The Manitou is a 1978 American horror film directed and produced by William Girdler and starring Tony Curtis and Susan Strasberg, based on the 1975 novel by Graham Masterton. The movie is based on an old legend about the Native American spirit-concept Manitou.
Plot[]
A woman named Karen, who is suffering from a growing tumor on her neck, enters a hospital in San Francisco. After a series of X-rays, the doctors begin to think it is a living creature: a fetus being born inside the tumor. Eerie and grisly occurrences begin; the tumorous growth perceives itself – himself – to be under attack as a result of the X-rays used to ascertain its nature, which are starting to stunt and deform its development. T
he growth is actually an old Native American shaman; he is reincarnating himself through the young woman to exact his revenge on white men who invaded North America and (from the old shaman's viewpoint) exterminated its native peoples.
A second Native American shaman is contacted and hired to help fight the reincarnating medicine man, but the kind of spirits he can summon and control appear to be too weak to match his opponent's abilities.