Manitou's Shoe
Short description
Abahachi, chief of an Apache tribe, and his white blood brother Ranger try to keep order in the Wild West. To buy a saloon for his people, Abahachi borrows gold from the Shoshone, but the man who sold him the place, Santa Maria, cheats him and disappears with the money. The Shoshone demand their gold back, and Abahachi and Ranger are also blamed for a death connected to the deal. The two set out to find a treasure that Abahachi's grandfather left him, which could settle the debt and clear them, though the map was split into four pieces and Abahachi no longer remembers who holds three of them.
Manitou's Shoe is a German western comedy directed by Michael Herbig, who also plays the lead roles of Abahachi and Winnetouch. It was Herbig's first feature as director and the earliest entry in his filmography, followed by (T)Raumschiff Surprise - Periode 1, Wickie the Mighty Viking, Balloon, A Thousand Lines and Manitou's Canoe. Herbig wrote the screenplay with Alfons Biedermann and Rick Kavanian; Kavanian also appears as Dimitri. The cast further includes Christian Tramitz as Ranger, Sky du Mont as Santa Maria, Marie Bäumer as Uschi and Hilmi Sözer as Hombre, among 34 credited performers and 64 credited crew members. The film took about 76 million dollars worldwide.
Audience reception is mildly positive: on IMDb it holds 6.7/10 from roughly 23,000 votes, and on TMDB 6.8/10 from about 599 votes.
What's left behind the scenes
- When the Shoshone chief Sly Slimy asks to dig up the war tomahawk, one of his assistants tells him in a fictional "Apache dialect" that the tomahawk broke because they bought a cheap, low-quality one. The last word he says in this "dialect" is "Chibo." In reality, "Chibo" is a popular chain of stores in Germany known for selling everyday goods at affordable prices.
- When Abahachi shows the Ranger photographs from his past, he points to one and says it's his father. In fact, he's showing a photograph of the French actor Pierre Brice, who played the main role of Winnetou in a series of German films released in the 1960s. At the same time, Abahachi tells the Ranger that his father could speak French, and no one knew where he learned it.
- In one scene, Abahachi plays a popular tune from the film "The Third Man" (1949). Paul Hörbiger, Christian Tramitz's grandfather who played the Ranger in "Manitou's Mocassins," played a role in "The Third Man."
- Before the release of "Manitou's Mocassins," two leading characters in sketches on the popular German parody series "Bullyparade" (1997-2002) by Michael Herbig were named Winnetou and Old Shatterhand, as in the novels by Karl May. After the film appeared on screens, they suddenly reverted to their "real" names, Abahachi and Ranger, in the television series.
- A special version of the film has a runtime of 100 minutes.
- The film's television premiere on the German channel PRO 7 achieved the highest rating in the channel's history. The movie was watched by 12.2 million viewers, or 32% of the channel's total audience.
- The film itself is essentially a parody of the novels by German writer Karl May dedicated to the Apache chief Winnetou and the films based on them, which are very popular in Germany. The character Karl M., whom the protagonists meet in a bar, is an additional reference to the famous writer.
- The entire cave scene was subsequently redubbed due to leaking street noise.
- Abahachi's mare, named Jacqueline, is actually a stallion.
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