Welcome to today's deep dive. We are we're so
glad you're joining us today because we are looking
at something truly extraordinary. We really are.
The journey this specific piece of media takes
is it's unlike almost anything else in cinematic
history. Right. We're exploring a comprehensive
Wikipedia article detailing the history of a
1966 independent film. It's called Manos, the
Hands of Fate. Yes, the legendary Manos. And
our mission today is to uncover how an objectively
terrible film managed to fall into complete obscurity,
only to be resurrected decades later as this
massive cult classic. It really challenges a
lot of our basic assumptions about how art survives
over time. It does. And I want to say right up
front to you, the listener. If you've ever felt
imposter syndrome or if you've ever worried that
your creative projects just aren't good enough
to share with the world, this deep dive is going
to completely change your perspective on ambition,
failure, and the bizarre life cycle of art. Oh,
absolutely. Okay, let's unpack this. To understand
how this all happens, we need to go back to El
Paso, Texas in the year 1966. Right. So to understand
Manos, the hands of fate, you really have to
understand the man who willed it into existence.
His name was Harold P. Warren. And he wasn't
a filmmaker. Right. No, not at all. He was an
insurance and fertilizer salesman from El Paso.
But he was active in the local theater scene
and had actually managed to land a walk -on role
for the television series Route 66. Which is
where he meets Sterling Siliphant. Exactly. Sterling
Siliphant was a professional screenwriter for
the show. So Warren is just chatting with Siliphant
at a local coffee shop. And he boldly claims
that making a horror movie isn't actually that
hard. The confidence is astounding. I know. He
literally bets Siliphant that he could make an
entire feature film completely on his own. And
he doesn't even go home to mull it over. He grabs
a napkin right there in the coffee shop and starts
writing the initial script outline. What's fascinating
here is the sheer audacity of that moment. That's
what anchors this entire story. You have a fertilizer
salesman with zero filmmaking background deciding
on a total whim to produce, direct, write, and
star in a feature film. And the titles he was
workshopping. Oh, the working titles perfectly
capture that raw, amateurish ambition. He was
calling it things like The Lodge of Sins and
Fingers of Fate during this early phase. Fingers
of Fate. Wow. Right. Well, Warren somehow manages
to gather a budget of $19 ,000 for this, which,
adjusting for inflation, that's about $189 ,000
today. It's a substantial amount of cash for
an individual to raise. It is, but it is absolutely
insufficient to fund a feature film. Not even
close to enough. So to pull off the production,
he hires actors from a local theater and a modeling
agency. And instead of paying them actual wages,
he promises the cast and crew, Offering a profit
share in lieu of a salary is a classic independent
film maneuver. But the catch is that it relies
entirely on the film eventually making a profit.
Which you usually need a good movie for. Right.
It generally requires a cohesive story that audiences
actually want to watch. And the narrative of
Manos defies conventional logic at almost every
turn. Defies logic is putting it mildly. Let's
talk about this plot because it is wild. It follows
a family on vacation near El Paso. There's the
father, Michael, the mother, Margaret, their
little seven -year -old daughter, Debbie, and
their dog, Peppy. The classic nuclear family
setup. Exactly. They are driving through the
Texas desert looking for a place called the Valley
Lodge. They get lost. They have a brief encounter
with the deputy over broken taillight. And they
eventually end up at this weird house in the
middle of nowhere. Which brings us to the introduction
of Torgo. Forgo. Yes. He is this bizarre satyr
-like caretaker who famously greets the family
by saying, I take care of the place while the
master is away. It's such an iconic, weird line.
So the family asks for directions and Torgo just
refuses. is to give them. But Michael insists
they stay the night anyway because his car won't
start. And he completely ignores the objections
of both his wife and the very reluctant caretaker.
Once they're inside, the narrative beats become
completely baffling. They find a painting of
this master alongside a dog with glowing eyes.
Margaret gets spooked by a howl outside. So the
family dog, Peppy, runs out into the dark. And
this is where it gets really strange. Michael
goes out to look for the dog, finds Peppy lying
dead on the ground. casually buries him in the
desert and just goes back inside he just buries
the family dog and moves on it creates a very
jarring viewing experience and while that is
happening outside torgo makes advances on margaret
inside right he tells her he wants to keep her
which is openly defying the master's desires
but then he convinces her not to tell michael
by promising to protect her the madness only
escalates from there the little girl debbie wanders
off and eventually comes back holding a large
dog on a leash and it's the exact same dog from
the eerie painting they saw earlier so the parents
follow her to see where she found this dog and
they discover the master and he is wearing this
robe with two giant red hands on it the hands
of fate if you will exactly and he's sleeping
around a blazing fire surrounded by his multiple
wives who are all just dressed in nightgowns
the master wakes up and immediately declares
that michael must be sacrificed to a pagan deity
named manos and he announces that margaret and
little debbie will become his new wives which
sparks an argument among the current wives they
start fighting over whether a seven -year -old
should be a wife or a sacrifice which then devolves
into a giant cat fight where all these women
in nightgowns are just tumbling around in the
dirt it's absurd and the resolution to all of
this is incredibly bleak the master breaks up
the fight decides he's going to sacrifice torgo
instead severs and burns torgo's left hand and
torgo runs off into the darkness with a flaming
stump Meanwhile, the family makes this failed
attempt to escape into the desert. They have
to return to the house, and Michael tries to
shoot the master, but the bullets have zero effect.
And then the movie just ends with a sudden time
jump. Right. Two new women arrive at the house
looking for shelter. They're greeted by Michael,
who is now fully entranced. And he repeats Torgo's
exact line about taking care of the place while
the master is away. And we see that Margaret
and little Debbie have officially become the
master's new wives. The critic Dan Neal from
the Los Angeles Times wrote a really fascinating
analysis of why the film feels this way. He noted
the film's strange intimacy. Intimacy is an interesting
word for it. It is, but it makes sense. Because
Harold Warren brooked absolutely no collaboration
throughout the entire process, Neal says the
movie serves as a pure slice of his cinematically
transfigured subconscious. That does make a lot
of sense. When you don't have a co -writer or
an editor to... push back on your ideas, whatever
pops into your head just ends up on the screen.
Precisely. You are essentially watching a man's
unfiltered, unedited dream state. Every bizarre
narrative choice, from that casual dog burial
to the lingering focus on the wives fighting
in the dirt, it's all there simply because Warren
thought it should be, without any external filter
to say, hey, maybe this doesn't work. But the
story behind the camera is somehow even more
chaotic than the subconscious dreamscape happening
on screen. Oh, absolutely. Here's where it gets
really interesting. Let's look at the technical
limitations they were dealing with. Warren rented
a 16mm Bell & Howell camera. A hand -wound camera.
Yes, hand -wound, meaning it could only shoot
a maximum of 32 seconds of footage at a time.
32 seconds is an astonishingly short window for
filmmaking. How do you even shoot a basic conversation
or establish a scene with a hard limit of half
a minute per take? You really can't. Think about
trying to write a complex, emotional novel. But
you're only allowed to do it by sending text
messages to your publisher. That's a great analogy.
That's essentially what Warren was doing. He
was creating massive, unresolvable editing problems
before he even stepped foot in the editing room.
And they were constantly rushing to maximize
their shots before the camera rental deadline
expired. Because of that immense pressure, the
onset problem solving turned into a master class
in production disasters. A perfect example of
that involves the cast. Warren had contracted
a local modeling agency to provide actresses
to play the master's wives. But early in the
production, one of those young women, Joyce Muller,
broke her foot. Now, in a normal production,
you would recast the role or rewrite the scene
to accommodate the injury so she could sit down.
Not Harold Warren. He rewrote the script to feature
a completely disconnected teenage couple kissing
in the convertible on the side of the road. Just
completely separate from the story. They have
absolutely nothing to do with the plot of the
movie. They are just placed in the film so he
could fulfill his contract with the actress while
allowing her to remain seated in a car. The compromises
extended to the cinematography as well. Since
the cast and crew all had day jobs, they were
forced to shoot night for night. Which means
they were filming out in the pitch black of the
Texas desert rather than shooting during the
day and applying camera filters to fake the darkness
like a lot of films do. And when you turn on
massive, bright movie production lights in the
middle of the desert at night, it attracts huge
swarms of moths. Oh, man. They are completely
visible, swarming the camera in the final film.
They really are. And the lighting issues actively
ruin the narrative, too. There's a scene where
police officers are supposed to be searching
the desert after hearing Michael fire his gun.
But the production lights... simply couldn't
reach far enough into the darkness to actually
illuminate a search. Right. So to get around
this, the actors playing the cops literally just
stood in place, feigned looking around the immediate
area and then left. The crew was well aware that
it was a disaster. They actually started mocking
Harold Warren behind his back. They renamed the
film. Mangoes the cans of fruit. Mangoes the
cans of fruit. That's brilliant. But the real
nightmare started in post -production. Yes, because
the equipment they used did not allow for location
sync sound recording. There was no audio captured
on set at all. None. Every single footstep, every
rustling bush, and every single line of dialogue
had to be overdubbed later in the studio. And
Warren didn't even bring the whole cast back
to do this. The dubbing was done by just a handful
of people, including Warren, his wife Norma,
and maybe a few others. Which leads to one of
the most heartbreaking details of the entire
saga. At the premiere, seven -year -old Jackie
Naiman, who played Debbie, broke down and wept
in the theater. She was devastated. Because when
she appeared on screen, a grown woman's dubbed
voice came out of her mouth. It's terrible. We
also have to mention the opening sequence. Warren
likely either forgot about the opening credits
or simply couldn't afford to shoot them. So to
fill the runtime, the movie just starts with
a staggering nine -minute sequence of the family
driving around looking for their hotel. With
minimal dialogue or plot progression, it is literally
just nine minutes of driving. If we connect this
to the bigger picture, though, before we move
on from the production itself, it is important
to pause and recognize a much darker, very real
human element to this story that we can't ignore.
Right. John Reynolds, the 25 -year -old actor
who played Torgo, committed suicide with a shotgun
on October 16th, 1966. That was just a month
before the film's premiere. Yes. It was his first
and only film appearance. And while it's easy
to analyze the absurdity of the production workarounds
and the tech his death serves as a sobering reminder
that behind this amateurish piece of media, there
were real people dealing with real struggles.
Yeah, that is incredibly tragic. Just a month
after that, on November 15th, 1966, the film
premiered at the Capri Theater in Warren's hometown
of El Paso. And Warren went all out to make it
feel like a major Hollywood event. He really
did. He rented a massive searchlight to sweep
the sky outside the theater. And he also wanted
the cast to arrive in a limousine. But the logistics
of the limousine really mirror the production
itself. Perfectly. He only rented one single
limousine. Just one. So the car would pull up
to the theater, drop off one group of cast members
on the red carpet, and then physically drive
around the block to pick up the next group and
drop them off. over and over again. It is the
perfect metaphor for the entire endeavor. It
was an illusion of grandeur propped up by incredibly
flimsy logistics. I can't even imagine sitting
in the car waiting for it to circle the block
again. Inside the screening, the reaction was
about what you would expect. The actress playing
Margaret, Diane Murray, reportedly laughed throughout
the whole thing at how ridiculous it was. After
the premiere, Warren himself actually admitted
that it was the worst film ever made. He was
completely aware of the quality, yet he still
felt a sense of accomplishment. He even suggested
they might be able to re -dub the audio again
to turn it into a passable comedy. But ultimately,
he was proud of it because he won his coffee
shop bet with Sterling Sillifant. Right, he proved
he was physically capable of creating an entire
feature film from scratch. But I imagine the
cast and crew felt quite differently about the
outcome, especially regarding that promised Oh,
without a doubt. The film had a brief run at
the Capri and showed at a few drive -ins in West
Texas and Mexico. Official box office figures
are completely unknown. The only actual payout
that anyone received was a bicycle for little
Jackie Naiman and 50 pounds of dog food for her
family's dog. The dog that played Pepe. Yep.
And after that brief theatrical run, the film
vanished into total obscurity. It remained lost
for over two decades. But then comes the television
broadcast that changed everything. The miracle.
A 16mm print of the film eventually ended up
in the home video collecting market through public
domain suppliers. And one of those suppliers
sent a box of random obscure tapes to Comedy
Central. In 1992, Frank Conniff pulled Manos
out of that box. He later said the film had this
undeniable vibe and felt like it might be a crime
against humanity. When they brought it to Mystery
Science Theater 3000, the pacing was so non -existent
that the season crew struggled to even heckle
it. Right. During that nine -minute opening drive,
they resorted to just sarcastically repeating
the title over and over. Manos, The Hands of
Fate. The film broke them. By the end of the
broadcast, the robot characters actually broke
down sobbing. The mad scientists who forced them
to watch the movie actually apologized to the
audience, admitting the film was abysmal beyond
their limits for torture. Kevin Murphy, who voiced
one of the robots, later stated that he genuinely
hated the movie, saying it made his skin crawl.
Yet that single television broadcast completely
saved Manos the Hands of Feet from the ashes
of history. It triggered a massive cultural phenomenon.
Manos. developed this rabid cult following that
started creating their own art based on the film.
Fans have adapted it into four different comedy
stage plays. Four of them. There's a rock opera.
called Manos, Rock Opera of Fate. There's a puppet
musical called Manos, The Hands of Felt. Hands
of Felt. I love that. Yeah. And The Reach goes
far beyond niche theater, too. There are video
games based on it. The CBS television show Elementary
even did an episode where a murderer uses Torgo's
facial features to create a fake police sketch.
It became a universally recognized shorthand
for cinematic failure. Exactly. And that cult
status eventually led to its physical salvation.
In 2011, a Florida State Film School grad graduate
named Ben Solovey found the original 16 millimeter
work print of the film in a collection of old
films in California. A work print is essentially
the rough draft of the film used by the editor
during the cutting process, right? Yes. So finding
it was a massive stroke of luck for preservationists.
Solovey launched a Kickstarter campaign to preserve
and restore the work print for a high definition
Blu -ray release. He asked for a modest amount
of money, but the campaign exploded. He ended
up raising $48 ,000. which was nearly five times
his initial goal. And that restoration project
brought a very bizarre legal limbo to the surface.
In the United States, any work published before
March 1989 generally required a copyright notice
attached to it, or it would fall into the public
domain. And Harold Warren failed to include a
copyright notice on the film. Right, so Manos
the Hands of Fate has essentially lived in the
public domain this entire time. Anyone can use
it. But when news of the high -definition restoration
broke, Herod Warren's son, Joe Warren, started
looking into the legal status. He discovered
that the original script had actually been copyrighted
and registered in the Library of Congress back
in the day. Oh, interesting. He tried to argue
that this script copyright should apply to the
film itself to stop others from profiting off
his father's work. Did that argument actually
hold up? Well, he even obtained pending publication
of a trademark on the phrase Manos, the hands
of fate. But ultimately, the trademark filing
was officially abandoned in December 2018 for
failure to respond. So it's still public. There
is no legal precedent for his specific copyright
argument regarding the script versus the film.
So the legal status remains incredibly murky.
But practically speaking, it is still freely
adapted by fans today. Speaking of adaptations,
the story came full circle in an incredible way.
Jackie Naiman Jones, the woman who played little
seven -year -old Debbie in the original film,
successfully crowdfunded a comedic sequel. She
managed to get her real father, Tom Naiman, to
reprise his role as the master, and Diane Maury
returned to reprise her role as Margaret. They
shot it in 2016, and the sequel, called Manos
Returns, was released on Amazon Prime in 2020.
She took the childhood trauma of crying at her
own movie premiere and turned it into a creative
triumph 50 years later. It is a profound testament
to how art, once released into the wild, takes
on a life entirely independent of its creator's
original intent. So what does this all mean?
We started with a fertilizer salesman making
a boast in a coffee shop. We navigated broken
feet, moth swarms. unsynced audio, and a premiere
with a single circling limousine. And a very
well -fed dog. Exactly. And we ended up with
a public domain legends that spawned rock operas
and sequels half a century later. It proves that
perfection is not the only path to a lasting
legacy. Sometimes absolute unadulterated failure
can be just as immortal as a masterpiece. I'd
like to leave you with one final thought to mull
over. Think about the profound irony of that
missing copyright notice. Okay. If Harold Warren
had been a consummate professional, if he had
hired a lawyer and properly copyrighted his movie
in 1966, it would have been locked away. It would
have been legally untouchable. Mystery Science
Theater 3000 wouldn't have been able to afford
the broadcast rights to mock it. Fans wouldn't
have been able to legally adapt it into stage
plays or puppet musicals without fearing a lawsuit.
Manos, the Hands of Fate, only achieved total
cultural immortality because its creator legally
lost ownership of it the very moment he brought
it into the world. It really makes you wonder,
does true cultural permanence require surrendering
control? That is a fascinating question. Thank
you so much for joining us on this deep... deep
dive into the desert, the dark and the weirdly
wonderful world of Manos. We hope you keep creating
no matter what it looks like until next time.
Take care, everyone.