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Fate Saves Workprint of Manos: The Hands of Fate

Posted by samzenpus on from the won't-somebody-please-think-of-torgo? dept.

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.

20 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Re:"Digital HD medium" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The transfer is in HD on to a digital medium. Stop being such a literal douchebag, fuck.

  2. yay! by MickyTheIdiot · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This film is the only movie ever to make me physically ill (except maybe ones that cause motion sickness).

    It was literally made by a manure salesman.

    It was made with a wind-up camera that could only take a shot for about 60 sec. or so (which is why there is constant jump cuts).

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

    You can go on and on. It's a bit of cinematic history.

    (I think Tarantino owns one of the prints of this, however...)

    1. Re:yay! by hag3r · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:yay! by Alsee · · Score: 2

      I hear the assistant director's name was Clippy.

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    3. Re:yay! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The camera only allowing 60 second shots by itself isn't necessarily a big problem. Next time you watch a movie, count the number of seconds between clips. Films usually only use 7 second clips. Micheal Bay is even worse, he has so many clips that are 1 second long last movie I checked. The bigger problem is a director and film crew that doesn't know how to use equipment to their advantage.

    4. Re:yay! by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

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      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    5. Re:yay! by uigrad_2000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Also, most people have only seen this film through the edits made by MST3K.

      I normally love all MST3K stuff, but in this case, they complain about how the whole movie just doesn't make sense. The reason it doesn't make sense is that a lot of the important scenes were cut out, to make room for all the MST3K content. They chose to cut out plot-important scenes so that they could be sure to preserve all the "driving in silence" scenes at the beginning of the movie.

      Essentially, MST3K edited it horribly, and then proceeded to make fun of how badly it was edited.

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    6. Re:yay! by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 2

      "Space Mutiny" suffered a similar fate. Yes, it's an awful movie and yes, the writing was pathetic, but again, some key plot exposition got cut for MST3K and the movie definitely makes more sense when viewed uncut.

      But let's face it, I've probably watched the MST3K episode of "Manos" a dozen times, but the uncut/unriffed movie only once. I'm pretty certain I would never have seen it, and probably not even heard of it, if it weren't for Joel and the Bots.

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      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    7. Re:yay! by Sporkinum · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's the ring tone I have assigned to my wife.

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      "He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
  3. Heritage by mattie_p · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not that this movie is any good, but such works SHOULD be transferred to digital/HD media before they are lost forever. How many classic silents are lost forever? If only the studios hadn't lost their copies... Anyway, continuing a trend to digitize movie archives? Nothing to see here, move along.

    1. Re:Heritage by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      It isn't the same for Hollywood movies. For example, I don't think anyone would argue that the movie Gigli is worthy of preservation. But 100 years from now, historians may look back on Internet archives to see how everyone is calling Gigli an awful piece-of-shit movie that uses minutes of their life that they can never get back, but they would not be able to view the movie themselves to appreciate it. Wouldn't that be a loss?

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      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  4. Re:"Digital HD medium" by sourcerror · · Score: 2

    Ever heard of DV tape?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DV#Magnetic_tape

  5. The original thread by ConaxConax · · Score: 5, Informative

    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

    1. Re:The original thread by ConaxConax · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I should probably note that the thread was made by the guy who is doing the restoration work, and he created the website in TFS and has a load of cool pictures and stuff.

  6. Why buy it alone when you can watch the MST3K? by CRCulver · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Why buy it alone when you can watch the MST3K? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Have you even looked at the quality comparison between the DVD release and the current work?

    2. Re:Why buy it alone when you can watch the MST3K? by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Why buy it alone when you can watch the MST3K? by Creepy · · Score: 2

      you haven't seen bad movies then...

      Try a marathon of
      Hobgoblins
      Vampires vs Zombies
      Sorority House Vampires from Hell
      Zombies Gone Wild (which is the worst movie I've ever seen I think - and this plotless disaster had a huge budget compared to the next one, which is better...)
      O.C. Babes and the Slasher of Zombietown

      if you haven't gouged your eyes out, gone insane, or drank yourself unconscious by that point, throw in "best worst movie" Troll 2 or Biker Zombies from Detroit, which are bad on their own, but masterpieces compared to the rest of this trash - they are more Manos or Plan 9 From Outer Space bad, as in you can laugh at them instead of just groan in agony.

  7. Manos, Manos, Manos.... why? by Dripdry · · Score: 4, Informative

    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).

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    1. Re:Manos, Manos, Manos.... why? by dkleinsc · · Score: 2

      The thing is, while there are lots of bad movies out there, there's nothing I'm aware of that's quite so staggeringly bad. There's no redeeming quality whatsoever - little to no plot, nothing resembling acting, a pathetic attempt at musical score, directing and cinematography that's makes Ed Wood look like Ang Lee by comparison, a 'fight' scene that involves people getting massaged to death, and costuming that attempts to make people look menacing while wearing a nightgown.

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