MANOS

In 1966 an El Paso fertilizer salesman by the name of Hal Warren decided to make a feature film. after raising $19,000 (approximately $125,000 in 2020 money) Hal wrote a script, got a cast, acquired props, found filming locations, and a soundless, wind-up camera & film! Hollywood was within his grasp.

After eight days of shooting in the Texas desert, and an unnaturally short 6 hours of editing, the final result was the now infamous film "MANOS" The Hands of Fate. Now considered to be one of the worst films ever made.

MANOS was picked up by a distributor and, for a very short time actually made its way into a few drive-in theaters. Its fame was short-lived and it disappeared into obscurity. That is until 1994, when the show "Mystery Science Theater 3000" featured it, catapulting MANOS to the cult film status it is today.

Since then there have been various re-creations, remakes, tributes, musical adaptations, professional puppet shows, documentaries, books and articles about MANOS.

Even the 6 year old "Debbie" from the film (Jackey Raye Neymen Jones) has a book out called "Growing Up with Manos: The Hands of Fate: How I was the Child Star of the Worst Movie Ever Made and Lived to Tell the Story" It's an interesting look on the making of the film, and how it affects the lives of the actors and crew to this day. The book, along with a large amount of MANOS related merchandise is available, like everything else, on Amazon.

And if that wasn't enough, now there's a traveling tribute/rock band, staring 4 of the main characters from the film! It's "MANOS" The Band of Fate. Understandably silly, and geared for its core audience of horror, tattoo, film and comic convention attendees (for which there are tens of thousands in the US alone.) More on them and tour dates at www.ManosBand.info.

For many years, MANOS was only to be found as a "low resolution" copy floating around on the Internet. Thanks to Ben Solovy from Los Angeles, a Blu-Ray of the film is available everywhere! It also includes the documentary "Hotel Torgo" which takes an interesting look at some of the filming locations.

Because there was never a "copyright" notice on the actual film, the film is now in the Public Domain, but there still has been a good amount of arguments between Hal Warren's son Joe and anyone who has capitalized on MANOS. The question of WHO (if anyone) actually owns MANOS is an on-going debate.

I suggest that you take a look at the non MST3K version on Blu-Ray. Some say that it's unwatchable, some find it to be a lesson for any filmmaker on how NOT to make a film, other just enjoy it because of it's surprising good characters like Torgo and The Master. It will be up to you to decide if it deserves to be on the IMDB "Bottom 100" list or not.