A bogus psychic and a Native American medicine man combat an ancient entity of unimaginable power.
THE MANITOU (1978)
Cast: Tony Curtis (Harry Erskine), Michael Ansara (John Singing Rock), Susan Strasberg (Karen Tandy), Stella Stevens (Amelia Crusoe), Jon Cedar (Dr. Jack Hughes), Ann Sothern (Mrs. Karmann), Burgess Meredith (Dr. Snow), Paul Mantee (Dr. McEvoy), Jeanette Nolan (Mrs. Winconis), Lurene Tuttle (Mrs. Herz), Felix Silla/Joe Gieb (Misquamacus). Director: William Girdler. Screenplay: William Girdler, Jon Cedar, Thomas Pope, based on the novel by Graham Masterton. Cinematography: Michel Hugo. Music: Lalo Schifrin. Color, 104 min.
Showtime: Saturday, June 13, 11:00pm PST/2:00am EST
Blame it on the lingering effects of last week’s immersion into roller disco cinema but this week I’m singing “Manitou” to the tune of Olivia Newton John’s chart-topping earworm “Xanadu.” Actually, what better day to be writing about William Girdler’s THE MANITOU (1978) than hump day, being one of horror cinema’s most indelible unsightly growth films and years ahead of BASKETCASE (1982) or HOW TO GET AHEAD IN ADVERTISING (1989). Based on the 1976 novel by Graham Masterton, an Edinburgh-born writer of sex instructional manuals turned horror novelist, THE MANITOU finds San Francisco resident Karen Tandy (Susan Strasberg, above) so concerned about the tumor growing on her back that she gets a second opinion from her former boyfriend, Harry Erskine (Tony Curtis), a sham psychic who makes his living cousining widows and grandmas out of their savings and pensions. At first skeptical, Harry becomes a believer after all sorts of weird things begin happening (events that include, but are not limited to, a levitating Laurene Tuttle) and the lump reveals itself as the manifestation of an ancient Native American spirit named Misquamaquas. Though Harry brings in a ringer in the form of South Dakota shaman John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara), who knows the being by reputation and has some idea of how to combat him, all involved soon realize that saving Karen will be, quite literally, “one hell of a problem.”
Like a mud run for charity, THE MANITOU is good sloppy fun that leaves you feeling exhausted and good about yourself afterwards. A natural born hustler, William Girdler was always chasing the tail end of the big money, crafting the African American possession shocker ABBY (1974) to cash in on the success of THE EXORCIST (1973), GRIZZLY (1976) to ride the wave of JAWS (1975), and DAY OF THE ANIMALS (1978) to profit from the mid-70s vogue for “revenge of nature” films. Boasting Girdler’s biggest budget to date and San Francisco locations that bestowed upon the film instant production value, THE MANITOU is anchored by Tony Curtis’ fully-engaged and thoroughly sincere lead performance and enlivened elsewhere by guest appearances from the likes of Stella Stevens (made up, for some occult reason, like Joan Crawford in THE UNKNOWN), Ann Sothern, and Burgess Meredith as “the guy who wrote the book” on Native American black magic and Sausalito’s top manitou man.
The daughter of legendary/controversial/respected/hated acting coach Lee Strasberg, Susan Strasberg had by this point transitioned with grace to middle age and away from her ingenue origins, settling into a run of B-horror films of which this is the jewel in the crown; she had already played prominent roles in the odd cult number THE NAME OF THE GAME IS KILL (1968) and the Dan Curtis-scripted/produced telefilm FRANKENSTEIN (1973) and would go on to pop up, sometimes only briefly, in such 80s fright flicks as BLOODY BIRTHDAY (1981), Bert I. Gordon’s THE RETURNING (1983), and SWEET 16 (1983). Playing a specialist called to consult on Strasberg’s case is Jon Cedar, a familiar face to anyone who watched TV in the 70s, who also contributed to the adaptation of THE MANITOU and served as an associate producer.
I love just about every frame of THE MANITOU and enjoy all the performances (a happy surprise is the entrance of Paul Mantee, ROBINSON CRUSOE ON MARS himself, as one of the befuddled Frisco medicos) but none more than that of Michael Ansara as John Singing Rock, the movie’s exorcist/Quint. Ansara gets all the best lines (“Your God won’t help you. Nothing in your Christian world will help. Not prayers, not holy water, nor the weight of a thousand of your churches”) and his gravely voice is THE MANITOU‘s best special effect. The actor was pushing 60 when he signed on for this and brings to the role just the right mixture of spirituality and world-weariness.
Of Syrian descent, Ansara’s dark skin made him a natural for playing Hollywood exotics of every stripe, from Apache chieftain Cochise on the ABC-TV series BROKEN ARROW to a Klingon commander on STAR TREK. In Gordon Douglas’ ONLY THE VALIANT (1951) – an Indian massacre movie that plays as a dry run for Douglas’ later slaughterfest CHUKA (1967) – Ansara plays one of those marauding renegades whose anarchic machinations are cloaked in horror movie tropes, right down to the shock reappearance after the audience thinks he’s dead… a trait that would pass from redskin savages to the mechanical, unkillable predators of the slasher subgenre, which was born, for all intents and purposes, this same year with the release of John Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN (1978). Though it’s disappointing when John Singing Rock is shunted aside in THE MANITOU‘s final frames, as Karen rises from her hospital bed for a topless mano a mano with “the Mix-Master” (as Curtis’ character calls him), I like that the film’s leading lady gets to play a part in her own salvation (a setpiece that, though it takes place in space, seems to owe a debt less to STAR WARS than Roger Corman’s THE RAVEN).
THE MANITOU‘s laser light denouement is what earns it a slot in the TCM Underground lineup and Psychotronic infamy but I think the movie is better than its reputation. The film assembles a pleasing assortment of characters, most of whom live in the comfortable gaps between authenticity and artificiality, between legend and history, between purity and compromise. Tony Curtis’ rascally Harry Erskine (a character that contrasts nicely with the actor’s turn as HOUDINI) is coded as a man of great potential and sensitivity, yet one who squanders his natural gifts on artifice and illusion; ditto the true psychic played by Stella Stevens, for whom one too many bad seances has convinced her that there’s a better living in running a nautical-themed curio and occult gift shop. Despite his prowess as a shaman, John Singing Rock is depicted as eking out a living as a subsistence farmer on government land while even Karen’s doctors, in a throwaway line early on, lament that too much of the time they should be spending healing the sick is taken up by administrative duties.
Girdler and his collaborators (among them source novelist Masterton, who conceived the plot during his wife’s nervous first pregnancy, as he sought distraction in an article on indigenous American myths published in the 1955 edition of The Buffalo Bill Annual) lay a deceptively complex foundation for THE MANITOU that makes the resolution, however diluted to modern eyes by the climactic use of low tech special effects., satisfyingly complete. In the final analysis, THE MANITOU is fun,it is an aerobic, preposterous, charming balls to the wall good time, which is a claim I cannot make of many modern horror movies (I’m looking at you, INSIDIOUS and INSIDIOUS 2), which emphasis the dire and hopeless and the cruel when they should be trying to excite and beguile us. Though often pigeonholed as a point-and-shoot profiteer, William Girdler proves himself an efficient and artful director who might have gone on to bigger and better things had he not died in a helicopter crash in January 1978 (three months beforeTHE MANITOU‘s premiere) while in preproduction in the Philippines for his next film.
Trivia: THE MANITOU‘s second assistant director was Alain Silver, perhaps better known to anyone who has read this far as the author/co-author/editor of such important genre studies as The Vampire Film, The Zombie Film, The Film Noir Encyclopedia, The Film Noir Style, The Film Noir Reader series, The Gangster Film Reader, The Horror Film Reader and What Ever Happened to Robert Aldrich? His Life and Films.
Even if there were a place left in this world where it might still be possible for Joan Crawford to get a fair trial post-MOMMIE DEAREST (1981), there exists no such venue in which to defend her for TROG (1970).
In her final theatrical film, the former GRAND HOTEL (1932), MILDRED PIERCE (1945), and JOHNNY GUITAR (1954) star was widowed and broke, a quarter century past her only Academy Award win, and nearly two decades beyond her final Oscar nomination. She had deglamorized for Robert Aldrich’s WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962) and turned in one hell of a performance to boot but the Academy instead favored costar Bette Davis (who ultimately lost to Anne Bancroft). While Davis went on to another high profile gig with Aldrich in HUSH, HUSH, SWEET CHARLOTTE (1964), Crawford (who had been cast in the film but ducked out, purportedly due to illness, and was replaced by Olivia de Havilland) had to contend with down-market gigs with William Castle and work in a TV pilot directed by some pink-cheeked pischer named Steven Spielberg. In England, however, she was still a name and so she traveled there to headline the grisly circus shocker BERSERK! (1967). When the producer, Herman Cohen, requested her services again two years later, Crawford jumped at the opportunity to play an anthropologist who discovers the missing link and attempts to integrate the throwback into modern society.
In JOAN CRAWFORD: THE ESSENTIAL BIOGRAPHY, writers Lawrence J. Quirk and William Schoell delineate Crawford’s professional options while shooting “the lamentable TROG“…
“Joan’s power to delude herself had to be on overdrive during filming, as even she must have known that TROG was light-years away from POSSESSED or HUMORESQUE. But Joan wanted to keep in front of the camera. She wanted to work and she needed the money, so she went to England, where the work was.”
TROG is just one of those movies that draws hoots and hollers by mere virtue of its title. More people have derided the film than have seen it but I am uninterested in trying to persuade anyone that TROG is better than its reputation. Nevertheless I think it’s worth noting that nobody involved in the production, from director Freddie Francis (Jack Clayton’s cinematographer on THE INNOCENTS) to Crawford to DP Desmond Dickinson (who had photographed Olivier’s HAMLET), was deluded into thinking they were making anything more than a cost effective riff on KING KONG (1933). It was one for the punters… fast, cheap (well, after Crawford’s travel and salary were deducted from the budget), and easy. Though Crawford was obliged to wear her own clothing and make costume changes in the back of a transport van, she reportedly had a grand time filming TROG and even secured a product placement for Pepsi Cola, her late husband Al Steele’s old company, where she remained on the Board of Directors. Stripped of the baggage of kitsch and with the RiffTrax option on mute, TROG shows Crawford having a great time. She smiles more in this than she had through the entire 1960s.
Being a Kong story, things have go to pear-shaped, of course (having everything to do with petty township councilman Michael Gough, seen plotting in the rear), and build to a tragic finish. Even if you haven’t had the pleasure of keeping company with TROG you can divine that the day goes very badly for the character in Act III, at which point he goes on the run, kills a bunch of townies, makes off with a little girl who has fainted from fright at the sight of him, and retreats to his Berkshire hidey hole. A team of squaddies shows up to bring him down. Crawford intervenes to bring the child to safety and, without a bargaining chip (or any understanding of the concept of leverage) Trog is gunned down.
It’s all pretty rote stuff but Crawford gives it her all, without grandstanding. She allows herself a moment of grief before turning away from the camera (and, by inference, society/mankind) to move on. Unfortunately, a pesky TV journalist gets in her way, determined to ask her how she feels.
The question of her feelings hanging in the air like cordite, Crawford casts a mournful look back.
For the briefest of moments she considers What Has Been. Who knows what Crawford was “seeing” at this moment? And then…
It’s as if the actress is saying, at the end of a 45 year career that bridged the silent to the sound era and encompassed the entire Golden Age of Hollywood, “To hell with it.”
Francis and Dickinson hold the take as Crawford retreats to the back of the frame. The journalist (David Warbeck, a former TV Robin Hood, here at the start of his own film career) looks momentarily baffled before he elects to follow the breaking story rather than linger on yesterday’s news.
Far from being held accountable for the collateral damage caused by Trog’s rampage, Crawford’s character walks away unnoticed. Forgotten. As if she too is now an extinct species, a throwback, lost in the distant past. But what a past.
Joan Crawford: “The last shot of that film was a one take and it was a very emotional moment for me. When I was walking up that hill towards the sunset I was flooded with memories of the last fifty years, and when the director yelled cut I just kept walking.”