The Manitou (1978)

Director:

William Girdler

Writers:

Jon Cedar (writer)
William Girdler (writer)

Release Date:

24 January 1979 (France)

Genre:

Horror

Tagline:

Evil does not die... It waits to be re-born!

Plot:

A psychic's girlfriend finds out that a lump on her back is a growing reincarnation of a 400 year-old demonic Native American spirit.

Plot Keywords:

Good Versus Evil | Possessed Human | Evil Spirit | Nudity | Tumor

Awards:

2 nominations

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
Hugh Corcoran	...	MacArthur
Ann Newman-Mantee	...	10th-Floor Nurse
Jan Heininger	...	Wolf, an orderly
Michael Laren	...	Michael, an orderly
Cindy Stanford	...	Neighbor

Runtime:

104 min

Country:

Canada | USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby

Certification:

UK:15 (re-rating) (1991) | Iceland:16 | UK:18 (re-rating) (1987) | UK:X (original rating) | USA:PG (re-rating on appeal) | USA:R (original rating) | Australia:R | Finland:K-18 | Norway:18

Filming Locations:

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Mid-America Pictures

Trivia:

Last film of director William Girdler. Shortly before the film's release he was killed in a helicopter crash in the Philippines while scouting locations for an upcoming film.

Quotes:

Dr. Snow: What you have to understand is that the magic of ancient Indian tribes was very, very powerful. They were, in fact, one of the great magical societies of modern times, of pure ethnic occult art. And, er, they were,
[wiping bookcase]
Dr. Snow: Ugh, this is a mess! They were, er, undiluted with European conceptions and preconceptions. The whole concept of the Indians, the whole concept of life and death and inner space was rolled up in the Indians demon, the equivalent demon. That demon would be possessed of monstrous, monstrous power!
[...]

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Empire of the Censors (1995) (TV)

Hey, you oughta see a doctor about that thing on your neck!

How am I going to fill ten lines about this movie? Here goes: There was a time that Tony Curtis was a serious player in movies, he did the one with Sidney Poitier--for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it--and there's Spartacus and a couple of others that showcased some talent, even with a toupee that looks like a . . . toupee. Susan Strasberg, a hormone-flooding beauty who I remember from Toma on ABC back in 1973, was also a serious performer. If you go down the cast list for The Manitou, you see a lot of good A and B grade actors and actresses who must have really needed some quick cash or were possessed--in and out of the movie--as a group by some sort of Native American evil spirit thing that, at one point, I kid you not, manifests itself in a tumor-like blob of ecto-oogy on somebody's neck.

Yech.

That's all I can remember about this movie. I saw it on HBO in 1979 and after thousands of hours of therapy, I recovered. Unfortunately, somewhere during the courtship of my future wife, I discovered that she had a rather large mole on her neck, right under her hairline. I called it Manitou. She didn't get it.

And I'm not ordering the movie from Amazon just to show her why I named her mole!