The Scare Salon

As you fellow horror nerds probably know, every now and then, you’re really in the mood for some pure, unadulterated, and vibrantly fragrant 1970s cheese. Being in one of those moods myself this week, I decided to toddle on over to Shudder and check out a 70s flick that I had been curious to see but had somehow passed me by back in the day: the unabashedly outlandish 1978 opus known as The Manitou.

Based on British horror author Graham Masterton’s debut novel of the same name, which was published two years prior, the movie was sadly the final film directed by William Girdler, who perished in a helicopter crash before the movie was released. Girdler made nine movies over the course of his brief career, dabbling in blaxploitation (1974’s Abby, 1975’s Sheba, Baby), proto-slashers (1972’s Three on a Meathook), political thrillers (Project: Kill from 1976), and eco-horror (1976’s Grizzly; 1977’s Day of the Animals). The Manitou falls into none of these discrete categories, however, being something of a body horror narrative with supernatural overtones inspired by Algonquian mythology.

It boasts a pretty impressive cast, too, led by Hollywood legend Tony Curtis, and also features significant roles for Michael Ansara (a Lebanese actor who often played Native American characters, as he does here; I actually recognized him from Buck Rogers, and as Commander Kang on the original Star Trek series), and Susan Strasberg (from The Trip and a couple episodes of Night Gallery), plus a cameo appearance by none other than Burgess Meredith.

The movie starts out relatively normally, almost playing out like a bit of an amusing romantic dramedy of the type that were popular back then (albeit with a neck goiter involved…more about that shortly), but make no mistake, this thing gets pretty wacky toward the end, so much so that at one point I dozed off for a few minutes (give me a break, I work really long hours), and when I woke up, I was so confused by what was going on in the movie that I thought I was having a particularly vivid acid trip. So while I wouldn’t call The Manitou a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, it is a wildly entertaining one, with plenty of WTF moments to wonder at and enjoy.

At the beginning of the tale, which is set in San Francisco, we’re following a woman named Karen, who is consulting a medical professional about this disgusting growth on her neck (told you I’d come back to that). She first noticed it three days ago, she tells the doctors, and it’s been expanding at an alarming rate since then. It doesn’t hurt, she says, but she relates that it moves sometimes, as though something inside of it is settling into bed. Uh oh.

The docs tell her it’s probably nothing to be concerned about (easy for them to say), but schedule a surgery to remove it just the same. After she leaves, though, the doctors⁠—one of whom is a tumor specialist⁠—privately opine that they’ve never seen anything like this growth before, and the tumor guy thinks that whatever the x-rays are showing is inside there looks way too much like a fetus for comfort. Why they failed to tell the actual patient any of this information is not explained, but y’know, I guess if you’re a woman with a possibly cancerous infant-tumor growing on your body, there’s no need to worry your pretty little womany head about it. The dudes have got it under control.

Karen is no dummy, though, and she’s sure the doctors aren’t giving her the full picture. For whatever reason, she decides the best course of action is to call Tony Curtis, or at least the character he plays in this movie, whose name is Harry Erskine. You find out later that Karen used to work with Harry, and that they had a prior romantic relationship, but haven’t seen one another in a very long time.

Up to this point, we’ve actually been getting a glimpse into Harry’s life as well. He makes his living as a cheesedick fortuneteller, reading tarot cards for a series of rich but doddering old ladies who troop through his apartment weekly, seeking advice, solace, and affirmation. I actually laughed out loud at one point when Harry, after seeing off his latest client, peels off his fake mustache and sticks it jauntily on the wall next to the front door before getting back into his normal clothes and relaxing with a cold beer.

When Karen calls him and wants to meet, though, Harry is immediately on board, implying that he’s still carrying a torch for her. It’s not entirely clear whether Karen called him because she wanted him to tell her future in regards to the neck growth (because she makes it obvious later that she doesn’t really believe any of that fortunetelling jazz), or whether she was missing some of that sweet, soothsaying Harry dick (sorry), but I guess it could be a little bit of both.

Anyway, they meet up and Harry assures her that everything is going to be a-okay with the surgery, even though his tarot cards indicate otherwise. So he’s also keeping crucial information from her, in other words. The pair then reconnect⁠—by which I mean, it’s implied that they fuck⁠—but while Karen is snoozing in front of the fireplace, she utters a strange phrase in her sleep that sounds something like, “pana witchy salatoo” (which made me cringe every time someone said it, and someone said it a lot). The next morning, when Harry is dropping her off for the surgery, she says she has never heard the words before and doesn’t remember saying them.

Not surprisingly, the surgery doesn’t go so well; matter of fact, it doesn’t “go” at all, because as soon as the doctor puts the scalpel to the growth, Karen’s supposedly anesthetized eyes pop open, her heart rate goes bonkers, and the doctor slices open his own wrist with the scalpel, evidently under the influence of some overpowering mind control. Thereafter, Karen is placed back in her hospital room and presumably sedated while the doctors try to figure out what the hell is going on.

Meanwhile, one of Harry’s clients, a flaky old woman named Mrs. Herz, has some kind of seizure during her session, saying the same words Karen said before legitimately levitating out of the room and throwing herself down the stairs to her death.

A frightened Harry talks to the tumor doctor, and after hearing about what happened with Karen’s surgery, is convinced that whatever is in her neck growth is causing some kind of psychic force to be unleashed through her body. Naturally, the doc doesn’t buy this, though he does admit the whole situation is pretty fucking weird, so Harry decides he’s gonna use his connections on the “spiritual” side of things to try to help Karen before the goiter grows so big that it consumes and kills her.

First, he consults a couple who owns a new agey type store, and they set up a séance to ask the spirits about the entity supposedly possessing Karen. In what is actually the movie’s best effect, a freaky-looking man emerges from the middle of the séance table like a guy slowly rising out of a pool of oil. He doesn’t say anything that anyone can understand, speaking in some unknown language, but because the medium at the séance says he reminds her of one of those “cigar store Indian” statues, the gang deduce that the spirit must be some kind of being from Native American folklore.

The group then visits Burgess Meredith, playing a Colonel Sanders-looking anthropologist named Dr. Hughes, who wrote a book about said folklore, in which he mentioned a thing called a manitou. This is essentially a sort of life force which certain powerful medicine men can use to be reborn in different bodies, thus living forever; that is, at least according to the stories. Hughes also tells them that the phrase “pana witchy salatoo” means “my death foretells my return.” He doesn’t actually believe any of these legends are true, however, so he suggests that the Scooby gang go and talk to an actual medicine man and get the hell out of his hair.

At this stage, Harry then goes to this movie’s “magical Native American,” John Singing Rock, who is initially real cranky, but grudgingly agrees to help Harry’s pasty white butt in exchange for some tobacco and a $100,000 donation to a Native American charity. Where Harry got his mitts on a cool hundred grand is not explained, but he doesn’t bat an eye at the sum, so I guess he’s kin to the Rockefellers.

John is able to communicate with the entity growing inside Karen’s goiter (yet another sentence I never thought I’d type), and said entity reveals that he’s a shaman named Misquamacus (who is actually a character from August Derleth’s 1945 novel The Lurker at the Threshold, which was based on unfinished writings by H.P. Lovecraft). Old Misq is a mite annoyed by the whole “white man wiping out the indigenous peoples” thing, and has decided to possess Karen’s body so he can return and wreak his revenge. Why he chose Karen in particular is never clarified, and it’s also not clear why Misq waited so long to come back and kick some Caucasian ass. Maybe he was busy imprisoning Ossadagowah in a ring of stones all that time; that’s gotta count for at least a couple of centuries, right?

So it’s at this juncture where the movie cranks up the level of batshittery, and just goes balls to the wall bananapants for the remainder of the runtime. Basically, Misquamacus busts out of Karen’s neck goiter, looking like a naked brown dwarf with looney eyes, and proceeds to pull all kinds of paranormal shenanigans, including telekinetically cutting up John’s face with scalpels (off screen); freezing the hospital hallway for some reason, including the hapless receptionist (whose frozen head breaks off later, by the way); and siccing a process shot of a giant lizard on our intrepid heroes.

A weary John tells Harry that Misq is far too powerful for him to fight, and though the demon is temporarily put out of commission after Harry hefts a typewriter at him (yes, really), it does appear that he might be correct. Frustrated by John’s defeatist attitude, Harry wonders whether the manitous inside all the hospital’s machines might somehow be harnessed to battle the demon (which…what?!?), so they give this bizarre plan a spin, but apparently the collective life forces of the high-tech EKG machines and ventilators don’t want to help the white peoples either.

It appears now that Karen’s hospital room is floating in a void in the far reaches of outer space, and it’s against this backdrop that the final battle royale occurs, with Misquamacus snickering and throwing fireballs, and the machine manitous chastising John for helping whitey. Just at the point where everything seems lost, however, Harry calls to Karen to fight back, and Karen smirkingly sits up in her bed (because she’s just been dozing there like a useless bum throughout this whole ordeal) and starts chucking magical lightning balls back at the demon. Also, I’m pretty sure she’s naked, though she wasn’t before and isn’t after, and it’s hard to tell because of all the darkness and flying light beams, but yeah, I thought I saw some boobies there. I guess only naked ladies can fight demons in this movie’s universe, so fair enough.

Karen’s laser light show and bare breastage are too much for Misquamacus, and he disappears in a big explosion. I think it’s mentioned that Harry’s love for Karen was able to defeat the evil when everything else failed, but I’m not certain I have a handle on what the logistics of all that are. At any rate, Misquamacus is beaten back, along with the Great Old One who was backing him up, and everything goes back to normal again, although John warns that Misq isn’t dead, just temporarily sidelined. The demon seemed pretty hellbent on revenge, though, so I’m guessing it won’t be long before he installs himself in someone else’s bodily protuberance in order to be born again. Have those moles and swellings checked, people; you never know what Algonquian troublemaker might be skulking around in there.

Again, The Manitou is not a great film; it’s silly, it’s completely unbelievable, and it seemingly pulls its mythology right out of its rear end whenever convenient. But damned if it isn’t an enjoyable slice of overt ridiculousness with some decent special effects for the time and an engaging sense of utter absurdity. I’ve never read the book, so I don’t know how accurate an adaptation it is, but I’d hazard a guess that the source novel took itself much more seriously (and probably made a hell of a lot more sense in context). If you find yourself with an appetite for some strange supernatural craziness from the decade of bean bag chairs and key parties, then invite The Manitou into your heart and your neck tumor, and until next time, remember to keep it creepy, my friends.