There's a lot of incredible movie trailers out there - trailers that are shocking, or mysterious, or hilarious. But only one is for 1978's The Manitou (directed by William Girdler) and respect must be paid. Telling the uncanny tale of an Indian shaman being reborn through a tumor in the back of a woman's neck, The Manitou's trailer whistles up a mean tune of pure bat shit.Besides the sight of a entranced old lady floating down a hallway, besides the spectacle of random laser beam fire, besides Tony Curtis' spontaneous yelling, and besides the confoundingly cosmic final image, what I love most about this trailer is how the title keeps dramatically appearing. That's something that used to be commonly seen in trailers but it just gradually went out of fashion. It's really awesome here, though, as 'The Manitou' flies out of a woman's screaming mouth, is zapped by lightening, and finally emerges from an explosion. You just can't forget a movie title when you see it like that - not even if you try.
4 comments:
What a great trailer! And having just watched this not too long ago, I can say that the feature more than lives up to it. It was a sad day when we lost William Girdler indeed.
Yeah, it's sad that we'll never know how Girdler's career would've played out - I bet he would've gone on to be a big gun in the '80s. But between Manitou, Grizzly, Day of the Animals and Abby, that's some horror/exploitation legacy he left behind.
I love how the music shifts to that noble brass melody when they walk into the star-filled hospital room. The final frontier...
I agree, the Lalo Schifrin score is great and those notes at the end of the trailer give a grandeur to that last image.
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