The Manitou (1978)

You ever have that experience of watching a film for the first time and asking yourself, 'Why the Hell didn't I watch this before?'   Well, that was my reaction when I finally got around to watching The Manitou (1978) over the weekend.  I actually remember when this film was originally released - it was heavily promoted in TV spots (those were the days when cinema releases were regularly advertised in commercial breaks on British TV) - but I was too young to see it.  Whilst I'm pretty sure that it turned up in a late night slot on ITV in subsequent years, I never managed to catch it then and its UK TV screenings seemed to dry up.  I don't recall it having a UK VHS release while DVD/Blu Ray releases in the UK have been patchy.  But, thanks to the magic of the internet and its plethora of streaming sites of dubious legality, I was finally able to watch it the other day.  It has to be said that The Manitou fully lived up to its magnificent reputation as a truly lunatic cinematic experience.  Clearly made to cash in on the then current cycle of Exorcist-inspired demonic possession films, in its latter third goes off completely at a tangent and starts crossing into Star Wars territory (which had just been released) with characters shooting laser beams from their hands, star fields and explosions in space.  The film's eccentricity should come as no surprise, bearing in mind its pedigree: co-written and directed by exploitation specialist William Girdler (who had previously enjoyed a hit with Grizzly) and adapted from a popular novel by prolific British pulp writer Graham Masterton.  

I can't claim to be overly familiar with Masterton's work and have never read the source novel, but I'm assured by those better versed in his works that most of the lunacy in the film version of The Manitou actually comes from the book.  The movie is apparently a fairly close adaptation of the book, with the script only changing a few plot details, pruning a couple of sub-plots and characters and shifting the location from New York to San Francisco.  Girdler's style perfectly matches his material, with the film coming over as the cinematic equivalent of the sort of pulpy, mass market paperback you might pick up from a newsstand in a station or airport in both tone and execution.  Backed by Avco-Embassy, the film gives Girdler a somewhat larger budget than usual, which he deploys well in terms of production values, special effects and cast, with the film overall looking very slick, with excellent photography and sound quality.  But it is still the lunatic nature of the plot that lifts The Manitou above the average level of seventies horror films.  Starting with commendable briskness, we immediately meet some of our main protagonists, with Karen (Susan Strasberg) undergoing hospital tests on a mystery growth on the back of her neck, with her doctors concluding that, far from being a regular tumour, it has the charactersitics of a growing foetus.  With this diagnosis, Karen does he obvious thing - she asks her former employer, fake psychic Harry Erskine (Tony Curtis) for help.  After various weird incidents, including one of Harry's regular clients, an old lady, levitating her way out of his apartment and crashing down the stairwell, to her death, Harry and some paranormal investigator colleagues he consults with conclude that the rapidly growing lump on Karen's neck is the 'manitou' of a long dead Native American medicine man, (who has a real grudge against the white man - and who could blame him?), in the process of being reborn in corporeal form.

Advised by a cranky old anthropologist (Burgess Meredith) that they need to consult a living Native American medicine man, Harry persuades John Singing Rock (Micheal Ansara) to help.  With Karen admitted to hospital as the lump grows, the film starts to take a left turn into absolute insanity, with the 'manitou' being born from Karen's upper back (in some surprisingly decent prosthetic effects) in the form of a malignant dwarf, Harry and John battle to contain it in her hospital room.  Both John and the 'manitou' invoke other 'manitous' (or spiritual life force) in their battle, with the more powerful reborn medicine man invoking a lizard man that attacks one of the doctors and eventually freezing the entire floor of the hospital containing Karen's room.  The evil medicine man eventually invokes the 'Great Old One' (Masterton's works frequently reference Lovecraft), causing the whole building to shake.  Harry suggests John channels the power of the 'manitous' of the various electrical devices in the hospital (in particular the main computer) to combat the reborn medicine man (who has never before encountered such spiritual energy) and repel the 'Great Old One' who is gradually emerging into the universe via a portal.  Returning to Karen's room, they now find themselves in an illusion of outer space, a vast star field, with Karen's bed and the shaman apparently floating in the void.  John tries channelling the machine energy, but can't do so effectively as it is from 'white man's technology'.  Luckily, Karen at this point revives and manages to channel the energy herself, sitting up in bed and engaging in a laser beam battle with the evil 'manitou', eventually destroying him and causing the portal to explode before the 'Great Old One' can emerge.  At which point everything returns to normal.

As barmy as all this sounds, the fact is that, to the credit of Girdler's direction, that way out conclusion just seems to flow naturally from what has gone before.  Somehow, Girdler moves the film progressively and smoothly through what starts as an Exorcist/Rosemary's Baby type rip off to ultimate near surrealism, gradually building toward the climax through an escalating series of supernatural incidents and weird occurrences.  The film neatly balances itself, with sceptical Harry and his paranormal investigating colleagues spending the first part of the film trying to explain everything in rationalist terms, while the latter part mirrors this with the rationalist hospital doctors forced to accept the existence of a supernatural threat and eventually help combat it through their scientific technology.  Girdler's success in maintaining audience suspension of disbelief for the endurance of the film, despite the wild stuff occurring on screen is greatly aided by the cast.  Tony Curtis, despite looking as if he'd just been dredged up from a week long session in an opium den (and probably thinking for large parts of the filming that he was still trapped in a bad trip) is truly magnificent as Harry Erskine.  He has the perfect degree of smarmy charm to convince as a fake psychic, donning a cloak and false moustache to fleece old ladies, but is equally convincing as a sceptical investigator, reluctantly forced to accept that the very supernatural forces he has faked and dismissed are real.  By contrast, Micheal Ansara as John Singing Rock, (despite being of Syrian descent, Ansara spent a lot of his career cast as Native Americans), delivers a suitable stolid and serious performance,full of gravitas, which contrasts nicely with Curtis; flamboyance.  The rest of the cast, which includes Stella Stevens, Susan Strasberg, Burgess Meredith, Ann Sothern and Paul Mantee, are all excellent as well, all resisting the temptation which afflicts many such films to play for laughs or simply phone in their performances.  The special effects work throughout the film are uniformly pretty good, with the utterly lunatic climax surprisingly well executed.

Despite proving popular upon its initial release, The Manitou failed to spawn any sequels, despite the ending leaving the door open for follow ups and Graham Masterton writing a number of other novels featuring both Erskine and The Manitou.   This was, perhaps, due to the death of director Girdler before the film was even released, killed in a helicopter crash at the age of thirty.  The Manitou undoubtedly stands as the pinnacle of his career and a fitting epitaph, showing that he was more than capable of making the transition from low budget to mid budget movies.  He makes good use of the additional resources at his disposal for The Manitou, delivering a slick-looking, fast paced piece of exploitation, packed full of incident, enjoyable performances and articulating its narrative clearly and effectively.  Most of all, The Manitou is prime schlock which isn't afraid to fully embrace the inherent ludicrousness of its central premise and run with it, building to a true fever dream of a climax, but unlike its low-budget, poverty row predecessors, it executes it all with aplomb.