i recently watched this for the millionth time and i am pretty goddamn sure that the whole movie is shot and edited in camera, and all sound is dubbed. Unreal.
You are more-or-less correct. The camera they used could only shoot something like thirty seconds of footage at a time, and it didn't have an audio track.
Yeah, there was no microphone in the camera so everything was dubbed in post, though the director opted not to tell anyone that until near the end of filming.
I think my all-time favorite scene in this movie is the clumsy molestation of the mother by Torgo. How she kind of is cool with it for about a minute, then suddenly freaks out.
Manos was some bad it became good then looped back around to bad. No matter how bad it was, at least it was adorable, like a retarded puppy trying to cook spaghetti. Yeah, it left a mess but awwwww.
While it's a bad movie, MANOS is sort of creepy in some parts. In the hands of a competent director it could have been an okay horror flick. Some of the other stuff they msted could never have been good or entertaining, even with a competent director and crew.