The Manitou (1978) sees screen legend Tony Curtis battle an evil Native American shaman who lives in a girl’s neck.
Pretty standard stuff, really…
The Manitou
“The Manitou” pops up in blood-red letters, along with paintings of Native American demons. The paintings are kept half offscreen, as if the movie is already embarrassed of itself. The music is orchestral with a Native American undercurrent. The composer is Lalo Schifrin, who wrote one of the most recognizable themes in television history — the Mission Impossible theme.
The Manitou is based on a novel by Graham Masterton. In the time it takes to write this article, Masterton will have written two novels, five short stories and an instruction book on sex.
I could write an instruction book on sex.
Lesson One: Crying Is Natural…
William Girdler directed. Girdler helmed such fun flicks as Grizzly and Day of the Animals. He was fairly prolific. He did nine films before being killed in a helicopter crash at the age of 30.
Don’t Have A Cow, Manitou
The movie displays an X-ray. The X-ray is also partially offscreen. At this point, I must wonder if the horizontal settings on my TV got skewed.
“Have you messed with my TV settings?” I yell at Mrs. Wrenage.
“You care more about your TV settings than you care about my heart settings!” Mrs. Wrenage yells back.
Cue two-hour fight. Woo-boy, let that spat be seeded with salt and never spoken of again. I mean, it really went dark, man. Note to self: crying is natural.
Anyway, two doctors discuss the X-ray.
“The girl has a tumor that is growing 7.3 millimeters an hour.”
“That’s impossible!”
The two doctors are played by Jon Cedar and Paul Mantee. They aren’t A-listers, but they are somewhat recognizable. They take a stroll through the hospital as they chat. The hospital has a major 1970s thing going on. Does it have orange carpeting? You bet! At any moment, I expect Farrah Fawcett to roller-skate by, dancing to disco, and eating fondue.
The Manitou From Nowhere
We meet Karen, the patient. She is played by Susan Strasberg. Strasberg did not have a big career as a leading lady. She eventually ended up in roles like “Passenger” in the Chuck Norris/Lee Marvin vehicle, The Delta Force. As a result, Strasberg had a second career as a writer.
Dr. Hughes (Jon Cedar) asks Karen to unfetter clothing so they can examine her neck. That is what I hate about going to doctors…and dentists, car mechanics, teacher conferences, etc.: they always make me unfetter clothing.
We get a look at Karen’s tumor. It is on the back of her neck and…EGAD!
The tumor looks like she has a baby tortoise under her skin! It looks like someone attached a miniature Wehrmacht helmet to the top of her spine! It looks like her neck is growing a breast!
And…DOUBLE EGAD! Dr. Hughes touches it! I’m uncomfortable with this…
Karen says she feels no pain, but…
“The tumor moves sometimes, like someone turning over in bed…”
The doctors decide swift surgery is the answer. Meanwhile, a fetus development chart conveniently hangs on the wall, and they gravely intone that what’s inside the tumor looks exactly like it…
I’m The Manitou
Enter screen legend Tony Curtis. At one time, we all thought we owed Tony a debt of thanks for bestowing Jamie Lee on the world. Then social media happened…
Tony had an interesting career that spanned over six decades in film.
Tony even got to work with Jimmy Stewart in Winchester ’73. I’ll never forget the shooting contest in that film where Jimmy mistakenly shoots through the center of a piece of necklace thrown into the air that already had a hole through its center. Hence, his bullet left no mark, so he puts a stamp over the hole, throws it into the air again and shoots through the stamp.
Tony Curtis plays a charlatan fortune teller in The Manitou. He makes a living bilking old ladies out of their social security money. He tells their futures with tarot cards out of his apartment while wearing an embroidered robe and a fake moustache.
Despite the fact he is in a movie about a woman growing a shaman in her neck, Tony looks to be having fun. He knows his time as an icon is past, but he appears to love being in front of the camera (he has a Robert-Preston-in-The-Last-Starfighter vibe). His positive energy emanates from the screen as he turns on funky music and dances while drinking beer from a wine glass.
Work it, Tony!
Karen calls and interrupts this bachelor paradise. Karen and Tony are an estranged couple, but now that she has a shaman growing out of her neck, she’d like to see him again.
The Manitou Who Shot Liberty Valance
Tony and Karen meet up in an oriental garden. I perk up because maybe ninjas will be there, too!
Karen talks to Tony about the tumor and the upcoming operation. They go out for seafood and admit they miss each other. It rains on them. The music swells. They go back to Tony’s place and drink wine. Tony gets the bright idea to read Karen’s, surely, bright future.
Tony turns up the following tarot cards: tower, moon, devil and death. Yikes, that’s not so bright. Tony tries again and turns up: tower, moon, devil and death. At least he’s a consistent good-time-fun-ruiner.
From there, it cuts to Tony and Karen sleeping in front of the fireplace. Tony wakes up as Karen starts mumbling words in her sleep that sound suspiciously evil.
“Pana witchy salatoo.”
Mrs. Wrenage also mumbles in her sleep. It usually sounds like…
“I can’t talk right now. He’s sleeping right next to me. I will meet you tomorrow at Motel Rumpy-Pumpy.”
The next day, Karen is in a hospital OR, lying on her stomach and all zonked out while a team of doctors in green scrubs hover over her. They are waiting for her to be completely unconscious before they pose her in funny positions, is my guess.
Wait, my mistake. They are there to remove the tumor. Dr. Hughes puts a scalpel to the growth when he is interrupted by the soundtrack becoming dominated by stringed instruments. That’s usually not a good sign (see Psycho). Karen opens her eyes and whispers evil words.
Dr. Hughes turns the scalpel on himself and tries to cut off his own hand. You know, The Manitou would make a good double feature with Michael Caine’s The Hand. They both are a bit unhinged.
The Rain Manitou
Meanwhile, Tony gets a visit from an old lady client. He decided to skip hanging out at the hospital while the love of his life undergoes life-saving surgery. The old lady takes a seat while Tony reads her fortune with tarot cards. The death card comes up once more.
For whatever reason, this causes the old lady to pitch a fit. She groans and waves her hands around while uttering “Pana witchy salatoo!” After she adds shamble-dancing to the mix, Tony calls for an ambulance. The old lady yells some more, ditty-bops out the door and proceeds to float down the hallway until she takes a header down the stairs in a way I’ve never seen before. She breaks pretty much every balustrade of the banister on the way down.
It reminds me of Bela Lugosi fighting the octopus in Bride of the Monster, for whatever reason.
Tony goes to the hospital and checks in on a sleeping Karen and pow-wows with Dr. Hughes. Tony tells Dr. Hughes about the old lady who swanned-dived down his building’s stairwell and how she said the same words Karen said in her sleep the night before.
Putting two and two together, Tony and Dr. Hughes realize something weird is going on. It’s not every day an old lady floats and speaks the same weird words as a woman with a fetus growing in her neck. Tony trail-balloons the idea of black magic and gives a couple of introspective lines on the subject that display !ACTING! ability.
It might be a goofy movie, but Tony is not just there for a paycheck. Well…yes, maybe he is somewhat just there for the paycheck — but he’s not phoning it in. Good on you, Tony!
Iron Manitou
Tony visits a friend named Amelia. She seems to be a gypsy. I don’t know if she is an actual gypsy. Rather, I made a judgment based on her appearance. She wears a scarf, talks about fortune telling and gives off the vibe that she might steal my wallet and give me ringworm in the process.
Amelia listens to Tony’s black magic theory. After checking with her Rob-Reiner-circa-All-In-The-Family-looking husband, she decides they should have a séance to get answers.
Cut to night and rumbling thunder. I get the feeling this seance is not going to go well. Tony, Amelia, her husband, and some lady who came into the movie out of nowhere, sit around table. Amelia chants in a weird language. I’m pretty sure she said “barista” in there somewhere. Is she talking about Starbucks?
More thunder rumbles. The wind comes up. The house gets electrical issues. Green light appears.
A slimy head rises out of the table. It looks like they built a pool of black syrup in the middle of the table and poked a prosthetic head out of it. Nice! The effect is simple but effective. The head mumbles scary sounds and sinks back out of sight.
Next, lightning and wind destroy the room.
Tony, Amelia, her husband and the out-of-nowhere woman pull themselves out of the wreckage and deduce they are dealing with an evil spirit.
You think?
Manitou On Fire
Tony goes back to Amelia’s place to figure things out. Luckily, Amelia’s husband has a book that explains exactly what they’re dealing with. It says Native American medicine men could escape a bad situation in their present and cause themselves to be reborn in another person’s body many years down the line.
Tony and crew go to visit the book’s writer, who turns out to be the great Burgess Meredith! As usual, Burgess Meredith looks approximately 80-years-old. He always looks 80-years-old.
Nevertheless, Meredith was born in 1907, so he would have been around seventy in The Manitou. One of my favorite roles by Meredith is his turn in Magic (which came out the same year as this flick), where Anthony Hopkins is a crazy ventriloquist in love with Ann Margaret. Meredith has a cynical edge to him in that film that I hadn’t seen from him before.
With the help of Burgess, Tony and company learn that “Pana witchy salatoo” is the language of the Piscataway tribe. (Duh, pretty obvious, really.) It means “my death foretells my return.”
Beyond that, Burgess is reluctant to say there is an actual medicine man growing in a woman’s neck, even as he talks about a case of a medicine man growing in a woman’s arm in the 1850s. In Burgess’s professional opinion, Tony should get another medicine man from South Dakota to fight fire with fire.
Fight Fire With Fire…that’s a good Kansas song!
The Third Manitou
Since the last procedure went so well (he only tried to cut his hand off; he didn’t actually accomplish it), Dr. Hughes decides to operate on Karen again — this time with an optical laser. That sounds extremely reasonable in this movie’s universe. What could possibly go wrong?
Aaaaaaaand the laser shoots up the OR room. Things explode and get fried by blue light while nurses cower in terror.
To make sure I caught the many subtle nuances of the movie version of The Manitou, I also read the novel it was based on. They did not have a laser in the book, so my guess is this laser was a product of Star Wars, which came out a year earlier. Lots of lasers got put in movies after Star Wars. That laser probably added an additional $500,000 to The Manitou’s box office because they could put it in the trailer and make The Manitou look like a science-fiction adventure film.
After the laser does its thing, Karen stands in the corner of the OR with her now giant tumor bulging out of her back. She hisses…
“Don’t touch him. You must not touch him. He is in pain. He is hurt. The light hurt him.”
She punctuates the speech with an over-the-top scream.
Dr. Hughes and Tony realize “the light” means the X-ray machine. Dr. Hughes explains they gave the tumor enough X-rays “to see through Fort Knox.” That amount of radiation could not have been good for a developing fetus. Now they don’t just have a medicine man growing inside a woman’s neck. They have a deformed medicine man growing inside a woman’s neck.
“We’ve created a monster,” Dr. Hughes ominously says.
I am unashamedly in awe of this goofy movie.
The Quiet Manitou
Tony drives to a farm where he meets a modern-day medicine man named John Singing Rock. It’s Michael Ansara! Ansara was TV’s go-to guy to play Native Americans for a while. He was also in that Outer Limits episode Harlan Ellison claimed James Cameron ripped off for The Terminator.
Tony lays out the situation, and Singing Rock asks if Tony loves Karen.
Sure, Tony does — at least as much as a guy-who-stays-home-to-goofily-read-fortunes-to-old-ladies-while-Karen-is-getting-surgery-to-not-die can.
“Love is one of the strongest medicines there is,” Singing Rock sagely says.
Maybe, but I prefer Alka-Seltzer.
Singing Rock explains the kind of bad-ass villain they are dealing with. The shaman inside Karen’s neck could be on his fifth reincarnation. Apparently, medicine men get stronger with each life they live. Additional rules are touched upon, similar to vampires with crosses, but I get the sense the rules are whatever the movie needs them to be…
Singing Rock is reluctant to help because Tony is a whitey, but he will do it for $100,000 donated to an Indian education fund…plus some tobacco. That is beautifully progressive and racist at the same time!
The Elephant Manitou
Tony whisks Singing Rock back to the hospital. Dr. Hughes (who looks a little bit like Daniel Craig) is waiting for them. Dr. Hughes and Tony tensely watch Singing Rock pour red and white sand around Karen’s bed while the music intensifies the intensity of pouring sand around a bed.
Whew! The sand pouring went okay. I wasn’t sure it was going to, what with all of the manufactured suspense (by the way, the sand is supposed to trap the evil shaman within its boundaries).
Singing Rock rattles what look like homemade S&M whips at Karen, who was sleeping until that moment. She now talks for the bad medicine man growing inside her humongous hump. She basically says his kung-fu is greater than Singing Rock’s kung fu.
Karen also reveals the shaman’s name — Misquamacus. This causes Singing Rock to grow so shocked that he has to sit down. Apparently, Miquamacus is the Michael Jordan of evil medicine men.
The Music Manitou
Tony paces the waiting room like an expectant father. I suppose he is; it is a fetus on Karen’s neck, after all. Thunder and lightning crash outside. Tony peeks in on Karen again. He’s probably thinking, with a hump like that, she should be living in a belltower! Or crossing the desert! Hey-yo!
Tony visits a nurse at the help desk and asks if she has any drugs to ease his tension. She does and hands him — I kid you not — Alka-Seltzer!
I love serendipity. I also love Tony’s hip jeans. They have leather back pockets.
Meanwhile, the male nurse guarding Karen has all of his skin removed (offscreen) by malevolent shaman telepathy. The screams of the male nurse draw the attention of Tony, Dr. Hughes and Singing Rock. They enter the room to see Misquamacus birthing himself from Karen’s back.
Body horror time. Karen is on all fours while her hump writhes. We see the outline of a hand and arm moving inside it. The hand punches through the hump. As Misquamacus crawls out of Karen’s back, she groans like she is having a bad time of it on the loo.
Finally, Misquamacus plops onto the floor all naked and slimy. He is basically Peter Dinklage crossed with Glenn Danzig crossed with Tim Curry from Legend (minus the horns).
Singing Rock immediately puts Misquamacus to sleep with his Indian powers.
Misquamacus is played by little person Felix Silla. Silla play a lot of great roles over his career. He was Cousin It in The Addams Family. He played one of the hang-gliding Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Silla was a penguin in Batman Returns, a Dink in Spaceballs, Twiki in Buck Rogers and more.
The Manitou In The Iron Mask
Dr. Hughes wants to call the police. Singing Rock says that is a bad idea. Everything has a spirit of its own, even inanimate objects. If cops with guns show up, Misquamacus will take control of the spirits in their guns and turns the cops’ weapons against them.
“Here we are in a world of computers and technology and some creature from 400 years ago is scaring the hell out of us,” Tony laments.
“What is more frightening is if we don’t stop him,” Singing Rock replies.
“What then?”
“Absolute devastation.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the stakes have officially been raised…
Misquamacus wakes up. He is trapped inside the circle of sand, but that doesn’t stop him from raising the skinned nurse from the dead. The zombie nurse shambles toward the new nurse/guard. The new nurse/guard is sleeping — because everything that is happening is so standard and boring, as to illicit drowsiness — you should understand…
Singing Rock arrives in time to wave his hands at the zombie nurse. He may also throw powder. It is hard to tell. Regardless, zombie nurse hits the floor, un-reanimated.
Karen reveals herself to still be alive, but she will definitely need to consult a skin removal specialist about that empty flesh sack hanging off of her back. Karen speaks for Misquamacus. She reports he “feels pain” and “will destroy you.”
Thanks for the update, Karen.
Misquamacus proceeds to break the sand seal. When that doesn’t work, he summons a demon that takes the form of a man in a dinosaur costume crawling along the floor while superimposed over Misquamacus. Dr. Hughes holds his hand out for the dinosaur to bite. The dinosaur obliges and promptly disappears while Dr. Hughes screams bloody murder.
Am I really watching this movie or am I experiencing delirium tremens?
The Wicker Manitou
Tony lugs Dr. Hughes back to Dr. Hughes’s office so the man can bleed all over his nice furniture. If only they were in a hospital full of rooms designed to handle bleeding people…
With Dr. Hughes safely out of danger, Tony hops into the elevator to return to Karen’s room. When he gets to the appropriate floor, he steps out into a set that looks like a reject from any number of 1960s fantasy TV shows. The hallway is “iced” up with carved Styrofoam and sprinkled glitter.
The nurse is still at her desk and — wonder of wonders — she is frozen in a Heil Hitler salute!
Tony rushes into Karen’s room to find Misquamacus gone and Singing Rock on his knees.
“I tried to stop him,” Singing Rock says, “But he gave me a face full of surgical instruments.”
That is the genuine dialogue. I am not overselling it.
As Tony helps Singing Rock out of the room, Singing Rock explains that a demon called “Star Beast” caused all of the ice (in case you’re wondering). A winter wind blasts through the hallway, making Tony and Singing Rock’s day worse than it was. Plus, the wind decapitates the frozen nurse.
Misquamacus emerges from a doorway, walking on his knees and chanting.
Tony throws a typewriter at Misquamacus. The typewriter explodes (like, a literal explosion, with flames and everything), and poof…Misquamacus is gone again.
I am at a loss for words with the wonder of it all.
A Manitou For All Seasons
Singing Rock laments that they are beaten. Singing Rock’s personal spirits aren’t helping him overcome Misquamacus, but Tony doesn’t want to give up on them, dagnabit!
“I’m going to make a person-to-person call to [Singing Rock’s spirits]! Collect!”
I’m getting a bit lost in the lunacy here. Tony makes no call, collect or otherwise. Rather, Tony and Singing Rock end up in Dr. Hughes’s office. As if we don’t have enough going on, an earthquake shakes the room apart. It looks like they built the entire room on some sort of elaborate dolly. Even the walls move. If they spent most of the effects budget on this earthquake room, that would explain a lot about the movie’s eventual climax, but we’ll get to that…
“It was no earthquake,” Singing Rock said. “Misquamacus just called The Great Old One.”
I am flabbergasted by the amount of awesome this movie continues to dispense. Now we are getting a cross-over with H.P. Lovecraft’s universe! Truly, The Manitou is a gift that keeps on giving.
Bat-Manitou
While in Dr. Hughes’s office, Tony notes the doctor’s fancy computer. Tony proposes this solution to their problem: if everything has its own spirit — even inanimate objects — they should turn on all of the computers in the hospital and focus their collective spirts on bringing Misquamacus down.
“It just might work,” Singing Rock says.
How Michael Ansara didn’t burst out laughing as he said that line should have garnered him an Academy Award.
Tony and Singing Rock tell Dr. Hughes to give them five minutes, then unleash hell — by turning on every single computer in the hospital. All. At. The. Same. Time.
Madness!
You know what else is getting turned on? Movie lovers everywhere. This is cinema at its purest.
Tony and Singing Rock return to the frozen hallway. Even if the frozen hallway looks chintzy as can be, Tony gives it his all, acting-wise, by selling the cold with his nipples.
Put on an undershirt, Tony, please!
The Bicentennial Manitou
Tony and Singing Rock approach Karen’s room. A fireball flies out, and they narrowly avoid it. This is an example of the movie going that extra mile. Totally unnecessary, really, but Girdler must have said…
“A fireball WILL shoot out of that door, or you will never work in this town again, Special Effects Guy! I’m the guy who had the vision to blow up a grizzly bear with a bazooka! Obey!”
Somehow, some way, the movie finds another level of awesome. Tony and Singing Rock enter Karen’s room, which has become the void. There is nothing in there but Tony, Singing Rock, Karen’s comatose body lying on a bed and a floating Misquamacus, all within a field of green stars.
The Great Old One appears behind Misquamacus. The Great Old One is basically an outtake from the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The level of craftmanship renders me speechless, which is fine, because I’m typing this…
Manitou On The Moon
Dr. Hughes heroically activates ALL of the computers in the hospital from his fancy computer.
Singing Rock shouts within the void, ordering the computer spirits to “Kill Misquamacus!”
Misquamacus laughs. Singing Rock continues to shout. Tony looks concerned. Computers compute. Volt gauge needles swing into the red. Electricity crackles.
As Dr. Hughes’s fancy computer overloads, he scrambles to escape the room, and do you know what happens to him? Can you guess the obvious logical result of his heroic actions within the standard parameters of traditional storytelling?
Dr. Hughes blows up!
It makes no sense, yet at the same time, it makes perfect sense.
Meanwhile, the computer spirits continue to ignore the shouting Singing Rock. Misquamacus roars in triumph as he floats among green stars and 2001: A Space Odyssey outtakes.
“Who do you think you are?” Tony shouts at Misquamacus. “We’re not going to scream anymore at each other!”
This is all the further Tony gets in his old-man-shakes-hand-at-cloud rant because the computer spirits manifest themselves as lightning that awakens Karen, who sits up in bed — topless — and shoots pink laser beams out of her hands that blow Misquamacus up.
I don’t do drugs, but I’m totally high right now, aren’t I? That’s the only way to explain what I’m seeing. I ate a cinnamon roll this morning. Whatever bakery that cinnamon roll came from had a worker who was doing LSD, and he accidentally dropped a tab into the dough that ended up in my cinnamon roll.
Now The Great Old One is lobbing fireballs and asteroids at Topless Karen while she continues to shoot pink lasers out of her hands. The action culminates in a huge explosion that destroys The Great Old One and returns us to the hospital room where Misquamacus is now an ash stain on the floor.
Weary heroes, Tony and Karen hug. In what is surely a visual metaphor that represents the danger being over, Karen’s top is once more sensibly covered.
Super-Manitou
The movie shows us a sunrise to let us know it is a new beginning — a new world free of malevolent shaman growing in women’s necks. For that, we can be grateful.
Tony says goodbye to Singing Rock, but first…Tony bequeaths Singing Rock with tobacco.
Truly, a reward well-earned.
As the camera pulls away to an aerial view of the city, the movie lays this heavy title card upon us:
“FACT: TOKYO, JAPAN, 1969. A FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOY DEVELOPED WHAT DOCTORS THOUGHT WAS A TUMOR IN HIS CHEST. THE LARGER IT GREW, THE MORE UNCHARACTERISTIC IT APPEARED. EVENTUALLY, IT PROVED TO BE A HUMAN FETUS.”
The Manitou
Wow, what a movie! They don’t make them like this anymore. It’s a fine art to balance sheer wackiness with sincere effort. How does one make sense of the peculiar madness of it all?
One day a guy said to himself, what if a shaman grew in a woman’s neck? I should write a book about that.
A publisher said, I got this manuscript about a shaman growing in a woman’s neck. I should give the author money and print thousands of copies.
Then a movie guy said, I got this novel about a shaman growing in a woman’s neck. I should throw $3 million at it and make a movie.
Tony Curtis said, I once dated Marilyn Monroe, but that doesn’t make me too good to star in a movie about a shaman growing in a woman’s neck.
Then one day I said, I should write an article about a movie about a shaman growing in a woman’s neck.
Then you said, I should read an article about a movie about a shaman growing in a woman’s neck.
And people say there is no God. No way this amount of goofiness could string itself together in a purposeless universe because such a universe would destroy itself through abject absurdity. No, this amount of goofiness needs intelligence to steer it away from self-destructive stupidity the way one steers a child learning to walk away from the edge of the stairs.
Thank you, The Manitou, for enlightening us. I love you and want to have your baby in my neck.
