"The Manitou" - Zach's Take

This is our second reader request, having been recommended to us by DeWayn Marzagalli. He recommended it on the basis of two points: it was one of the worst films he'd ever seen and it features a talented cast that is completely misused.

He's right on both accounts.

It's preposterous, silly, and has no idea what it's trying to say. The film concerns a woman played by Susan Strasberg who develops a tumor on the back of her neck. Her doctors are concerned -- it doesn't feature the same characteristics of a normal tumor. Instead, it resembles something closer to a fetus. We later learn that is is actually a malevolent Indian medicine man, who is attempting to attain the status and power of the great Wichi Manitou (the Indian "God," according to the film). In order to do this, he has to go through the cycle of being reborn through people eight times. This is all explained to us through many scenes of laborious and glacial exposition, which culminates in a painfully boring "showdown" between a reluctant mercenary medicine man (not as badass as it sounds), Tony Curtis, and the aforementioned evil medicine man.

The film is notorious for it's final scenes of trippy, nonsensical visuals (think the "evolutionary" wormhole trip from 2001: A Space Odyssey meets the ending of The Neverending Story). Those minutes were certainly entertaining in a "Were these people serious?" kind of way. The rest of the movie, however, is entirely forgettable and completely inconsistent in tone. For example, the movie starts out rather serious and eerie, but then moves on to Tony Curtis' character (who wears a fake mustache for some reason) giving tarot card readings to elderly women. It's kind of jokey and stupid, I guess in an attempt to lighten up the tone. But it doesn't work. It just makes it feel like it's part of a different film. Also, we're lead to believe that Tony Curtis' character doesn't actually believe in spiritualistic nonsense, but later on he acts in a way that suggests that he does. Essentially, the writers change his character to fit the dramatic needs of the current scene, without any kind of logic or reason for the change.

Also, the movie is kind of racist. That reluctant medicine man I mentioned earlier? He keeps mentioning how inferior the Christian god is and how white man's science is no match for the evil that has taken over Susan Strasberg's neck. Except, in the end, white man's science is EXACTLY what kills the 400-year-old mystic thing. They "channel" all the "energy" from the spirits of the computers in the hospital to destroy the evil spirit (yeah, it's even more stupid than it sounds). And it was all the white guy's idea -- the medicine man never even considered that as a possibility. Yay, white people! Overall, the film is kind of a Native American-styled rip-off of The Exorcist. Same basic structure, just with a lot more overt racism.

The one thing I wholeheartedly enjoyed about this film is how it unsubtly hints at the possibility of a sequel. The good medicine man mentions that they only destroyed the body of the evil medicine man, but the spirit still remains. Duh-duh-duhhhhhh.

It's a shame they never got to make The Mani2. Or, Manitou Fast 2 Furious. Or my favorite, The Manitou Too: Man to Manitou.