Apparently, the bottom two are a tie between films called “Daniel the Wizard” and “Smolensk.” At 1.2, they rate lower than a Kirk Cameron Christmas movie, which is pretty impressive. Now I kind of want to see them.
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Wow. Re Daniel the Wizard from IMDB’s Trivia:
According to a newspaper report, one theater showed the movie as a sneak preview. When the audience realized what they were about to see, they forced the theater to show a different film.
And the star himself calls it the worst movie ever made.
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I will never not delight that Joel mentioned The Master’s similarity to smooth jazz crooner Michael Franks.
Every now and again you get a reference that’s really obscure and feels like it’s almost made for you.
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Manos was the FIRST full episode of MST3K I watched; I watched it on Comedy Central after moving back to New York City in 1995. (I lived in rural North Carolina during the first half of the 1990s but our cable provider didn’t offer Comedy Central.)
It was indeed one of the best episodes, if not the best in the whole series. Manos hands down is probably the WORST movie ever made!
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I disagree with people who say it’s one of the worst movies ever made simply because there are other movies made by people who should be competent filmmakers which are utter trash. Manos was made by amateurs and it has to be viewed in that context. You can’t compare it to any studio film. At best you can compare it to student films, so in the MST3K oeuvre, you could look at The Final Sacrifice as a comparison and I’d say, while it ranks below that, there is probably so much worse out there.
Heaven’s Gate. Now that’s one of the worst movies ever made.
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I believe its, “My my my… What do we have here?”
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It is contingent on where you hang your hat on worst. Worst is a broad net as wide as what actually went down in Monster A-Go-Go (1965). By worst do you mean production values, so bad it’s good, comprehension, form, technical aspects, coherence, mistakes, the pain of watching it? Manos is distinct in that it’s memorable. You never forget it. Down to the plot and the little details. Many films that I would depending on the definition consider worse than Manos (1966) disappear from the memory or become vague with time but not Manos. It is as vivid to me now as it was when I was 13 seeing it for the first time. It commands your attention. Even in its incompetence you can’t look away. Something I can’t say about most terrible films.
My best friend Matthew who was not a MSTie or a fan of watching bad films generally continues to lament to this day he can’t forget Manos. He will quote it occasionally and even watch the MST episode by himself unprompted. It’s a curious rub that a movie so awful inexplicably holds a power normally only good films have. This aspect is why for me I call it the worst ever even if movies exist that are more unwatchable. Perhaps Manos is simply the most watchable of unwatchable wonders. The closest to the abyss a number of us can travel while booking the next reservation.
To me, great cinema is defined by not only by its greatness but also its replay and whether it grows with time. Bad cinema defies many rules yet there are one-offs and perennials. And I would argue of the very worst that people return to Manos is among the hardest hitters and even stranger its power grows with exposure making the pain worse and also strangely profound. So in a way, it is the Citizen Kane (1941) of the other end. Noteworthy, distinctive, heavily dissected, and holding a mystique uncommon in movies, Manos is a name people know and it survives that first encounter and thrives with those who see it. This is a trait anything worse does not have. Not to the same degree. It’s why it has become a term meaning many things and it’s here interpretation runs rampant.
“The New Manos”? What does that even mean? To be clear, to be “Manos” is to defy the mold and also define it in the same breath. Trendsetters and benchmarks do that and Manos has become that whether we like it or not. It is a standard of its kind and remains a yardstick of anything that follows. The word “Manos” like “Worst” is a reflection of what people read out of it. So much gets conflated purely by people not explaining themselves. In my mind, Manos is the worst rewatchable picture I have ever seen and it lives in my consciousness forever never to go way. That is power.
As I see it. It is the worst film as a whole or in pieces and in every practical measure that draws attention to that fact that I am compelled to study and analyze anyway. One could write a BFI book on Manos. Owing to its contradictions and pull. In my case, “Worst” refers to the best least movie that I would place back into my player fully aware of what it is and though there is worse it is not a worst that lives on in my waking life.
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Perspective is a curious filter. There are those I know who sing its praises for the exact same reasons you do not. I’m with you. I would rather re-see Manos (1966) than Heaven’s Gate (1980). Yet for most, the notion of placing the Cimino below Manos is unthinkable. Heaven’s Gate is in the Criterion Collection. Seemingly it has its fans.
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Does that mean basically real Manos inspired all that Harem Manga which I’ve heard them… talk about… so much? 
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I would say that Manos doesn’t look AS bad now, because we’ve lived long enough to see so much other awful amateur stuff unearthed. But it’s still really bad. And I WISH that story of a Texas matron punching the auteur over the fate of Debbie was a real happening. But Jackey Neyman herself told me No. That’s just an urban legend.
I think it could be argued that Manos screws up some stuff that many acclaimed and/or commercially successful films also screw up. It’s just that those other films had the budget and talent to sort of trowel over that.
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And the awareness of what they were doing. Being in a bubble (pun unintended), may intensify positive or negative effects of a work accordingly.
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Ah, yes. The “That’s An Odd Taste” school of, uh… local color.
In a way, you’re cutting cards with The Devil Master himself just by filming your movie somewhere outside California. (Or its foreign equivalent.) You de facto get an out-of-the-ordinary tone, but at what cost?
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I’m one of Heaven’s Gate’s fans, but I’m not gonna throw my back out defending it. Tastes in films are totally subjective and people are more than welcome to their opinions regarding them. Vive le différence! And as a native El Pasoan, I’m proud that the most notorious film featured on MST3K was made in my hometown. I also think Monster a-Go-Go was the worst movie featured on the show, not Manos. But again, to each their own!
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Hmm, no. That was a British “explorer” who made his money traveling to exotic locations and then telling tall tales about his exploits. In some Arabic countries, it’s traditional to have the whole extended family living under one roof. The house has women’s quarters, where girls can be safely raised by their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers and play with their sisters and female cousins. This allows them to grow up free of the male gaze, and it also allows those aunts to get some downtime away from men (their husbands included). Men are forbidden to enter the women’s quarters, and the word for “forbidden” is “haram.” (It’s the opposite of “halal,” which means “permitted.” Pork is haram, but food with no pork is halal.)
Our British explorer heard about this and thought that tales of powerful men who kept a tent full of women that no other man was allowed to even see sounded more like something that would buy him some beers and sell some of his books. So he completely twisted the whole thing and also mispronounced haram as harem.
The salacious tales of exotic debauchery with such clearly uncivilized people took root in the popular imagination, and thus we ended up with a racist myth. Which then spread and helped to lay the groundwork for an entire subgenre of stories aimed at Japanese teenage boys.
Of course, many of those stories end up involving a protagonist who is completely unaware that any of these beautiful women could possibly be attracted to an ordinary guy like him, let alone all of them, resulting in a story that’s surprisingly chaste.
Manos, on the other hand, was probably more inspired by the various American cult leaders who really did claim all their female followers as wives, regardless of age.
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Please forgive me. I was in jest but once I started picturing Manos the Manga I had to inflict the idea on the rest of the world.
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Please forgive me in return. I just couldn’t pass up the chance to highlight a bit of British colonial racism that’s persisted unnoticed for so long. Please pardon the soapbox.
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Idols Of Perversity is a moldy old ranty chestnut but I still treasure my copy for its jabs at this kind of thing. Also it’s consoling to me to realize that there’s always been a lot of really bad art in the world. 
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“The Haunting Peeping Torgo Scene”?
Jonah’s pep talk in the Manos tribute is solid gold. I hope somebody squirreled it away somewhere for posterity. 
(Mmmm… granola bar…)
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