The Manitou

(1978) Directed by William Girdler; Written by: William Girdler, Jon Cedar and Thomas Pope; Based on the novel by Graham Masterton; Starring: Tony Curtis, Susan Strasberg, Michael Ansara, Stella Stevens, Jon Cedar, Ann Sothern, Burgess Meredith, Paul Mantee and Felix Silla; Available on Blu-ray and DVD 

Rating: **½

A huge thanks to Rebecca from Taking Up Room for hosting another spectacular edition of the So Bad It’s Good Blogathon (https://takinguproom.com/2026/02/13/the-eighth-so-bad-its-good-blogathon-has-arrived/), a celebration of movies that probably never won any accolades, but they’re still winners in our hearts. Be sure to feast your eyes on all the wonderful posts!

“Your God won't help you. Nothing in your Christian world will help. Not prayers, not holy water. Not the weight of a thousand of your churches.” – John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara)

John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara): “Gitche Manitou? Harry, you don't call Gitche Manitou. He...”

Harry Erskine (Tony Curtis): “Oh yeah, well, he's going to get a person-to-person call from me... collect!”

Filmmaker William Girdler (Grizzly, Day of theAnimals), was known for his low budget flicks, featuring outlandish plots and ridiculous premises, yet oddly entertaining. Quite possibly his most “out there” premise, however, was reserved for The Manitou, adapted from a novel by Graham Masterton. */** With a $3 million budget, The Manitou was Girdler’s most expensive movie to date,*** which he touted as a cross between The Exorcist and Star Wars (although the results were much closer to the former film than the latter). 

* Fun Fact #1: According to Masterton, he had discussed a sequel with Girdler, but his plans never reached fruition due to the 30-year-old director’s untimely death. Regardless, The Manitou became a franchise in its own right, with six novels. 

** Fun Fact#2: Despite having penned more than 100 novels, The Manitou is the only feature film adaptation of Masterton’s work, to date. 

*** Fun Fact #3: According to film writer Troy Howarth, the film was financed under the auspices that the script was already written. After the deal was struck, Girdler and fellow writers Jon Cedar (who also appeared in the film as Dr. Jack Hughes) and Thomas Pope reportedly belted out a screenplay in three days.

Set in modern-day San Francisco,* the movie opens with doctors poring over X-rays of a 28-year-old woman, Karen Tandy (played by Susan Strasberg, who was nearly 40 at the time), who suddenly developed a large growth on her neck. To make matters curiouser and curiouser, Dr. Jack Hughes is perplexed to discover that within the growth, which only appeared a few days earlier, a fetus is developing where it shouldn’t be. When Karen reaches out to an old flame, Harry Erskine (Tony Curtis) for help, it turns out she’s carrying a reincarnated 400-year-old Native American medicine man (Talk about having a lot to carry on your shoulders!). After consulting with a professor of Native American culture and mythology (Burgess Meredith), Harry decides it’s time to fight fire with fire, enlisting the aid of reluctant medicine man John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara).** 

* Fun Fact #4: In the novel, the story was set in New York City. 

** Fun Fact #5: Although cast as a Native American medicine man, Ansara was of Syrian descent.

Harry Erskine is a likeable fraud, who makes his living cheating nice but naïve old ladies out of their money, with a fake tarot card routine. His world is turned on end when he’s forced to confront a genuine supernatural occurrence. Tony Curtis delivers a comic performance in a movie that is allegedly a horror drama – unsubtle but fitting for the character and context of the film, which is anything but subtle. Erskine is such a colorful character that he eclipses Karen by comparison. Despite her acting pedigree, Susan Strasberg isn’t given much to do but fret about the tumor on her neck for most of the film.

In addition to Curtis, The Manitou is enhanced (somewhat) by an assembly of veteran character actors. Most notable of these appearances is the always watchable Burgess Meredith, who obviously understood his assignment, in a performance that flirts with camp, but never quite crosses the line. As Dr. Snow, an expert in anthropology and Native American lore, Meredith provides the right balance of eccentricity and earnestness to what would have been a throwaway part in less capable hands. 

Believe it… or not.

One of The Manitou’s debatable charms is that it consistently stretches suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. During what seems like a routine meeting with one of Harry’s favorite clients, the frail old Mrs. Herz (Lurene Tuttle) becomes possessed, spouting invocations in an alien dialect before throwing herself down the stairs. If broad comedy is what Girdler was aiming for, he succeeded. Ratcheting up the terror? Not so much. In a later scene, where a medical laser (under the influence of the angry medicine man developing inside Karen) goes haywire, it appears more like a ray gun from Star Trek or Star Wars (Complete with “pew pew” sounds – Think of a similar scene in Logan’s Run) than a precision medical instrument. Of course, the film’s claim to fame is its depiction of a fully formed medicine man (in miniature) emerging from Karen’s back. The evil medicine man, Misquamacus (deformed by X-rays), is played, alternately, by Felix Silla and Joe Gieb. What follows is a cosmically confusing ultimate battle between good and evil, as Karen’s hospital room transforms into a portal to another realm of time and space where “The Great Old One” dwells (at least I think that’s what happened). The special effects-laden scene, which probably used up a sizable portion of the budget seems more tacked-on than essential to the story, producing more shrugs than “oohs” and “aahs.” If that wasn’t enough hokum for one movie, The Manitou ends with a dubious fact, that a similar incident occurred in Tokyo several years before.* 

* Fun Fact #6: A cursory search for the alleged 1969 Japanese incident yielded nothing, leading at least this reviewer to conclude that it’s nothing more than ballyhoo from William Girdler.  

 

“I shall call him Mini-Misquamacus.”

Besides the well-worn trope of non-Native Americans playing indigenous people, The Manitou commits the sin of homogenizing Native Americans into one large group, with no distinguishing aspects between one tribe or another. I’m no expert, but considering there are currently 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the United States, it seems highly unlikely that the legend of an extinct Northern California tribe would be known to an indigenous man living on a South Dakota reservation.  

Many adjectives could be used to describe The Manitou: silly, misguided, bizarre, but also fun (if you don’t take it too seriously). In a horror film that has more (unintentional and intentional) laughs than scares, it manages to entertain in spite of itself. Lalo Schifrin lends more gravitas to the film than it probably deserves, with a score that conveys an appropriate balance of mystery and terror. While the movie is more miss than hit, there’s one genuinely frightening scene, involving a séance to summon the spirit of the ancient medicine man, with his head ominously emerging from a table. Critics of the time were less than enthusiastic about The Manitou, with one decrying it as “another Exorcist copycat” with “limited appeal.” But that seems a bit too harsh. While Girdler’s cinematic swan song* certainly isn’t a masterpiece by anyone’s definition (no matter how broad), it’s more than worth a look for anyone who appreciates a good old, strangely engaging, Hollywood misfire. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, for better or worse. 

* Fun Fact #7: According to a 1977 Hollywood Reporter blurb, Girdler intended to follow The Manitou with three productions, Knights of Glory, The Deadly Jungle, and The Last of the White House. Whether any or all of them would have ever seen the light is lost to speculation.

 

Sources for this article: Shout Factory Blu-ray commentary by Troy Howarth; Interview with author Graham Masterton; “Girdler Slates Three to Follow Manitou,” The Hollywood Reporter (March 2, 1977); “Another Exorcist Copycat. Oke credits. Limited Appeal,” by Hege, Variety (March 1, 1978).

 

 

Battle Royale

 

(2000) Directed by Kinji Fukasaku; Written by Kenta Fukasaku; Based on the novel by  Koushun Takami; Starring: Tatsuya Fujiwara, Aki Maeda, Taro Yamamoto, Chiaki Kuriyama, Takashi Tsukamoto, and Takeshi Kitano; Available on Blu-ray and DVD 

Rating: ****

“I had a horrible experience escaping air bombing and helping to pick up dismembered limbs of people who were killed. I realized later that I was told lies by the Japanese military government that told us we have to fight to save our country from the enemy. I felt cheated and isolated. This is what I wanted to portray in the movie.” – Kinji Fukusaku 

“Basically, the person who is outside the battlefield or someone who can calmly observe the whole situation has the most power. Below that level are the people who actually fight. That’s the nature of violence. The most frightening person is the one who is quiet and lets others be violent.” – Takeshi Kitano

Where does influence end and originality begin? Or perhaps this is the wrong question to ask. Film fans and critics alike often look for the mythical “first” movie that started it all, but that’s not as easy as it seems. The more movies I see, the more I realize it’s just one big continuum, with ideas constantly being recycled, regurgitated, and re-formed to fit the moment. Consider Battle Royale, one film that’s engendered the cinematic equivalent of the “chicken or the egg” debate since its release, and the subsequent franchises that drew upon it for inspiration (whether intended or not). The Hunger Games (2012), Ready or Not (2019), and Squid Games could arguably be considered direct descendants of Battle Royale, but Battle Royale didn’t exist in a vacuum, with the many books and films that preceded it encoded in its DNA (The Most Dangerous Game, Lord of the Flies, and The 10^th Victim, to name only a few). Veteran director Kinji Fukasaku,*/** best known for his controversial Yakuza films of the ‘60s and ‘70s*** prompted more controversy with his adaptation of Koushun Takami’s 1999 novel. 

* Fun Fact #1: Fukasaku celebrated two milestones with Battle Royale: His 60^th feature film and his 70^th birthday. 

** Not-So-Fun fact: Sadly, Battle Royale would prove to be his last completed project. Fukasaku died of cancer only a couple of years later, while filming Battle Royale II: Requiem (which was finished by his son, Kenta). 

*** Fun Fact #2: Kinji Fukasaku is probably best-known on these shores, however, for the kitschy space epic The Green Slime (1968).

Set in a dystopian near-future, Japanese society has eroded to the point where unemployment has reached 15%, youth violence has run rampant, and public schools can no longer manage their students. In response to these changes, the “BR Act” was created, to keep the young people in line. In the film, a classroom of 42 middle school students (traveling under the auspices of an end-of-year field trip) are brought to a remote island.* They soon learn they’re about to embark on a three-day life-or-death competition, with the object of killing each other off, until the last boy or girl is standing. Each student is subsequently provided with supplies (including a random weapon), and sent out meet his or her fate. To discourage any thoughts of escape, each student is equipped with necklaces that will explode if they disobey or attempt to tamper with the devices. Beyond the constraints of the island and necklaces, there are no rules. 

* Fun Fact #3: The island used for filming was Hachijō-kojima, a small island that has remained uninhabited (except for a population of goats) since the late 1960s.

Much like Lord of the Flies, some of the students form alliances, in the hopes that they will get through this together, but it’s merely delaying the inevitable. When “kill or be killed” is the only imperative, most of them do away with the pretense of friendship or teamwork. One such alliance is between “transfer student” Shôgo Kawada - Boy #5 (Tarô Yamamoto), who survived the game before, but at the expense of his girlfriend. He initiates a shaky truce with Shuya Nanahara - Boy #15 and Noriko Nakagawa - Girl #15 (Tatsuya Fujiwara and Aki Maeda, respectively). Kawada casts a shadow on his credibility when he continually changes his back-story (claiming at different times to be the son of a doctor, chef, and fisherman), leaving Shuya and Noriko to question his motives. While some choose to team up, others prefer to act alone. Another transfer student, Kazuo Kiriyama - Boy #6 (Masanobu Andô), operates on his own, mercilessly killing off the other students with maniacal glee. But at least everyone knows where they stand with Kiriyama. Less predictable is Mitsuko Sôma - Girl #11 (Kô Shibasaki), using every trick she knows to lull her fellow students into a false sense of security. A brief flashback to her early childhood provides a sympathetic view of an otherwise unsympathetic character, who vowed never to become a victim.

As disturbing as the students’ behavior may be, it pales in comparison to their teacher Kitano, played by comic actor Takeshi Kitano (aka: “Beat” Kitano). Kitano steals the show whenever he’s onscreen, with his deadpan delivery. In the opening scene, set a couple years before the government-ordained bloodbath, he’s stabbed by a student, resulting in his departure from the school. Now, bitter and estranged from his family, he returns to see his old class kill each other. Whatever status quo he’s preserving has done nothing to improve his life or set a model example for the younger generation. One nice little touch, illustrating Kitano’s amorality, is his munching on a bag of cookies (while he tracks the carnage from a control room) that was being shared by his students a only few hours earlier. One aspect that’s never fully explored is his soft spot for Noriko, who seems to fill the void (at least in his mind) of his broken relationship with his own daughter.

It would be a gross understatement to say that Battle Royale must have been a tough sell to any potential distributors (including its delay in getting a theatrical release in the States). It’s easy to see how it would be unpalatable to most audiences to depict a bunch of 9^th grade kids (most of whom were played by actors in their mid to late teens) murdering each other. Battle Royale was a lightning rod for its detractors, who focused on the content rather than the subtext. The satire was lost on members of Japanese parliament who decried the film as depicting violence for violence’s sake. When it was screened for the politicians, it evoked a knee-jerk reaction without analyzing what the film was attempting to say (Illustrated by the following selected quotes from two lawmakers on opposite ends of the political spectrum: “The movie is crude and it is tasteless.”; and “This movie is anti-social. It shows distinct acts of violence that have no place on the screen.”). In the context of the film, violence isn’t an end to itself, but a symptom of one of the main underlying themes – the breakdown in communications between the older and younger generations. Although Fukasaku’s interview quote referred to one of his earlier Yakuza films, it applies to his raison d'être for Battle Royale: “… I became interested in violence itself, its contagious, chaotic purposeless character.” When friends (or at least individuals that harbored no former animosity) are forced to fight for their survival, humanity is reduced to its most primitive state, where relationships in the outside world have no meaning. The adults’ answer, meeting the students’ violence with violence, is nothing but a dead end.

Battle Royale keeps many plates spinning as it follows the students’ individual personalities, and for the most part, it succeeds admirably. The message flew over the heads of well-intentioned, but misguided critics, politicians and concerned parents, but managed to reach audiences who appreciated its sardonic tone. The social commentary isn’t subtle, but then again that’s the point. Kinji Fukasaku’s film is at once a pitch-dark comedy, and a cautionary tale about what might happen if we ever grew accustomed to the wholesale slaughter of our fellow human beings. In its own way, Battle Royale recalls Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” taking a cartoonishly extreme stance, but with a wink and a heaping helping of stage blood. 

 

Sources for this article: “Kinji Fukasaku: An Introduction,” by Keiko McDonald, Film Criticism (Fall 1983, volume 8, issue 1); “Japanese Pols Taking Aim at ‘Battle’ Over Violence,” by Jon Herskovitz, Variety (December 4-10, 2000); “More to Him than ‘Green Slime,’” by Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times (January 17, 2001); “A Battle Royal Over Movie Violence,” by Suvendrini Kakuchi, World Press Review (March 2001); Interview with Takeshi Kitano (included in 2014 Arrow Blu-ray)