The Manitou—a film that somehow makes “body horror” sound like a midlife crisis crossed with a garage-sale spiritualism convention. Let’s dive in and sprinkle some dark humor on this 1978 supernatural disaster.
Watching The Manitou is like being trapped at a cocktail party thrown by Tony Curtis and a possessed neck tumor. It begins innocuously enough: Karen Tandy, a woman in San Francisco, discovers a rapidly growing lump on her neck. But no ordinary dermatologist visit will do—this lump is more ambitious than most aspiring actors. It’s a fetus, sure, but it’s also the reincarnation of an ancient Native American shaman named Misquamacus, who apparently couldn’t get a second life through Kickstarter or a Patreon page.
Now, this premise is already teetering on the edge of absurdity. A mystical shaman grows in someone’s neck like a magic bean gone rogue? That’s body horror crossed with a failed experiment in medical tourism. And yet, the film leans in with all the seriousness of a man reading a tax manual aloud in a haunted house. The result: a movie that’s not terrifying but confusing, like staring at a Jackson Pollock painting while someone whispers “you’ll never guess what this is supposed to be.”
Tony Curtis plays Harry Erskine, a fortune-telling fraud who somehow becomes the protagonist by sheer narrative inertia. Curtis, sporting a hairpiece that looks like it survived a wind tunnel, is charming enough to carry you through the film’s convoluted plot—though, let’s be honest, charm can only patch so many gaping holes. Harry’s sidekick, John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara), is an aging medicine man who alternates between sagely pronouncements and inexplicable demands for $100,000 and tobacco. If there’s a moral here, it’s that spiritual enlightenment has a price tag, and it might require you to check your 401(k).
The plot’s absurdity peaks during the surgical scenes. Karen’s tumor-fetus is growing like it’s on steroids, and when the surgeon’s hands shake, he accidentally chops himself with a scalpel. This is supposed to be suspenseful, but it reads more like a cautionary tale: never operate on anything possessed by an ancient shaman unless you have trembling hands and a flair for chaos. Meanwhile, the movie’s attempt at supernatural horror involves seances, levitating clients, and a woman screaming something that sounds like “pana witchy salatoo.” I can only assume this was the director’s attempt to add linguistic gravitas, because it sounds like the worst incantation at a discount Halloween store.
One of the most entertaining aspects of The Manitou is its commitment to escalating nonsense. Misquamacus, once fully revealed, is a dwarf-sized man crawling out of Karen’s neck. Not content with mere birth horror, he reanimates dead nurses, summons a “Lizard of the Tree,” and apparently has enough magical oomph to freeze entire hospital floors in ice. And what’s the heroes’ solution to this escalating apocalypse? Throw a typewriter at him. Yes, a typewriter. Forget magic swords or holy rituals—office supplies are your first line of defense against ancient evil.
The supporting cast is a parade of bewilderment. Burgess Meredith as Dr. Snow offers exposition like an oracle who learned his craft from reading cereal boxes. Stella Stevens, Jeanette Nolan, and Ann Sothern drift through the story like extras in a fever dream. The film clearly wanted to feel like a polished supernatural thriller, but instead it’s a patchwork quilt of horror, slapstick, and very bad ideas sewn together with 1970s polyester thread.
The horror itself is less terrifying than it is… uncomfortable in a “why did I agree to this?” kind of way. Watching a fetus-shaman fight through a human neck is only slightly more disturbing than watching a grown man struggle with a paper shredder, and that’s being generous. Yet, the film occasionally achieves unintended hilarity: the thunderstorm hindering a seance, machines channeling manitou, and earthquakes caused by spiritual tantrums read like a supernatural parody written by someone who watched too many disaster films and not enough anatomy textbooks.
And speaking of physics, the rules in The Manitou are nonexistent. Ice floors appear, demons appear, typewriters fly, and hospitals become arcane battlefields—all while nobody seems to notice the total collapse of reality around them. It’s like the film exists in a bubble where logic took a long lunch break and never came back. By the time the climactic scene rolls around, where Karen channels “machine manitou” to defeat ancient evil, you’re not cheering for her—you’re applauding sheer audacity.
Now, let’s talk tone. The movie takes itself seriously in a way that makes you suspect the cast and crew were too polite to say “this is insane.” There’s an earnestness to the dialogue and performances that clashes hilariously with the material. Tony Curtis’s delivery alone is worth the price of admission—it’s equal parts charm, confusion, and “what am I even doing here?” Susan Strasberg’s Karen is the perfect straight-woman, her terror and confusion providing a grounded counterpoint to the story’s escalating absurdity. Without them, the movie would simply be chaos, and it’s already close enough.
The Manitou’s greatest crime, however, is its potential. The premise—ancient shamanic revenge manifesting in modern urban life—is fascinating and could have been a genuinely chilling exploration of culture, identity, and horror. Instead, the execution stumbles like a drunken man in a wind tunnel. Special effects are unconvincing, the pacing is erratic, and the narrative is a jigsaw puzzle missing half the pieces. Watching it is like being promised a gourmet meal and instead being served a bowl of jelly with a plastic fork.
In conclusion, The Manitou is a spectacularly bad film wrapped in the guise of 1970s supernatural horror. It’s bizarre, laughable, and occasionally horrifying in ways that were clearly not intended. Watching a shaman grow in someone’s neck and summon cosmic horror with a side of typewriter attacks will leave you bewildered, amused, and possibly questioning the sanity of everyone involved. It’s not a good movie—by any metric—but it’s a masterpiece of chaotic ambition, a film where bad ideas collide with genuine curiosity about Native American mysticism, resulting in a cinematic car crash you can’t look away from.
If you watch The Manitou, do so with the understanding that logic, biology, and good taste are optional. Embrace the absurdity, laugh at the horror, and remember: in the world of 1970s supernatural body horror, your neck may be more haunted than your apartment.
