MANSON

Fascinating must-see 1972 (oscar-nominated!) documentary on the Manson Family. If you don’t know anything about them, you’re probably at the wrong website—stop reading this and go edumacate yourself!. The Manson case is intriguing because it came at such a crucial intersection of cultural flux and drama in our history. For many people, the dream of the sixties didn’t end with Altamont, Kent State, or the Kennedy/King assassinations, --it was slain and smeared on the wall of Cielo Drive by the Manson family.
The film itself is uneven , the special effects techniques (negative image, overlap photography, split screen, etc.) kinda corny and the grainy period footage serve as a time capsule of the era. The split screen technique particularly, gets annoying after a while—thought I was watching “Woodstock” for a second. The whispery narrator occasionally lapses into purple prose—but hell, so do I. These are all minor complaints, really. The content is much more important than the techniques used. It seems the filmmakers stumbled onto shooting some of this Spahn Ranch footage right before Charlie was accused of the murders, while in jail on other charges. They followed this up with footage during and after the trial, lucking out with some priceless stuff along the way. There’s some footage of prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi in the courtroom telling tales, which I could have done without. I mean, hell, the man has made a career off of this case. But this is all coming from 1970-71, when there was not the glut of Manson info there is now. There is mucho footage of the family at the Ranch, talking about Charlie’s philosophy, sewing Charlie’s ceremonial vest (Where the hell is THAT now?), the girls walking with George Spahn, riding dune buggies, naked hippie bathing, and so on. There’s hippie-dippie folk music by Paul Watkins and Brooks Poston, two Family defectors. The best and most chilling scenes for my money are the long interviews with the girls, with their shorn hair starting to grow back (Squeaky Fromme, Sandra Good, Nancy Pittman) cleaning their rifles while they talk about freedom, love, faith and being ready to die for Charlie. Makes you wonder if we all are as easy to manipulate. The girls don’t seem any different than any number of disaffected youth. Could you or me be re-programmed as easily?
I did like the dramatic structure. The first half of the film has other people talking about Manson, slowly creating a picture and a history for this character, then leading up to the man himself, with some rare courtroom footage and disturbing voice-overs. Charlie singing “Helter Skelter” is just plain fucking unnerving.
By the way, for some great L.A. Times photo coverage of the trial, check out the Los Angeles Library’s site at www. Lapl.org/elec_neigh/index.html and type in Manson in the Photo section.
Long unavailable and still somewhat hard-to-find (the filmmakers have sued websites Amazon and eBay for allowing “counterfeit”copies to be sold there) Manson is well worth the effort. The film images illuminate the times and players in a way that reading all the books simply can not. A re-edited 5 hour version (available for a fee, of course!) has been promised for a while now, for you real buffs. A somewhat confusing and conspiratorial website exists for producer/director Hendrickson (www.exclusivefilms.com), who in the 70s successfully sued co-producer/director Laurence Merrick to remove Merrick’s name as producer from future prints. Merrick (responsible for The Black Angels and Guess What Happened To Count Dracula?) died from a shot in the back in the parking lot of his acting school in 1977. The crime remained unsolved until the murderer’s confession 4 years later, fueling much paranoia and speculation that the family was involved. It was actually done by a would-be acting student with a history of psychological problems who claimed Merrick used black magic on him at his audition, to later destroy his voice and physically shrink him!
Manson is the ultimate cautionary tale of what can happen when you abuse & neglect children. Just where does society expect its rejects to go, and what does it expect the garbage people to do? It’s somewhat of a cliché, but Manson IS us—a product of the system, a baby of our institutions, a twisted funhouse reflection of society, and thus fascinating in a car wreck sort of way. The narrator calls him a “Venus Flytrap among the Flower Children.” The ultimate symbol of the hippie ideal gone bad, yes, he is a con man and a loon, but he does have some perceptive moments and a painfully earned sense of the hypocrisy of the straight world and its’ agents. This film may give you more insight into his world than you wanted.

-Hysteric Eric