Warning: Wall-O-Text ahead.
ChristovR said:
I started a friend off with Manos: The Hands of Fate, and Santa Clause Conquers the Martians. Those ones seemed to work out well as now she often asks to watch more ever since.
Oooo. I'm glad it worked out well, but I still think
Manos doesn't really work as an introduction. I've actually been thinking about this today a little bit (read: far too much), and I think I can explain why. (I'm speaking to the established fan base here.)
If you consider nearly all the films screened in the Mystery Science Theater before
Manos, they were all bad of course, but they all had a certain quality of bad. Consider Bert I. Gordon's works, for example. The stories were goofy and the effects weak. But even so, there was a certain level of professionalism in the films. The cinematography was competent (if simplistic), the lighting was [em]occasionally[/em] moody, and the acting, if wooden, was earnest. People were genuinely trying, and it showed.
The same can also be said of many of Roger Corman's works.
Teenage Caveman, though ludicrous, shows us a young Robert Vaughn who can really deliver the work; and
Viking Women and The Sea Serpent, while even more ludicrous, had some actual worthy moments.
Likewise, the Japanese monster movies enjoyed a certain minimum level of competence and craft. Despite the use of models, you really could get the idea that Godzilla was smashing up Tokyo, and people were actually upset about it. Even the
Fugitive Alien films had many of the elements that define Japanese cinematography of that period (dramatic zooms being an obvious example).
And so, with nearly four seasons worth of bad movies under their belt, you started to get a sense of what you could expect in a bad movie. Even the much derided Ed Wood Jr. managed to achieve (for brief moments, anyway) a basic level of filmcraft: At least one person who could act. Competent cinematography and lighting -- you could see everything, and it would be in focus. At least one interesting or engaging moment. At least one interesting idea in the story. You started to get comfortable with this model of what constituted a Bad Movie.
...And then...
Manos.
Manos fits none of the models. Just when you think you've grokked the Bad Movie,
Manos comes out of nowhere (Waco, TX) and establishes an entirely new class of Bad Movie -- a class you thought could not possibly exist. A class that leaves you sitting agape at the screen, unable to formulate any question more complex than "How?" or "Why?" It's not that
Manos breaks the rules.
Manos was completely oblivious that there [em]were[/em] any rules.
The film stock is dreadful -- there is more grain in this film than an Iowa wheat farm. The cinematography would embarrass Zapruder. If anything is in focus, or indeed in frame, it's almost certainly a total accident. The audio is abominable. Apparently they couldn't afford synced sound, so they recorded the audio dubs after the fact, and it is [em]obvious[/em] this is what happened. The story is merely uninteresting where it is not almost maliciously tedious, and the "twist" at the end is not so much clever as it is a handful of fertilizer to the face.
With the possible exception of one, none of the performers in the film can be said to be an actor, or even clinically alive. Nobody moves or speaks with any urgency or sense of internal purpose. They seem like automata, jerking into motion just long enough to speak their line for that moment, then grinding to a halt. The one exception I might grant is to John Reynolds (Torgo), if for no other reason than he seemed to put some thought and effort into the character -- crazed, delusional, psychotic thought, to be sure, but he put some work in to it.
Manos, tragically, does not stand alone in its class (
Attack of the The Eye Creatures is in there), but it stands at its apex (or nadir). And this is why I feel
Manos should not be viewed too early in the MST3K collection. Yes,
Manos is bad. But until you've had an introduction and grounding in the subtle art of the Bad Movie, it is impossible to know and appreciate just [em]how[/em] bad it truly is.