REVIEW: THE MANITOU

This review contains spoilers. Just so you know. But, trust me on this, it doesn't really matter because you won't be watching "The Manitou" for the clever twisty-turny plot. 

"The Manitou" is a horror film from 1978. Made in the wake of "The Omen" & "The Exorcist" it tells of Karen Tandy who has a thing on her neck. She goes to a top oncologist who doesn't know what to make of it. It is not composed of cancerous tissue, he explains, and is growing at a rate very similar to.... He trails off, looking at a pregnancy chart...

Yes! She's neck-preggers! I'm not sure how she managed it, but "never let him put it in your ear" is my new advice to you girls.

She goes to see her boyfriend Tony Curtis. He plays a fake psychic complete with astrological cape and comedy moustache. The bit where he takes his psychic outfit off and starts grooving to 70's funk makes this film worth watching alone. But back to Karen! She falls asleep muttering strange incantations like "by the power of Greyskull" and "izzy-wizzy, let's get busy". Tony starts to worry, especially when one of his elderly clients appears to become possessed by a comedy demon that makes her mutter the EXACT SAME WORDS before throwing her down the stairs.

There then follows a bizarre and somewhat pointless series of scenes of Tony going to see a bloke who doesn't know the answer, but knows someone who might. Long story short, he goes to see a doctor who points him at a medium, who tells him to go to an anthropologist who tells him to go and see a Native American. There! Wasn't that nice and simple!? 

John Singing Stone (the Native American chap) explains that a manitou (a powerful medicine-man) has attached itself to Karen's neck in order to be reborn. This will result in Karen's untimely demise. So doctors attempt to remove the (by now) medicine-man sized wart from the back of her neck using Star Wars blasty lasers that instead go beserk and blow up the operating theatre. Well you can't say you're not getting your money's worth.

The medicine man breaks free of Karen's neck, but has been shrunk due to all the laser beams and x-rays. So you've got this rather unthreatening Mini-Me version of Tecumseh wandering about the hospital, skinning lesser members of the cast and casting spells which cause sock-puppet demons to appear. Tony Curtis hits him with a typewriter and John Singing Kettle realises that the medicine man is vulnerable to modern technology. Tony has all the hospital's computers switched on, which causes the whole hospital to enter another DIMENSION! The dimension of VERY BAD SPECIAL EFFECTS. The medicine man tries to summon a squiggly Satan but is vanquished by Topless Karen who fires all the energy of the combined Vic-20's and ZX Spectrums at him. I'm not sure why Karen is topless.

Unrateable, but hysterical.