I've been awfully curious about the The Manipulator, a 1971 flick with Mickey Rooney as a has-been movie makeup guy who kidnaps an actress and forces her to reinact movie scenes. That's what it says on the box, anyway. Rooney did some wacky evil roles, in Night Gallery (as a mob boss) and Twilight Zone (the jockey who wished to be "a big man"), so I decided to checkitout ---Since I found it on one of those dicey Mill Creek "50 Movie" multipacks, I should have known I'd be falling waaaaayyyy down the rabbit hole....There are almost no words to describe The Manipulator -- could be the trippiest movie I've ever seen. More trippy than The Trip! Somewhere between the psychedelic non-sequiturs of Wonderwall and crazed movie geek Eric Binford in Fade to Black -- it's mostly just Rooney, imagining stuff and people, all distorted with psychedelic sound FX and insane soliloquies. Sometimes, Rooney is seen in slowmo, sometimes speeded up, and frequently surrounded by pulsating hallucinations...this movie just seemed drenched in LSD. And BiPolar disorder ----Just...wow...

Well it strikes me that if you hold your index finger strategically placed on the fast forward button, you'll suffer no loss of coherence or continuity while watching this thing. Now I would have done that, except then I'd lose some integrity in writing a review, so I forced myself to suffer through it. Which is not to say that there wasn't a single redeeming factor here, that being Mickey Rooney's insanely delivered performance as a mad film director and erstwhile performer in his own twisted production. He barks orders to imaginary crew and cameraman while the imaginary applause of worshipful fans appeal to his artistic sensibilities. Luana Anders is at the same time his leading actress in bondage and almost willing co-conspirator in the madness. What you wind up with is a pretentious art house film, the product of a writer and director with no vision other than to get something down on celluloid and call it art.Throughout this twisted nightmare, there were moments when Rooney actually looked like he might have been having fun in between his misgivings about taking on the assignment. Those inspired renditions of Chatanooga Choo-Choo were pure Cyrano de Rooneyac. What I'd really like to know is if Rooney ever discussed this film role as a guest on Carson's 'Tonight Show'. Can you picture that - with Rickles sitting on one side, and Dean Martin on the other. Now that's something I would really want to see.

The legendary Mickey Rooney gives an incredibly wild, hammy and over-the-top full-tilt insane, inspired and uninhibited performance as B.J. Lang, a deranged and delusional psychotic washed-up Hollywood has-been who thinks he's a great successful big-time film director ala Orson Welles. Lang relentlessly torments and terrorizes hapless lovely aspiring actress Carlotta (the beautiful Luana Anders) on a dingy and decrepit abandoned studio back lot: he rants and raves to himself with rip-snorting gonzo aplomb, spoon feeds her baby food, impersonates an effeminate make-up artist (Rooney sports bright red lipstick and gaudy blue eye shadow!), pretends to have a fatal massive heart attack, and occasionally breaks into these astounding impromptu a cappella renditions of "Chattanooga Choo Choo" which he heartily belts out in this pained hoarse'n'wheezy croak of a voice.Writer/director Yabo Yablonsky whips up one awesomely aberrant and idiosyncratic marvel of an outré indie avant garde experimental cinematic meditation on dreams, delusions, dementia and the fine line between unattainable fantasy and bitter reality. Yablonsky deftly creates and maintains a clammy, creepy and claustrophobic weirded-out mood that sucks the viewer into the stunningly surreal and suffocating anything-goes nightmarish atmosphere which proves to be both jarring and riveting in comparable measure. Baird Bryant's garishly stylized cinematography uses every fancy artsy trick in the book: crazily tilted camera angles, distorted fish-eye lens, strenuous slow motion, artificially sped up film, wonky zoom-in close-ups and startling freeze frames. Gil Melle's groovy, droning, atonal psychedelic acid jazz score constitutes as another significant asset. Keenan Wynn briefly pops up in an embarrassingly thankless bit part as a mumbling drunken bum who Rooney runs through with a rapier. While Rooney clearly dominates the picture with his bracingly berserk and bravura acting, Anders still nonetheless holds her own quite well and gets to perform a major crack-up scene where she really cranks up the astonishing eye-rolling histrionics to 10 plus. A splendidly screwy and singular one-of-a-kind piece of sheer celluloid lunacy.

"Do you hear it, BJ? Do you hear me throw this piece of junk against my bedroom wall and hear it shatter?" This movie is not only the most awful movie that I have ever seen, it makes no sense at all whatsoever!! Why in the world is a Hollywood legend like Mickey Rooney even playing such a senseless character as BJ Lang? And playing Carlotta is an anorexic strung out washed out actress that he keeps as his prisoner hidden in his dorm of props. The whole movie is just hilariously funny and makes me wonder why in the world did anybody even make this movie at all? Was he that desperate that he had nothing else to do with his life and no more roles to play that he had to play this god awful character? The whole movie centers on BJ Lang a hopeless Hollywood makeup artist (and judging from his own makeup artwork on his own face I fear what the people looked like that he made up)kidnaps an actress and ties her to a wheelchair and starves her as he makes her recite lines from different plays that he directs. He goes through the movie barking out orders to an unseen crew, mops the floor as he sings "The Chatanooga Choo-Choo" (oh God that was hilarious!!), puts on fake heart attacks and chases his prisoner through the theater through rooms of costumes, mannequins and props. The movie dragged on as he endlessly recites poems and rehearsals with Carlotta, the camera zooms in and out as crazy 60's acid trip music plays on and on throughout the movie, flashbacks keep coming back as Carlotta stares at the only sane guy in the movie which is the janitor that ends up being the only death in this movie. And it just gets worse. But I guess that there is something to think about in this movie, as awful as it is, it makes you think of people that act like something that their not and the manipulation that they place upon people in order to gain the approval of who they want to be.