‘Worst movie ever made,’ ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ gets HD and Blu-Ray release

The Master would be pleased.

An effort to bring back the “worst movie ever made” has finally happened.

“Manos: The Hands of Fate” is a horror film that has gained a cult following despite being quite bad.

It gained notoriety in the ‘90s after the TV show “Mystery Science Theater 3000” dedicated an episode to the odd movie.

And the following keeps growing with the film being shown at festivals, including El Paso’s own Plaza Classic Film Festival.

The film also had a brief part in the famously romantic two-minute date of the season three episode of “How I Met Your Mother.”

Much like the long — long driving scene that opens the movie, it’s been a long road to getting the movie restored and released, including some legal hurdles.

The year was 1966 and El Paso, Texas was known for producing the best college basketball team in the nation – the NCAA champion Texas Western College Miners.

Oh, and “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” sometimes affectionately known just as “Manos.”

“‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ may be a piece of El Paso’s infamy,” said Eric Pearson, president and CEO of the El Paso Community Foundation. The foundation runs the Plaza Classic.

In a nutshell, “Manos” is about a family who gets lost on the road and stumbles upon a hidden, devil-worshipping cult led by the fearsome Master and his servant, Torgo.

The film was written, directed, produced by, and starred Harold P. Warren, an El Paso fertilizer salesman.

“It really is just a jumble of really poorly shot – really, really poorly edited scenes,” Pearson said.

Decades later, that poorly shot film would be restored by a kid named Ben Solovey.

“Apparently he bought a truck load of old films and found the originally working print for ‘Manos: The Hands of Fate’ and then started going in,” Pearson said.

The restored film attracted the attention of the director’s son, Joe Warren, who strongly felt his father’s movie was not in the public domain.

Warren also asserted that his family was entitled to some cut of whatever proceeds the movie made.

“But somewhere, after what, 25 years of being gone, this kid finds the print and decides to make something of that movie, and this is the 50th anniversary of the making of that movie,” Pearson said.

While the legal dispute continued for a movie no one wanted decades ago, Synapse Films would release the restored version on Blu-Ray DVD.

“The guy who restored it said, ‘even bad movies deserve to live.'”

How to Get “Manos: The Hands of Fate” on Blu-Ray

Buy from Amazon at http://amzn.to/1Orn468
Buy from Synapse Films at http://bit.ly/1kdbajP

“Manos” in Another Form

Buy “Manos – The Hands of Felt” — a puppet musical re-imagining of “Manos” at http://bit.ly/1XT3Dop