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Karen Tandy is admitted to hospital with a growth on her
upper back. It continues to swell at an alarming rate. An
attempt to operate is aborted when Karen suddenly opens her
eyes and mutters a strange phrase, compelling the surgeon
to cut into his own wrist. Harry Erskine, an old flame of
Karen's, is a charlatan clairvoyant who preys on wealthy old
ladies. One such client, after hearing a reading, utters the
same phrase before throwing herself to her death down the
stairs. Experts at the hospital finally have to concede that
the lump is a foetus. Harry discovers that the phrase is Red
Indian in origin, and that the now huge lump is the seventh
birth of the spirit (or manitou) of Misquamacus, an extremely
powerful medicine man who originally lived 300 years ago.
He seeks out medicine man John Singing Rock to fight its control
over Karen and those around her, but Misquamacus emerges into
the modern world and the pair are forced to use extreme and
unusual measures to save all their lives...
As
a parallel to avoiding the score of an important football
match you have taped for later viewing, I have studiously
side-stepped every opportunity to watch this film in the past.
Graham Masterton, who wrote the original
best-selling novel is, in my humble opinion, the
greatest and most inventive horror fiction writer of all time.
So, you understand my problem; a film, no matter how good,
is never going to match the combined impact of a strong storyline
and an active imagination. I've lasted from the seventies
but now, as in that well-remembered episode of The Likely
Lads, I've fallen at the last hurdle (all praise the great
Editor!).
It
was never going to meet up to my expectations, but The
Manitou is neither dire or outstanding, instead fitting
comfortably somewhere in-between. The opening scenes of Harry
Erskine (Tony Curtis) in his apartment at home are not so
much quirky as bordering on slapstick and don't fit the style
at all. He later turns serious (as befits the seriousness
of the situation) but, unnaturally never quite becomes angry
at the hurdles put in his path. I hate overacting; however,
Susan Strasberg as Karen Tandy is an acting lesson in playing
down the role. None of the cast looked particularly scared.
I don't know about any of you, but if a head rose from out
of a table, or a man was stripped of his skin before my eyes,
I'd probably be suffering palpitations.
It's quite a serious omission to forget (or worse, ignore)
the reason for the rebirth of Misquamacus. In the book he
returns intending to wreak revenge on the white man, who all
but wiped out his Red Indian nation. The novel very nearly
made the ancient medicine man a sympathetic character by having
him intend to kill the same number of white men as his own
dead race.
Also
on the downside, the music is reminiscent of any 1970s TV
show of the time, a mind-numbing jazzy background which intensifies
with loud screeches when anything frightening is supposed
to be happening. You have to keep in mind here that there
was little in the way of special effects at that time, so
it's worth mentioning the nice make-up effects used for Misquamacus,
and the camera tricks (mainly superimposing and lighting effects)
which attempt to show the forces in conflict.
Not
a bad film for its time, I suppose, but I would rather recommend
you track down some Graham Masterton horror books. Among the
many you will find three sequels to The Manitou: Revenge
of The Manitou, Burial, and the recent release
Manitou Blood.
Ty
Power
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