The Manitou (1978)

In the Spirit of Howard Philips. The Manitou is an American horror movie from 1978 with Tony Curtis and Susan Strasberg, based on a 1975 book by Graham Masterton. A woman named Karen enters a hospital in San Francisco suffering from a growing tumor on her neck. The doctors think it's a living creature, a fetus being born inside the tumor. Eerie and grisly occurrences begin when the tumorous growth perceives himself to be under attack as a result of the X-rays used to ascertain its nature starting to stunt and malform its development. The growth is actually an old Indian shaman reincarnating himself through the young woman, to exact his revenge on white men who invaded North America and exterminated its native peoples. A 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 simply no match for the raw, unbridled energies his opponent can tap into. The movie is based on an old legend about the Native American spirit-concept Manitou.