The Manitou (1979) ★★★★

I haven't thought about The Manitou in decades. I watched it once on a black-and-white TV in 1979, heavily censored and airing at midnight on a late-night TV show called Creature Features. It melted my 12-year-old brain. I didn’t know what I was watching, only that it was terrifying, weird, and absolutely unforgettable. Then, nearly fifty years later, I came across a review for this from olivia, whose movie tastes are generally different than mine. Like a psychic tumor stirring beneath the surface, The Manitou burst back into my consciousness. 

And holy mother of Misquamacus, I wasn’t prepared for the full-color, uncensored, shirtless insanity I’d missed as a kid.

A mad blend of The Exorcist, Native American mysticism, and Crichton-esque 1970s sci-fi, all stitched together with fantastic practical effects, fog machines, and the unwavering belief that audiences would go with it. And somehow… it works.

Our hero, Tony Curtis, showcases the wildest career choice of his post-studio era spiral, playing Harry Erskine, a campy, gold-chained tarot card reader with shirts unbuttoned to his navel and collars that could double as glider wings. His affectation is effeminate, but the movie never cashes in on that. He smokes, seduces, banters, and commits to every line of mystical gibberish like it’s Shakespeare.

It’s like they told him, “You’re playing a Vegas psychic who accidentally gets caught up in an ancient Native American curse.” And he said, “Sure, just point me to this Misquamacus character.”

The premise is already bonkers: a woman develops a tumor on her neck that turns out to be… an ancient Native American shaman dwarf being reborn to exact revenge on white colonialism. 

SPOILERS BELOW

The birthing scene is a grotesque masterpiece of latex and practical FX, easily predating the “rage babies” of Cronenberg’s The Brood and echoing through the insane Norris arm-chomping chest scene in The Thing. It's wet, angry, and 100% committed. That thing crawling out of her back scarred me in 1979 and still holds up today. The fact that they cast Felix Silla, a dwarf actor best known as Cousin Itt, to play the full-formed Misquamacus is just another glorious WTF cherry on top.

Just when you think it can’t get weirder, The Manitou goes full 2001. Native shaman John Singing Rock, played with absolute gravitas by Michael Ansara (a Lebanese actor who somehow gives one of the film’s most grounded performances), drops the immortal line:

“Even your machines have Manitou.”

And suddenly we’re in psychic space, where a topless Susan Strasberg floats in a hospital bed, blasting the demon fetus with cosmic lasers powered by the spirit of the hospital’s mainframe computer. I am not exaggerating. I am also not drunk.

This is how the final battle plays out:

1. Naked astral woman
2. Hospital turned hyperspace battlefield
3. Evil shaman gets laser-nuked by the “good” machine spirits

It’s transcendently stupid. 

And yet... It’s kind of awesome.

What elevates The Manitou beyond schlock is that it takes everything seriously—no winking, no irony, no half-measures. The filmmakers firmly believe that this story about reborn shaman demons and psychic computer warfare is essential. And because solid actors play the characters, it works. You’re along for the ride.

Take Susan Strasberg. Early on, before we even see the grapefruit-sized tumor growing on the back of her neck, she plays it straight—beautifully stoic, calmly describing what seems like a real medical condition. But then she "gives birth" to a vengeful shaman dwarf struggling to claw his way out of the grotesque placenta fused to her spine. For a moment, it even looks like he's assaulting her mid-emergence, and the whole thing is deeply disturbing. Cut to the finale, and she’s sitting upright, completely naked, in her hospital bed, now floating in outer space, firing laser beams from her hands… or maybe her breasts? Honestly, I couldn’t tell. That’s some serious commitment. Or, more accurately, a case study in what Hollywood was willing to put beautiful women through back in the day—all in the name of spectacle.

This isn’t some ironic midnight movie. It’s a passion project from the depths of the genre’s most whacked-out corner. A film that dares to ask: What if your hospital’s CT scanner had a soul, and it was holy?

I’m amazed that this movie isn’t more widely celebrated. It deserves a permanent place in the WTF Horror Hall of Fame, right between Xtro and Society. If you’ve ever loved late-’70s horror for its ambition, its weirdness, and its refusal to play it safe, then The Manitou is your spiritual home.

Goodbye, John Singing Rock. Your Manitou was strong.