A review of: Manos: The Hands of Fate (http://www.torgo.org/torgo/review.html)
By: Glen Berry
 
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     Manos was made by a man who apparently sold fertilizer. I don't know why he
decided to make a movie but he did. I suppose that a movie can be made
worse than this. Perhaps you could film say, a stationary object, and just
let the camera run for 24 hours with edits only when you ran out of film.
All speculation aside, Manos: The Hands of Fate is as unwatchable as they
come. The story (as near as I could tell) begins with a young couple
driving out into the desert with their young daughter. They become lost
and arrive at a small shack at nightfall where they are entreated to spend
the night by a odd bow legged man. They soon discover that the shack
belongs to "The Master" and that he intends to keep the woman as one of
his undead wives. 

     I set out to watch this film all the way through to the
end. In my opinion as a film reviewer, it is deceitful to review a film
you have not seen completely through, no matter how bad it is. I could not
endure this film. It is awful in every way a movie can be awful. The
performances were terrible with the possible exception of the bow legged
man being passable. The actor in the title role of Manos was overbearingly
melodramatic and just missed being humorous in his overacting.
Technically, Manos was on the same level as a bad student film. The film
was riddled with shots that were completely out of focus, overexposed,
damaged by light leaks, flicker, blown out and had lens flares. The 
overpowering music jumped in and out jarringly throughout the soundtrack.
There were no sound effects or ambience and often mouths moved when there
were no dialogue (sometimes for several seconds) and vice versa. It might
be an exaggeration, but every cut seemed to be mismatched, too long or a
jump cut. The film would have been greatly improved if only if had been
edited correctly. There were shots where actors delivered multiple lines of 
dialogue as we watched the back of their heads. Creatively, there really
wasn't much to speak of. It just drags on and on and on and the pay off is
some bad special effects, a man droning some cheesy mystical incantations
and some women rolling around in the sand supposedly in undeadly combat.
Manos is truly a endurance test even for the late night cable viewer.