10 Films That Probably Started As A Drunken Bet

A candidate for the most unwatchable movie ever made, Manos really did begin as a bet. When Hal P Warren, a fertilizer salesman from El Paso, told Stirling Silliphant, the Oscar-winning screenwriter, that any fool could make a movie, Silliphant said it sounded like a wager.

Warren eventually won the bet – it’s just the viewer who loses. From a travel montage over which the filmmakers forgot to add the opening credits, through the blurry cinematography and horribly dubbed dialogue to the sleepwalking performers, Manos is the ultimate monument to incompetence.

Warren began shooting with a 16mm camera that could only capture 32 seconds of film, so that was the maximum length of any shot. The clapperboard is visible in one sequence, while a night scene has two police officers conduct a search by taking three steps back – as far as the lights would illuminate.