 Welcome to today's edition of Frightfleet Forgotten Horror Movies, but before we get started, what are we sipping on today? We are sipping on Hannigar Draft Lager. Today we're going to be talking about 1978's The Manitoum. It is directed by William Girdler and he hasn't done much, but he has done the kind of schlocky horror movie Grizzly. Tony Curtis is in this and he's a Hollywood legend, Houdini that he was in. It's a real story of Houdini, he all got punched in the kidneys. Yeah, he didn't die in that torture chamber, he just got punched in the fucking kidneys. Michael Ansara is in this. He was in a lot of TV, mostly TV, played Kang in the original series of Star Trek and Deep Space Nine and Voyager on top of it too, so it like connects them all. Susan Strasburg is in this, she plays the main female lead and of course Burgess Meredith is in this. We don't have to go into what he's done. The Manitoum starts off with this lady Karen going to the hospital because she has this strange tumor kind of growing on her shoulder. In the hallway, like not even in like a room, just like in the hallway like poking at it. This guy is kind of like a specialist on tumors and I've never really seen anything like this before in it. Right. He's like, you know what, it kind of looks like a fetus or something. We then get introduced to our main character, Harry Ermskin and he is a tarot card reader, like a mysticist and he's got the robes on and everything and this mustache. Then it's sick fake mustache. If you're good to the gods, the gods will be good to you. Then he kind of sees her out of his apartment and as soon as she's gone, he takes off the mustache and like puts it on the wall and puts it on all his disco. Yeah, he pours himself a beer, gets a phone call and it's Karen kind of find out they used to be a thing back in the day and she's kind of confiding in him and they get together and they meet. She tells him about this weird thing on her shoulder and she's scared because she's going in for the surgery to go get it removed, spend the night together and I don't know, I thought he'd be sleeping with this woman or this is a weird thing. In her sleep, she starts saying all these weird things, these weird words. She goes in for the surgery and goes to go make the incision and suddenly he's all mew, he cuts his own hand and they go flying back and all these tools. In the meantime, Harry's doing a card reading with this old woman and suddenly she starts going into this weird trance and then she starts like levitating and like going down the hallway of the apartment and she just kind of gets the end of these stairs and goes down the stairs and takes the railing right out with her ribs. Harry figures that there's something more to this tumor than just medical. So he goes to a couple of friends of his, true, legit card readers and mystics. Not frauds like him. Gather around a big table to do this seance to try and get more information about what's going on with Karen. This head comes up through the black glass and starts mouthing all these words and then goes back down. Mac, or Mike Love as we're going to call him, starts doing a little bit of research. They find the author of this book and this guy is actually some kind of weird eccentric archaeologist. These words that Karen was saying in her sleep, this Panna witchy salatou, is actually from an old extinct language, from an extinct native tribe. This sort of lump growing on her back, a 400 year old native medicine man that's starting to get reincarnated. He finally stumbles upon the door of a medicine man named John Singing Rock. Painted brown. Back in the day, he didn't actually hire a Native American to play Native American, just to get some guy and paint him. So John Singing Rock agrees to help Harry for $100,000 in 1978, which is huge. John Singing Rock and Harry go back to the hospital to try and help Karen and by this point that thing on her back is like huge and it's all like pulsating and everything too. Putting a ring of sand around the bed. Because there's a wall there, it doesn't actually make a circle, it just does half circle, like it doesn't have to be complete, you'd think, that's not a circle, my friend. That's a semi circle. Maybe $100,000 doesn't get you much on this. Obviously not, because he doesn't dry very hard, blows out these bones and then he's just sleeping. In the waiting room. He didn't even do anything. He just put some circle into this and then he goes to bed like, that's a lot of work. That's a lot of money here just to fucking sleep in the next room. This guy's head just bust right through the glass of the door. This medicine man kind of has stolen this guy's skin to become whole and he starts to get born. He actually starts to rip out of Karen's back and that's where we're gonna end it. It gets crazier than you expected to. The concepts of this movie is cool. There's an old world, right, against all this new world technology. That laser surgery and then it's all going around the room and everything, yeah. Machines have a manatee, so they use all the manatees of all the machines in the hospital to try to battle this medicine man. It's kind of neat. Tony Curtis' character, Harry, he's a mystic but he's a fraud. Danny's thrust into the situation where it is dealing with black magic. It is real and now I actually have to fight it for real. Right, and it's somebody that he loves and cares about, right? They do a great job of being serious where they need to be and also they know what they're doing with the comedy. Especially with Tony Curtis with that fake mustache and the mystic things. It's like in the disco music. They're all trying to make him way younger than what he really is. All the clothes that he wears are all contemporary, but he's all, like, sick. Yeah. We're in those super tight white pants. You can see his balls and his dink, like, super outlined. Like those tight leather jackets and, oh man. And you look at his face and you can see all the lines and you can see he's getting all pale because he's getting old. And then that dye job, that super dye job hair, it's pretty tame, right? It stays tame. And then when the medicine man kind of gets born and then the shit hits a fan and suddenly it gets gory. Yeah. Like that room is all splattered in blood after that guy gets skinned. Floor's all iced up. They were just cool. Yeah. Which is neat. And like the nurse is all frozen solid. They like fly back into the nurse and then the nurse's head comes right off. He goes into that glass pane. That guy's head all exposed. That doctor guy all blows up. It gets really gory, like, out of nowhere. It really ramps up. Yeah. The medicine man is like, well, he looks fucking creepy. Yeah. And I like how he doesn't, he's only short. He's a little short, like, yeah. Yeah. But the thing is, you don't need to be tall to be powerful. And he's, like, super powerful. Even just the simple aspect of having something weird growing on you is kind of scary. Yeah. It's kind of unsettling. And then to learn that it's like this fetus and the, oh, that's even scarier, then to learn, oh, it's a medicine man trying to be reborn through you, oh, that's even scarier. And he's like, he can't be stopped and then he can take over like the world and shit. Yeah. That's even scarier. Like, he just keeps ramping up. Yeah. He keeps getting worse, yeah. This movie also reminds me a lot of like an NES game, like an old school Nintendo game. Adventure game. Yeah. Where you could be, you could play like Tony Curtis, and you're like fighting all these like medicine men or whatever. And there's different levels. Like you got to get to like the desert to, to get John Sting Rock as like a partner. A little dialogue screen comes up, like, I will help you. In the cave or whatever. And you could buy things. You have to get enough coins to get, to get the hundred thousand dollars. Yeah, yeah. By fighting like, to pay John Sting Rock. By fighting like these generic medicine men or whatever. Then you got to go to the hospital is like the final level and beat all the levels. Overall this movie is just like, it's a good story. It's a lot of fun. Like from start to finish, like it's tons of fun. Exactly. And the characters help with that. They're all clearly defined. And they're all fun characters, really. Everyone plays their part perfectly and everything like the chess pieces are placed perfectly and it all, it's kind of works really well together. Exactly. So if you want just a good fun 70s tongue-in-cheek kind of horror movie, right, doesn't take itself too seriously, but it knows when to take itself seriously. Exactly. Check out 1978's The Manitou. And make sure you dress really tight when you do it. A lot of leather and stuff that doesn't fit you at all. And keep drinking.