Manos: The Hands of Fate

Manos: The Hands of Fate is a film written, directed, and produced by Americann fertilizer salesman Hal Warren in 1966, as a result of a bet. He intended to make a successful horror film on a very small budget (reportedly $19,000). The result was a movie considered perhaps the worst ever made.

The story is a stupefying mishmash about a vacationing couple and their little daughter who find themselves at a lodge that turns out to be the headquarters of a devilish cult run by "the Master". The Master has a bevy of beautiful concubines and a servant named Torgo, who is supposed to be a satyr. Due to a lack of both budget and, some might say, competence, Torgo's goat legs were conveyed by dressing actor John Reynolds in overlarge pants and stuffing them full of padding. Reynolds himself made the fake cloven hooves that are difficult to see onscreen.

In 1993, Manos, which had lain in obscurity for decades, became a cult favorite when it was shown on the television spoof series Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Such was Warren's inexperience and technical ineptitude that he forgot to add the film's opening credits in post-production, leaving the movie with an early driving sequence that seems to go on forever. Reportedly, Warren's small crew became so bemused by his amateurishness and irascibility that they derisively called the movie Mangoes, Cans of Fruit behind his back.

The film's premiere at the Capri Theater in Warren's hometown of El Paso, Texas is a tale unto itself. Heavily promoted, it was attended by numerous local dignitaries and media. Warren rented a limousine to deliver himself and his cast to the theater; the limo would drop off one group, then make the block and pick up another. Only minutes into the screening, the audience began laughing and heckling the movie, and soon were in open hysterics. Humiliated, Warren and the rest of his cast made a hasty, shamefaced exit before it was even over.

Three of the actors in the film, including Reynolds, committed suicide not long after it was made — though, despite some people's grim sense of humor, these acts were probably not motivated by their affiliation with Manos.

Users of the Internet Movie Database have consistently voted the film a position on the site's list of the 100 worst films ever made.