Talk:Manos: The Hands of Fate

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Contents

[edit] Quentin Tarantino

This page states that "Quentin Tarantino is a big fan of the film and owns a rare 35mm copy." While this is true, what the person who submitted this info forgot to mention is that Tarantino stated that this movie was his favorite comedy.

[edit] Actors' suicides

The part about four of the actors committing suicide is, in fact, wrong. Look at this IMDB thread: [1]. In reality, only Reynolds committed suicide. Poromenos 22:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The above link does not appear to have any information, at least any accessible to people who aren't IMDbPro subscribers. (I am a long-time IMDb user and contributor, and I'm not getting anything.) Please fix the link or provide an appropriate excerpt to make your case. Thank you. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 17:38, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Plot details?

Anyone up to fleshing out the plot a bit more? If not, I'll see what I can do...---Jackel 17:43, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Manos had a plot? --Malathion 21:40, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Actually, you could probably start by moving material from Torgo, which has more extensive discussion of the movie's plot than this article does. (Just remember to include the fact that it comes from Torgo in the edit summary, so people know where to check the history -- attribution, and all...) -- Antaeus Feldspar 00:29, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hal Warren's Demise

Does anyone have confirmation on how he died? The IMDb simultaneously reports his death as occurring in 1986 and that he died December 26, 1985 from a heart attack (despite having lung cancer) -- Xanadu 22:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hotel Torgo.

In the third paragraph, there is "In 2004, a group of Canadian filmmakers made a short documentary named Hotel Torgo". But, down in the body, a sentence claims, "However, the makers of Hotel Torgo, a 2005 documentary about "Manos"...". Which is it? -- Derfy 16:59, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

The actual date for Hotel Torgo is 2004. Fixed.

[edit] Memorable MST3K commentary (???)

id say that we delete it, what the hell is a mst3k??, is it supposed to be funny?... it is?... whats the point of it???... the serious description of manos is already funny, to place this last and completely unnecesary part really kills it.

(a) I agree that it doesn't need to be included. (b) Well, if you clicked on the MST3K link, you'd quickly find out. --Yar Kramer 17:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)
i did, and actually got a little embarrased. I am not from America and i thought mst3k was the name of some unknown internet writter (as the tittle seems to say "mistique", considering how geeks write words like "1337" or "h4xr"...) still, the bathroom humour of it did killed the eloquency of what it was a funny piece.
I'm a huge MST3K fan, but I agree that quotes from the unspoofed film are the only proper ones for this article. I added a clarifying line to the quote section and a link to the Wikiquote article and its Manos section. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:21, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Possible Error

"Users of the Internet Movie Database have consistently voted the film a position on the site's list of the 100 worst films ever made. It is usually near the very bottom of the list. As of August 29, 2005, it was #1 on the chart. As of January 7, 2006, it is #13."

Judging by the information here, wouldn't it be on the top of the list of 100 worst films ever made, instead of the bottom? I won't change it because I'm unsure, but if someone else could provide an opinion, then we could fix it. When I first read this part, I got the impression that it barely made it into the list.

Good point. I've changed the article to refer to the "top" of the worst-films list. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 12:33, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Movie Title

At the risk of seeming extremely picky the movie's title is in fact "Manos" The Hands of Fate, rather than Manos: The Hands of Fate. I'm pretty sure that's unimportant, but if someone thinks it should be changed...hey go for it.65.93.194.199 18:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

On what grounds is it "Manos" The Hands of Fate? The poster in the article does not use quotation marks. - furrykef (Talk at me) 15:44, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] great movie

great movie

[edit] Voice-over of Torgo

The article states that the actor who portrayed Torgo also did his voice, but I am pretty sure this is incorrect.--71.75.57.18 10:59, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Actually, virtually the entire "Trivia and errors" section cites no sources for its information, which are needed to clarify this and other points. I've added an {{unreferenced}} tag to encourage the authors to cite their sources explicitly. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sources

Would somebody with experience in the matter please help this page cite sources better? I rewritten it a bit, but I don't know how to line up all the sources to proper format.--Lenin & McCarthy 10:42, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] trivia

Can I just purge the rest if the trivia section?--Lenin & McCarthy 10:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

And the quote section. Perhpas move to Wikiquote?--Lenin & McCarthy 15:09, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mary-Robin Redd

Please, people. Robin Redd and Mary-Robbin Redd are not the same actress. I'm deleting all references to Mary-Robin Redd from the article.--Satan Rides a Bike 18:21, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Good Article

I've passed this article as a Good Article. It's well-written, well-referenced, and I have read it with much enjoyment on several occasions. A few suggestions:

  • The plot summary section is very good overall, but could use some minor cleanup as far as clarity and continuity go.
  • I think some interesting information may have been lost when the trivia section was removed. See if some of those tidbits can be brought back into the article.

Great job to everyone who's worked on this. Who knows, with a little more work, there could be a featured article nomination in the future. Stebbins 01:14, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

This is from an undergraduate astronomy and astrophysics major. The article is readable, and it has a lot of sources. Each source is linked from the main text in the appropriate place, and supports the information that is presented in the article. Whoever wrote the bulk of this article has actually read and understood the sources. It would have been so easy to dump them into an External Links section at the end. Well done.
Against it, the article is very slight, and it is poorly-written. There is a difference between a writer and a researcher; it is the difference between an architect and a bricklayer. The plot synopsis is robotic space-filler, and when that is taken out, the text amounts to one and a half pages of A4. The first sentence of the first paragraph describes the film in the present tense; the third sentence is formulated in such as way as to describe the film in the past tense, and in doing so it implies that the film was universally infamous in 1966. The second sentence is "Made in 1966 as the result of a bet, he intended to make a successful horror film on a shoestring budget", which should read "Made in 1966 as the result of a bet, Manos was intended by Warren as a successful horror film on a shoestring budget". You will wait for several weeks before performing this edit, because you do not want to admit that I am right. At the end of the introduction we are told that a theatre company in Portland "did a play" based on the film in 2004. That is not a professional standard of writing.
The screen capture of poor, poor Torgo has a computer cursor in it. There is room for a short sentence explaining why the film's title is rendered as "Manos": The Hands of Fate and not simply Manos: The Hands of Fate, as on the IMDB, perhaps with a screen capture of the film's title card instead of the awful DVD box. The article does not explain if the film is in the public domain. The standalone DVD release is by Alpha Video, a company that seems to specialise in public domain films (they appear to be unrelated to the Alpha Video listed on the IMDB). [2] Presumably the copyright of the film rests either with Hal Warren's estate, or with whatever became of Emerson Film Enterprises. The link to Alpha Video's DVD release of the film points to the wrong place. Rather than being a link to a search index page, it should be a direct link to the film itself. I could fix all this myself, but I have taken an instant disliking to you, and I am in a bad mood. If this is what passes for a featured article on Wikipedia, and if Wikipedia is the internet's leading source of information, there needs to be a vast and painful purging process. -Ashley Pomeroy 22:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA review

Alright, I have read the whole article and have many suggestions for you. First the good news. I think you pass all but two criteria. This article fails in that it is poorly written and the images have no fair use. Fixing the fair use is easy (see suggestion below) but the other one will take some careful editing. I suggest putting the whole thing in Word to help catch misspellings and some grammatical errors.

Errors:

  • "The Lodge of Sins" Should not be italicized and quoted per style guidelines.
  • Needs a non-breaking space for 16mm and 32mm.
  • None of the three images have fair use rationales (try cribbing them from Gremlins)
  • Why is hair wikilinked in the plot summary? Something special about her hair?
  • Just what is "the normal technique of shooting day-for-night"? Could you wikilink or explain?
  • Needs a thorough copyedit. There are numerous grammatical problems, for example "The Master angrily stops the argument and, enraged at Torgo's insolent behavior and for allowing the family to stay, decides to sacrifice Torgo to the film's mysterious deity and namesake, "Manos"." This sentence alone has a missing comma and a superfluous comma.
    • As I read, I keep coming across more and more grammatical errors as well as superfluous information that could be cut to make the article more concise.

*How was the dog killed?

  • Is the MST3K section really a spoiler? The lead says the film is awful and the opening is already covered in the production. The more things marked spoiler the less a timid reader will read.
  • "Heavily promoted, it was attended by numerous local dignitaries and media." Who specifically attended, and how was it promoted?
  • "Further cynicism is directed at the fact that "Manos" is the Spanish word for "hands"; thus, when entirely translated into English, the movie's title is 'Hands' The Hands of Fate.[17][3]" Again this does not need to be under a spoiler tag, and it is just tacked on to the end of a paragraph that has nothing to do with it.
  • Consider changing the cast since the WP:Film style guidelines recommends that you do not summarize the character if the character was described in the plot.
  • Either make stubs for the minor character actors or unwikilink them.
  • Consider wikilinking the actors in the plot summary.

--Supernumerary 01:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Much, much improved. The few things that bothered me I went ahead and fixed. If the minor character actors went on to star in other films then re-wikilink them, but if not they don't need a page on Wikipedia. The one thing that is still missing is specifically how was it heavily promoted?--Supernumerary 02:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Harold Warren's post-Manos career

I removed the following material from the "After Manos" section:

Hal Warren is presumed to have returned to selling fertilizer following Manos.<ref name="mst-warren">Mystery Science Theater 3000, "Manos: The Hands of Fate" [4.24], timecode 01:27:14. Tom Servo: If you'd like to contact Harold P. Warren, look in the Yellow Pages for "The Fertilizer Corporation of Texas".</ref>

I've reformatted the "source" info that User:Lenin & McCarthy added here, just for form's sake, but there's no way a MST3K quip can be considered a reliable source, even if it turns out to be true. Without a source, this is mere speculation. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 23:57, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Actually, it wasn't to source that he did, but that that was a presumption. --Spencer "The Belldog" Bermudez | (Complain here) 10:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I can understand the desire to treat a MST3K quip as simply a presumption, but it just doesn't fly, even if we could be sure that Servo was saying this based on actual belief (as opposed to just being funny), which we can't. Why? Because Wendell Corey didn't say "Hi-keeba!", as MST3K ACEG claims (it was Paul Gilbert), "I thought you were Dale" didn't come from a dish-detergent commercial, as Mary Jo et al have stated (it was a Grape-Nuts commercial); and Casey Adams/Max Showalter (from Indestructible Man) was not in Catalina Caper, as Dr. Forrester claimed (he was thinking of Del Moore). In other words, BBI makes mistakes, and clearly cares more about the humor than the precision. ("It's just a show", after all.) We can cite stuff like this to show it's what BBI writers thought was correct, but considering this particular statement was made as part of the joking commentary, the connection is just too tenuous to assert in an encyclopedia article, I'm afraid. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 01:05, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] B-rating

Shouldn't someone have changed the rankings on the top of this page from "B" to "GA"?
And if so should I do it? Or is it the job of the reviewer? --Spencer "The Belldog" Bermudez | (Complain here) 15:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Anyone can do it after it's passed the review. I went ahead and upgraded it.--Supernumerary 23:54, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
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