One would think that we produce more than enough bad movies in the right here and the right now that I wouldn’t have to jump into my handy time machine and go back into the past to retrieve old bad movies that have been long forgotten. One would think. But no my friends, sometimes you need to know where you came from to see where you are going and that is why ‘The Manitou’ is such a vital and important film in cinema history because this is a movie that manages to combine horror, slapstick, comedy, midgets, puppetry, and one of the most eclectic collections of actors ever assembled . And I really shouldn’t call it ‘a bad movie’ because the movie is way too funny to be completely dismissed, and is also one of those movies that will have you talking at your TV screen from damn near beginning to end.

Karen Tandy (the late Susan Strassberg) has a bit of a problem. You see girlfriend has a hump on her neck which is growing at an unbelievably rapid rate. Neck hump expert Dr. Jack Hughes (Jon Cedar), who is the absolute best tumor specialist on the planet, because he tells us this repeatedly, is confused as he and his colleague Dr. McEvoy (Paul Mantee) swears that the X-rays of this hump looks like fetus… but that’s just plain crazy ain’t it?

A perplexed and concerned Karen contacts her old boyfriend Harry (Tony Curtis) who spends his days as Eskrine the Mystic reading old ladies tarot cards and taking their disposable income. Karen is scheduled for surgery the next day to have the hump removed and just needs some reassurance from an old friend, which Harry provides by having sex with her, hump neck and all. My man. Harry put it to her so good that she was speaking in ancient Indian tongues in her sleep later that night, or at least that how I would have interpreted it. Harry being a mystic and stuff however realized that something wasn’t quite right with that scenario.

This lump apparently really doesn’t want to be removed which makes the surgery not go to good, combined with one of Harry’s blue hair clients, played by the late Anne Sothern, who does a Zulu dance, floats in the air, speaks in tongues and then launches herself down a flight of stairs which leads Harry to believe that something may be up. Completely baffled by now, with the growth getting larger by the day, Harry enlists the help of a number of experts such as his old Mystic friend Amelia (Stella Stevens), anthropologist professor Dr. Snow (the late Burgess Meredith) and finally Indian medicine man John Singing Rock (Michael Ansara) who refuses to help because he hates the WHITE MAN! At least until Henry promises to gives him some smokes.

Finally we know what we’re up against and that would be the greatest medicine man of all, the Alpha and the Omega of medicine men, the Jesus Christ of medicine men, Mismaques the Geechy Manitou and he’s PISSED OFF! Every so often he just feels a need to reincarnate himself, with Karen's neck simply being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Mismaques slides out of Karen’s back and is in the process of kicking much ass, reanimating the dead, blowing dudes up and freezing bitches to death, and is on the verge of ending the reign of the WHITE MAN! Except he doesn’t quite understand the WHITE MAN’S MAGIC! Ummm, that would be white women and typewriters. It’s complicated. We'd like to take this time to thank a beaten and bloodied John Singing Rock for helping save the planet Earth. Here’s that package of tobacco I promised you. Now get on back to the reservation.

I’m thinking a enterprising college professor could have an entire three credit class on the awesomeness of ‘The Manitou’. Directed by the late William Girdler, who would still be producing bad movies to this day if his life weren’t cut short in a tragic helicopter crash, ‘The Manitou’ is like no other film before or since. Yes, it’s talky, slow, boring, makes next to no sense and has a set of special effects that were even bad in 1978, but locked underneath that thick layer of awfulness are some fine strands of gold.

Take Stella Stevens skin for instance. She totally emptied the Coppertone bottle for her performance in this one going for the total Doc Savage look, and combined with her already world class set of breasts, girlfriend was looking good. Then you have Wolf the Orderly. So Mismaques was sliming around on the floor contained by only a circle of sand and had just murdered another orderly, and Wolf was charged with staying in the hospital room and was also charged with keeping an eye on the murderous midget, keeping an eye on Karen who is totally messed up after giving birth from her back, and was sharing space with the dead orderly who Mismaques has just ripped his skin from his body. Dude, especially considering the midgets power to reanimate the dead, I'm thinking this is probably not the best time to take a freaking nap. We also love Susan Strassberg's bravura performance in her final battle with Mismaques, and more so Mismaques expression when he realized that the White Man’s magic channeled through a White Woman would spell his downfall. Classic! Then there’s Mismaques himself, played by actor Joe Geib who The Academy somehow over looked as he was on his A-Game as the evil Medicine Man who can summon Satan from Hell, but can't do anything with a naked white woman with a gaping hole in her back. And wouldn’t it have just made more sense to park himself in the woman’s womb as opposed to the back of her neck? Lastly we can’t forget the Oscar Nominated Bernard Swartz, better known as Tony Curtis, who is STILL doing the damn thing at 83 and who my mother used to drone on and on about how beautiful he used to be. Well, not the Tony I know. I gotta hand it to TC on this one because he played this movie, as ridiculous as it may have seemed, as straight as humanly possible though he did manage to chew up a scene here and there. Don’t stop until they put dirt on your face Tony!

There’s so much insanity in ‘The Manitou’ that there’s simply aren’t enough hours in the day to uncover it all. Yes, at face value it’s merely a really bad movie, but when you dig a little deeper… it’s still a bad movie, and what I wouldn't give for a sequel.