Karen Tandy has a rather unusual
medical problem. There’s a lump
on the back of her neck, it’s growing at a phenomenal rate and
the finest tumour specialists in San Francisco are baffled. Luckily Karen
has an alternate source of help – fake tarot reader and ex-boyfriend
Harry Erskine, played with shimmying style by Captain Smooth himself,
Tony Curtis.
Describing himself as a “seller, not a buyer” of occult jibber
jabber, even sceptical Harry has to admit that this is more than just
a troublesome boil when Karen starts muttering an arcane phrase in her
sleep. The weird phrase is then repeated by one of Harry’s elderly
and gullible clients, just before she levitates down the hallway and
hurls herself down the stairs to her death. Even by the far out standards
of Seventies San Francisco, this qualifies as unusual behaviour.
Calling on flaky friends from the city’s spiritual subculture,
a séance at Karen’s home takes a worrying turn when a snarling
head emerges from the table, just before the lounge explodes. Reasoning
that the face looked like an ornamental wooden Indian as seen in front
of old style American stores (and what impeccable detective work that
is) they hit the books and discover the terrible truth behing Karen’s
ailment, which is now an enormous bulge on her shoulders.
The answer? She’s hosting the reincarnation of 400 year old Indian
medicine man, of course, and when he’s ready he’ll pop out
of her back and take over the world. Obvious really.
A visit to a local expert on Native American cultures (Burgess Meredith)
sends Harry to South Dakota to find a modern day magician – John
Singing Rock - who can help send the evil spirit back into limbo. Singing
Rock explains that the medicine man in question is Misquamacas, the most
powerful and merciless Indian magician of all, and his spirit – or
Manitou – may be thousands of years old. Singing Rock also explains,
rather usefully for the palefaces in the audience, that everything from
natural elements to man-made products has its own Manitou. Hmm. Might
prove handy later on…
To make matters worse, all the x-rays beamed into Karen’s lump
have mutated Misquamacas and, when he inevitably emerges from her back
for the final act showdown, the once-great medicine man turns out to
be a half-blind deformed midget, covered in goo. Misquamacas isn’t
just evil anymore - he’s royally pissed off as well.
Thus the stage is set for a frankly baffling showdown at the hospital,
between the forces of good and a pint-sized monster, who seems content
to sit on the floor and assail them with a barrage of cheap special effects – including
a ghostly lizard and an indoor snowstorm. John Singing Rock’s response
involves pouring sand on the floor and banging sticks together, neither
of which make for great cinema. Something more special effectsy is clearly
called for. Harry asks Singing Rock why he doesn’t call on Gitchi
Manitou, the Great Spirit and creator of all things, but the noble (and
impossibly patient) Indian explains that one simply doesn’t harass
Gitchi Manitou. “Well he's going to get a person to person call
from me....collect!” swaggers Harry and off he goes to cut through
the mumbo jumbo and supply an old fashioned American ass-kicking in order
to save the day.
Turning on all the machines in the hospital, Harry plans to channel the
spirit of all this trusty American technology at the primitive dwarf.
A fine plan, you may think, but by this point the Manitou has transformed
Karen’s room into a cosmic vortex (a starfield matte effect that
looks like a Windows 95 screensaver) and conjured up Satan himself, represented
here in true psychedelic Seventies fashion as a swirling mess of coloured
lights.
Singing Rock tries to summon the spirits of the machines, but they won’t
listen to him. “White man’s medicine” he explains,
reassuring the paranoid honkies in the audience that their newfangled
micro technology is far superior to the ineffectual ways of indigenous
people, even when dealing with mystical lunatics from centuries ago.
White man medicine need heap big white man magic to work.
Cue Tony Curtis, a very white man indeed, who steps into the breach and
starts dodging the pink and blue fireballs that are suddenly flying around.
Arcs of electricity flow over Karen’s inert body, and she suddenly
sits up in bed – topless, naturally – and fires laser beams
out of her hands, destroying the evil Manitou and Satan in a freaky-deaky
lightshow, their primitive sorcery unable to cope with the awesome spiritual
power of magnetic tape micro-computers and colour television. “Your
love made it come through her”, Singing Rock explains to Harry
- and, let’s face it, to everyone else
in the audience wondering what the shitting heck just happened.
The menace repelled, Harry and Karen embrace - though we sadly don’t
get to see his response when he realises she’s still got a grotesque
flapping skinbag dangling from her neck.
The Manitou is one of those movies that takes an absolutely nonsensical
premise, executes it with poker-faced sincerity and is thus all the more
hilarious when it wheels out the topless laser-shooting woman battling
Satan with disco lights. As for Curtis himself, he slides through the
proceedings with practised ease, clad in a marvellous array of Seventies
fashions, including a figure-hugging sheer silk shirt that clings to
his nipples with eye-watering tenacity. Seriously. They’re like
monkey’s toes.
Need to know: The Curtis clan just couldn’t escape the clutches
of crap cinema. Tony’s ex-wife spent 1972 tackling giant killer
rabbits (see: Janet Leigh) while their daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, wisely
opted not to fight her destiny and started her career in a whole string
of lurid horrors, ranging from the seminal Halloween, to the passable
Prom Night and the laughable Terror Train (see: David
Copperfield).
The Manitou was based on the 1975 book of the same name by Scottish author
Graham Masterton, who went on to pen several sequel novels, including
Revenge of the Manitou, Burial and Manitou Blood, the last of the series
published in 2005. The Manitou was the final movie from director William
Girdler, whose other Seventies shockers included the bear-faced Jaws
rip-off, Grizzly (see: George Clooney), and the self-explanatory Day
of the Animals, in which the entire animal kingdom goes nuts and tries
to wipe out humanity. The soundtrack for The Manitou was provided by
Lalo Schifrin, the iconic Seventies composer whose swinging tunes graced
the likes of Enter The Dragon, Dirty Harry and Starsky & Hutch
