The Manitou
Our Price: $33.13
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $29.99 (click here)
Category: DVD
See more DVD releases
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jon Cedar, Michael Ansara, Stella Stevens, Susan Strasberg, Tony CurtisBrand: Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 1.0; English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 1.0
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-03-06
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
Movie Reviews of The Manitou
Movie Review: "Guard well the pips!"
Summary: 5 Stars
"Guard well the pips," mystic Harry Erskin tells an elderly client just prior to encountering Misquamacus, a 200 year old medicine man that has been reborn out of Susan Strasberg's back! Okay, this sounds weird but it's very enjoyable and wonderfully weird in a good way! THE MANITOU is one of those rare movies that just gets better and better as it moves along.
Tony Curtis is great as the mystic ("Ya oughtta see him in his Mr. Wizard outfit!") and Susan Strasberg is electrifying as Karen Tandy in this wild sci fi/ horror flick. Michael Ansara almost steals the show as John Singing Rock, a modern day medicine man hired to do battle with the most powerful entity of them all. Stella Stevens, Eve Arden, and Burgess Meredith are also along for the ride in William Girdler's (GRIZZLY, DAY OF THE ANIMALS) most ambitious movie. I can't help but wonder what he might have accomplished if he hadn't died in that nasty helicopter crash!
This movie is like a slow moving freight train that just keeps pickin' up steam. A freaky seance, a frozen nurse who gets decapitated, a powerful earthquake that occurs only in the hospital, and then...and then Miss Strasberg steals the show from Mr. Ansara in one ot the most visually stunning showdowns ever put on film. Just imagine opening a hospital door to see an illusion of outer space in the tranquil, private room. Imagine that the deformed Misquamacus is floating in space in front of you while Miss Strasberg is floating lifeless on the bed to your left. In the distance, behind the fiendish medicine man, is a great mass of energy know as "the Great Old One." Then imagine that this entity is throwing blazing fireballs at you as you cower in the doorway. All seems to be lost until Miss Strasberg suddenly sits up as her hospital gown slips down. The tragic girl, not quite as dead as the viewer has presumed, raises her arms and fires bolts of electricity (machine manitous) at the medicine man, quickly dispatching the rascal. Then she and the Great Old One go at like Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef! The topless woman firing bolts of electricity from her fingertips as the Great Old One counters with his cosmic fireballs! Wow...what a battle!! You have to see it to believe it! Who wins? Buy the movie and you'll find out!
Five stars just ain't enough for this one folks...so, unofficially, I'll give it a TEN!! This is one of the most entertaining movies I've ever seen...Period! Don't look for award winning acting or some deep, profound message...you'll be disappointed. But, if ya wanna be entertined, this oughtta do the trick! If it doesn't work for ya, try reading a MILLIE THE MODEL comic book. 'Nuff said!
Summary of The Manitou
What surgeons thought to be a tumor growing on the neck of patient Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg of PSYCH-OUT) is actually a fetus growing at an abnormally accelerated rate. But when Karen reaches out to former lover and phony psychic Harry Erskine (Academy Award® nominee Tony Curtis), he discovers that she is possessed by the reincarnation of a 400-year old Native American demon. Now with the help of a modern-day medicine man (Michael Ansara), Erskine must survive this ancient evil?s rampage of shocking violence, and forever destroy the enraged beast known as THE MANITOU. Stella Stevens, Ann Southern and Burgess Meredith co-star in this infamous horror shocker produced and directed by William Girdler (GRIZZLY, DAY OF THE ANIMALS) from the best-selling novel by Graham MastertonFeatures:Theatrical Trailer,TV Spot
Lurid, ludicrous, and laughable (and those are the good parts), The Manitou is one of those movies that asks more questions that it answers. For instance, were respectable actors like Tony Curtis and Burgess Meredith so in need of a payday that they agreed to take part in this nonsense? Does the film fall into the so-bad-it's-good category, or is this horror story just plain horrid? Viewers will draw their own conclusions, assuming they can get through this 1978 tale about a centuries-old, evil Indian medicine man who returns to wreak all sorts of vengeful havoc on an unsuspecting populace. The setting is San Francisco (a place you'd think would be more tolerant of such alternative lifestyles), where Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg) seems to have been chosen at random as the host for the manitou's latest regeneration. When she goes to the hospital complaining about a tumor growing on her back (it starts out grapefruit-sized but enlarges at an alarming rate), doctors determine that the thing is in fact a living fetus. But their decision to bombard it with x-rays may not be the wisest course of treatment. When they then fail to cut it out (manitous apparently don't like scalpels), bogus psychic Harry Erskine (Curtis), Karen's love interest and a fellow who spends most of his time duping gullible old ladies, starts investigating alternative methods of extermination, seeking out a fortune teller (Stella Stevens) for a séance that goes very, very wrong, consulting a doddering old professor (Meredith, camping it up), and finally bringing in a contemporary medicine man (Michael Ansara) to try to keep the malevolent Misquamacus at bay. There are a few scary moments and a couple of nice set pieces, but horror fans will find The Manitou extremely tame by new millennium standards; and the climactic battle between good and evil is so silly as to beggar description. "If only we had some authority!" worries the Curtis character when he realizes what they're up against. A good script and better acting, direction, effects work, and all the other elements of a decent movie would have helped, too. --Sam Graham
Stills from Manitou (click for larger image)
|
Similar DVD Movies
Dark Night Of The ScarecrowVCI; Release date: 2010-09-28; DVD
Best price: $7.06
Price in other shops:
Trilogy of Terror (Special Edition)MPI; Release date: 2006-08-29; DVD
Best price: $11.94
Price in other shops:
Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (Remastered, Special Edition)Warner; Release date: 2011-08-24; DVD
Best price: $13.56
Price in other shops:
The Legend of Hell HouseFox; Release date: 2001-09-04; DVD
Best price: $4.59
Price in other shops:
Nightmare: 30th Anniversary EditionCODE RED ENT.; Release date: 2011-07-26; DVD
Best price: $14.49
Price in other shops:
GargoylesHTV; Release date: 2011-05-17; DVD
Best price: $13.31
Price in other shops:
Damnation AlleyVIS; Release date: 2011-07-12; DVD
Best price: $10.68
Price in other shops:
The CarUni; Release date: 2008-05-06; DVD
Best price: $12.60
Price in other shops:
SuperstitionFox; Release date: 2006-10-10; DVD
Best price: $34.63
HumongousRelease date: 2011-11-15; DVD
Best price: $10.25
Price in other shops: