Anyone hardcore fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000 should be familiar with the film Manos: The Hands of Fate. Manos is considered one of the worst films that ever appeared on the series. The premise of the show is that mad scientists have captured a test case and show him bad movies. The test subject and his robots make fun of the movies. Manos was the only film that was so bad, the scientists apologized to their victim. It is also considered one of the best episodes of the series.
My family and I started watching the series after it was off the air. I would occasionally pick up one of the boxed sets of 4 episodes that contained a bad movie that I was familiar with. We enjoyed these but we weren’t committed to seeing them all. After our family discovered Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, I began a search for the MST3K version on DVD. Although it would soon go out of print, I was able to find a 2-episode set with it and Manos that they called “The Essentials”. They had determined that these are the shows every fan should see and they are among the best.
This set was our first exposure to Manos and we would soon share it with our other friends that enjoyed MST3K. The movie follows a man, woman, and their daughter on a vacation. They end up lost at an inn that looks nearly abandoned. The caretaker is a creepy bum with big knees named Torgo who speaks with a quivering voice about “The Master”. The master shows up later in a black robe with a big red hand on it. We also encounter a group of women in sheer robes that are his wives. They appear to be a devil worshiping cult. Both Torgo and The Master take an interest in the woman. The Master wants to add her to his collection. The families dog gets killed, the Master’s wives wrestle each other and the Torgo is attacked on the altar sacrificed. At the end, they have all become part of the cult, with the man of the family replacing Torgo as the caretaker.
For the MST3K episode, Torgo also becomes the mad scientists’ pizza delivery man. There are also long scenes in the movie of the family car just driving around the countryside. The test case and his bots recreate this during a break in the movie. It’s also worth mentioning that the word “Manos’ means hands, so the title of the film means “Hands: The Hands of Fate”.
In 2015, a major restoration of the film was done to clean up the audio and video. This version is the one my family saw at a dusk-‘till-dawn bad movie night at a drive-in theater in Memphis. The MST3K commentary is about the only way to make watching this movie tolerable. And I regularly request my wife make me a robe like The Master for a Halloween costume. I would have to wear it to a party with the right crowd for it to be appreciated.
