Manos: The Hands of Fate - Production

Production

Warren was very active in the theater scene in El Paso, Texas, and once appeared as a walk-on for the television series Route 66, where he met screenwriter Stirling Silliphant. While chatting with Silliphant in a local coffee shop, Warren claimed that it was not difficult to make a horror film, and bet Silliphant that he could make an entire film on his own. After placing the bet, Warren began the first outline of his script on a napkin, right inside the coffee shop. To finance the film, Warren accumulated a substantial, but nevertheless insufficient, sum of cash, $19,000 (equivalent to $136,098 in 2012 dollars), and hired a group of actors from a local theater and modeling agency. Because he was unable to pay the cast and crew any wages, Warren promised them a share in the film's profits.

Under the working title The Lodge of Sins, the movie was filmed in mid-1966. Filming mainly took place on the ranch of Colbert Coldwell, a former judge of El Paso County. Most of the equipment used for production was rented, so Warren had to rush through as many shots as possible to complete filming before the deadline for returning the equipment. Footage was shot with a 16 mm Bell & Howell camera which had to be wound by hand and thus could only take 32 seconds of footage at a time. Albert Walker of agonybooth.com believes this is the source of the many editing problems present in the final cut. The Bell & Howell camera was incapable of double-system recording, and thus all sound effects and dialogue were dubbed later in post-production, done by only three or four people, including Warren, Neyman, and Diane Mahree. Later during production, Warren renamed the film from its working title to Manos: The Hands of Fate. Warren's small crew became so bemused by his amateurishness and irascibility that they derisively called the movie Mangos: The Cans of Fruit behind his back.

Early in production, one of the actresses playing a wife of the Master broke her leg. Warren rewrote her role to have her make out in a car with an actor during the events of the entire film, as the modeling agency that had loaned her and her castmates out to Warren would have sued had she been fired. The couple appears in the beginning of the film interspersed with the opening credits and shots of the main characters driving through the Texas desert. Despite events in the film portraying police officers ordering them to leave, they are seen again later in the film while the events transpire at night, still embracing in the same location; these characters are included despite having no apparent connection to the main plot of the film.

To portray his character Torgo as a satyr, John Reynolds wore a metallic rigging under his trousers, made out of wire coat hangers and foam by costar Tom Neyman. Fake cloven hooves should also have been part of Reynolds' satyr costume, but he is instead clearly shown wearing boots in several scenes, which can even be seen in the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version that superimposes the silhouettes of theater seats and three of the show's characters over the bottom of all the films they feature. The film's dialogue never mentions Torgo's satyr nature, and none of the characters seem to notice anything unusual about his appearance.

Warren decided to shoot night-for-night scenes, because many of the cast and crew also held day jobs. In many of the night scenes, the camera and lights attracted swarms of moths, which can be seen in the film's final production. In the scene in which the cops "investigate" Mike's gunfire, they could walk only a few feet forward, because there was not enough light to illuminate the scenery for a panning shot, creating the unintentionally amusing impression that the officers hear the gunfire, step out of their car, consider investigating but then give up and leave before making a proper check of the scene.

Post-production efforts were minimal, despite promises by Warren that any problems in the film would be fixed in later editing. One of the more visible examples of this is a brief moment at the beginning of the film in which the clapperboard (which was useless to the Manos shoot in the first place – such a device is used to help sync sound captured on location. Manos' sound and dialogue was not recorded during filming but dubbed in later) is visible after a cut to the "make-out couple". The entire opening sequence, which consisted of the main characters driving around looking for their hotel for minutes on end with minimal dialogue or effect on the plot, was the result of such neglect: Warren had intended to include opening credits at this stage of the film, but forgot or was unable to add them.

John Reynolds, the actor who played Torgo, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a shotgun on October 16, 1966, a month before the film was to premiere, although the incident has no connection to Manos. Reynolds was 25; Manos would be his first (and only) film appearance.