My Manos Movie Poster

Manos: The Hands of Fate

One of my favourite pastimes is watching bad movies. Some of you may wonder who would ever purposely watch a bad movie. However, these are not run-of-the-mill bad movies. These are bad movies that have a certain charm to them. In other words, they're so bad, they're good.

One such movie that is near the top of my list is the 1966 cult film, Manos: The Hands of Fate, which is in the public domain.

Manos was written and directed by Hal Warren, an insurance salesman, whom also starred in the movie.

The film is about a vacationing family that gets lost on a road trip and falls victim to a small cult out in a desert, that is led by an ominous man known as The Master. That's his glaring stare you see in my poster design.

Inspiration for My Design

After having become obsessed with this inept movie with quirky characters, I decided to design my own version of a Manos movie poster, which is what you see above.

My own research led me to conclude that no official movie poster for the film, existed. There is one that seems to have been adopted as the official movie poster but it's really just a colorized version of the ad that appeared in the El Paso Herald-Post. It was a flyer created for the Plaza Classic Film Festival in 2008.

I decided I would use all the information provided in the original ad except for the film's synopsis. I also altered the tagline, slightly.

Below is the original ad as it appeared in the El Paso Herald-Post in 1966.

Designing My Manos Poster

The Master

I decided I would go with a bold and simple design for a movie that is equally simple. I wanted it to look ominous with some symbolism.

I also decided that I would prominently feature The Master, who was portrayed by Tom Neyman. His character does not appear in the original ad despite Neyman being listed first in the cast credits.

I searched for a screen capture of the film that had a good view of The Master's face...one that had a menacing stare. After I found that I converted the image into black and white and vectorized it with CorelDraw.

This created an effective look, one that makes it appear that The Master is staring into your soul. It's almost as if he is eyeing you as the next victim of his cult.

The Hands

For the hands, I traced my right hand with a pencil on paper and scanned it into a digital file and vectorized it. I duplicated it and mirrored to create the left hand. I also extended the index fingers just because I though it would look more like it was part of The Masters robe.

I also positioned the hands so it appears like they are framing the film's title, almost like a director would frame a scene with his hands.

Landscape Movie Poster

Since Manos is public domain, I uploaded it to YouTube and created a landscape version of the poster to use as a thumbnail image. Enjoy!