Fate Saves Workprint of Manos: The Hands of Fate

SEWilco writes "One of the worst horror movies, Manos: The Hands of Fate, has come back from the grave. The work print was rediscovered during a move, and an attempt has begun to transfer it to digital HD medium." If you've never had the joy of watching MST3K's treatment of Manos: The Hands of Fate you're missing out on 90 mins of magic.

Comments

The original thread

[ConaxConax]

The Manos find was documented on the Something Awful forums, here is a link to the original thread if anyone is interested, it is an interested work. May be NSFW. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3450845

Why buy it alone when you can watch the MST3K?

[CRCulver]

If you want to see this legendary awful film, you can already buy the Mystery Science Theatre 3000's DVD set which contains the film alone on one disc, and MST3K's great comedic treatment on another.

No doubt some will wish to treat Manos on its own, in its uncommented bad-cinema purity, but I imagine a lot people would find the MST3K a better way to approach the film.

Re:Why buy it alone when you can watch the MST3K?

[Dachannien]

If you look at TFWebsite, you'll see that part of the reason for doing this transfer to HD is that the original theater print was made by taking the original 16mm print, making a 35mm negative from that, and then making positives from that for theatrical distribution. In essence, the footage seen in theaters and on MST3K was two copies away from the original, and they skimped on the transfers, resulting in horrible film quality.

But the guy doing the restoration found an original 16mm work print, and he's doing the HD transfer from that.

In terms of cinematic quality, this will be a huge improvement. On the other hand, in terms of entertainment quality, this movie was so god-awful that Joel and the Bots were only barely able to salvage it. What I'd love to see happen is for someone to transfer the silhouettes, audio, and sketches from the old MST3K version into the new HD release of this movie, so we could all enjoy (or run screaming from) both versions in HD glory.

Re:yay!

[hag3r]

Several people involved with the shoot (including the guy who played Torgo) later committed suicide.

AFAIK, the only one from the cast who committed suicide was John Reynolds (Torgo). It is speculated that the things he wore on his legs permanently injured his knees during the shoot, and that the pain later on drove him to commit suicide.

That anyone else involved in the shoot killed themselves afterwards is most likely just a myth.

Re:yay!

[enemorales]

The title already gives a hint of the creativity involved in the film: "Manos" = "Hands" in spanish. So the title is like "Hands: The hands of Fate".

Re:yay!

[ConceptJunkie]

I've read that poor John Reynolds was a troubled person to being with. It's a shame he committed suicide.

Also, according to the same article the camera could only shoot 32 seconds of film at once, which is a pretty amazing limitation to deal with.

Yes, "Manos" is a terrible, boring and disturbing film, but it is not entirely without merit. For one thing, the music is pretty decent, even if repeated too much. The whole thing is a weird story and this new discovery of a workprint is an equally weird coda.

Manos, Manos, Manos.... why?

[Dripdry]

As a collector and aficionado (of sorts) of B-movies, Manos seems to have merely been in the right place at the right time with MST3K.
There are many movies that could be lumped in with "worst of all time". Some are awful, some are hilariously fun, but there are definitely other contenders (mst3k hardly scratches the surface).

Try Guru The Mad Monk, Mama Dracula, War of the Robots, or anything shown at B-Fest in the last 30 years (manos was finally shown last year).