the natural eye of a director begging to be given a chance at something greater. That he spent the last years of his life working on THE MANITOU is unfortunate as the film does so little well thanks to a screenplay that is equal parts incomprehensible and ridiculous. Now not all of THE MANITOU is junk, mind you. There are some surprisingly effective scenes - the seance scene, in particular, is quite creepy - and Girdler's direction remains fluid and striking through-out. But there is only so much you can do with a movie involving a 400 year old, slimy, Indian midget with an attitude and THE MANITOU quickly descends into such mind-blowing nonsense that nothing Girdler can do can stop it from imploding.

Chalk this up as another childhood memory that should have stayed a childhood memory.

Not recommended.

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