Press "Enter" to skip to content

Manson Family Retrospective

Aired on October 20, 2019 (Episode #771)

2019 is the fiftieth anniversary of the murders committed by the Manson Family. The killings of seven people over two nights in August of 1969 and the trial that followed went beyond a mere true crime story to become a part of American folklore. In the half century that followed, Charles Manson became a cultural boogeyman and the notion of murderous hippies lead by an eccentric cult leader permeated throughout the culture and found its way into music, politics, pop art, and movies. The following commentaries examine the legacy of the Manson Family in cinema and the various ways Charles Manson and the Family have been represented on the screen.

Contents:

I. Background

II. Manson Family Documentaries

III. Manson Family Apologetics

IV. Manson Family Dramas

V. The Women of the Manson Family

VI. Echos of the Manson Family

I. Background

Charles Manson was born in 1934 to an impoverished single mother who was rumored to be a prostitute and who served time behind bars for robbery. Throughout his youth Manson was regularly in trouble with the law and spent time in various reformatories before being first sent to prison in 1951 at age sixteen. For the next decade and a half Manson was in and out of prison for stealing cars and forging checks. By the time he was released from prison in 1967 at age thirty-two, Manson had spent more than half of his life in prisons and similar institutions.

Manson exited prison and found himself in the midst of the counter cultural movement. Although he was a generation removed from most of the young people turning on, tuning in, and dropping out, Manson gathered a crowd of young followers, mostly women. Manson’s success is attributable to being in the right place at the right time. He espoused a philosophy that interlaced popular issues of the time like environmentalism, free love, and antiauthoritarianism bound together by pseudo-spirituality. He had also learned to play guitar and was an aspiring singer-songwriter and in fact had a relationship with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, who reworked Manson’s song “Cease to Exist” into “Never Learn Not to Love.”

Manson’s group of followers, who were called The Family, were a band of criminals who occupied a ranch outside of Los Angeles and subsisted on dumpster diving and thievery. They came to regard Manson as a prophet and the Family members engaged in psychedelic drug use and psycho dramas while Manson dictated a future in which America would be engulfed by a race war between whites and blacks which Manson referred to as “Helter Skelter” from the title of the Beatles song. In Manson’s view, the blacks would win and wipe out the whites but (Manson being racist) he predicted that blacks would be unable to run things at which point Manson and his Family—the last remaining whites—would emerge from hiding and inherit the earth. 

As time went on, Manson’s prospects as a musician evaporated and the Family members waited anxiously for Helter Skelter. When the apocalypse didn’t arrive, Manson hoped to kick start the race war by dispatching several Family members to 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles, the former home of a Beach Boys producer who had recorded some of Manson’s music but lost interest in making Manson into a superstar. The residence was now the home of actress Sharon Tate (her husband, filmmaker Roman Polanski, was abroad) who was there with her friends Steven Parent, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, and Abigail Folger. All five were murdered by the Manson Family and the killers painted messages in blood on the walls. The following night, Manson drove a crew of Family members to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Manson tied up the LaBiancas and his followers killed them in the same grisly fashion as the Tate crime scene.

The trial that followed became a media sensation. Manson and his companions showed no remorse and the legal proceedings became the longest criminal trial in California’s history to that point. Family members who weren’t charged with murder demonstrated outside the courthouse and Manson, ever the showman, interrupted the proceedings and played to the press. This was the start of a symbiotic relationship between Manson and the media. Ultimately, Charles Manson and his companions Tex Watson, Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel were convicted of murder and conspiracy and sentenced to execution. However, California abolished the death penalty and the executions were commuted to life sentences. One of the ironic post-scripts of the Manson trial is that the music that Charles Manson recorded in 1968 was subsequently collected and released on the album Lie: The Love and Terror Cult. The album was not a big seller in its initial release but it continues to be available and some of its songs have been covered or sampled by bands such as Guns ‘n’ Roses and Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson.

Back to Table of Contents

II. Manson Family Documentaries

One of the ways in which the Manson Family most obviously impacted cinema was in the documentary genre. In the wake of the murder trial, a whole cottage industry sprang up around Manson including nonfiction books, anti-cult literature, and many true crime documentaries that repurposed news footage of Manson mugging for courtroom reporters. A lot of these documentaries covered the same old ground and many of them contributed to the Manson myth that he was “the most dangerous man alive” as he was called on the cover of a 1970 issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

There was a symbiotic relationship between Manson and the press. The media ate up his antics and Manson seemed happy to oblige their appetite. The attention fed his ego and probably raised his standing in prison and the press gladly did this for him since Manson’s visage proved quite lucrative. Throughout the 1980s and 90s news personalities regularly conducted sit down interviews with Manson that were guaranteed ratings bonanzas. The interviews ranged from the fascinating to the embarrassing; when an interviewer tried to play the moral accuser (Geraldo Rivera), Manson frequently outwitted them but if he was asked open-ended questions and allowed to speak (Penny Daniels) Manson tended to be lucid and revealing. But even the best of these interviews contributed to the myth that Manson was the most dangerous man alive.

Throughout the 1980s and 90s cable channels regularly ran Manson Family documentaries and the true crime section of media shops were full of videotapes and DVDs with Manson’s face splashed across the covers. However, the Manson Family was fascinating and deserving of serious consideration. Maybe the most esteemed documentary about the Family was 1973’s Manson, directed by Robert Hendrickson and Laurence Merrick. Manson has been called one of the definitive documentaries on the subject. It was shot between 1969 and 1972 while the unincarcerated Family members still occupied the Spahn Ranch and Manson catalogues their daily routines and includes interviews with Family members including Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme. However, when Fromme was on trial for the attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford, a judge ordered the Manson documentary banned to avoid prejudicing the jury. Manson co-director Laurence Merrick was murdered in 1977 although his death had nothing to do with the Family. Manson got little circulation but it was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature and won the Silver Lion award at the Venice Film Festival. Despite its accolades, Manson is not currently available on physical media or for legal streaming. Robert Hendrickson’s 2007 documentary Inside the Manson Gang was made of outtakes from Manson.

Back to Table of Contents

III. Manson Apologetics

Following his conviction, Charles Manson was cast as a symbol of evil by the mainstream media who periodically trotted him out before the cameras. Beyond the infamy of his crimes, part of the reason Manson made such good television was that he was undeniably intelligent and his interviews reveal moments of perception and self-awareness, especially his comments about being a product of the prison system and the hypocrisy of society. Manson used his television appearances to inflate his own myth and to spout his rhetoric. The demonization of Manson and his ability to sound philosophical and occasionally profound made him very appealing to viewers with underground and countercultural sensibilities. And so, Charles Manson was embraced, if only superficially, by punks, white nationalists, occultists, and other contrarians who hailed Manson as a prophet and a political prisoner.

Probably the best example of this is the documentary Charles Manson Superstar, directed by musician and author Nikolas Schreck. Much of the film consists of an interview with Manson conducted at San Quentin Prison crosscut with narrated sequences. Charles Manson Superstar argued that everything popularly known about Manson is wrong and part of a deliberate effort to discredit him. According to Schreck’s film, Manson was a shaman who was victimized by straight society and the mainstream media because his ideas were threatening to the power structure. The documentary further asserts that Manson was at the nexus of a web of cosmic forces; Schreck makes this case with a kaleidoscope of coincidences that don’t actually mean anything but do create the impression of Manson as a prophetic and even messianic figure. Charles Manson Superstar is pitched precisely to appeal to viewers who distrust the establishment and fancy themselves too smart to be fooled by what’s right in front of their eyes.

Charles Manson’s appeal to occultists wasn’t made up of whole cloth. His circle of associates overlapped with other colorful figures of the late 1960s such as Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, and Manson had dabbled with Scientology and the Process Church of the Final Judgement. Family member Bobby Beausoleil, who was convicted of murdering a drug dealer on Manson’s behest, was also connected to the occultist and filmmaker Kenneth Anger who commissioned Beausoleil to score his underground film “Lucifer Rising.” Beausoleil wrote and recorded the music from prison. This genuine if tangential link between Manson and the occult added another layer of mystery to the man.

The phenomenon of Manson becoming a folk hero was not all that surprising or unique. Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and Bonnie and Clyde were thieves and killers who were also romanticized. Al Capone and John Dillinger ran major criminal operations and committed murder but with the passage of time they’ve been turned into socially acceptable personifications of American rebelliousness. It is not unreasonable to put Charles Manson in the same company.

That said, the idea that Charles Manson was a victim or some sort of political prisoner is at best incredulous. To buy what Schreck is selling in Charles Manson Superstar means discounting not only the evidence presented in the criminal trial but also the testimony of people who were actually with Manson during the time of the murders. And to accept the argument that Manson was incarcerated because of his ideas conveniently ignores the fact that nobody knew who Manson was until after the Tate-LaBianca killings. Furthermore, even if we allow that Helter Skelterwas about attacking the Establishment for its ravaging of the environment and assault on personal liberty, the seven people the Family murdered had nothing to do with that. Sharon Tate was a B-list movie actress. Leno LaBianca was a grocery store owner. These people were well off but they weren’t masters of the universe and their deaths were ultimately for nothing. The irony of the Manson conspiracy theories is that they pitch themselves as telling the truth about Manson that was distorted by the media while actually building upon the image of Manson as a philosopher and criminal mastermind that the mainstream media created. This kind of logical contortion is not unusual among conspiracy theorists but unlike a lot of contemporary conspiracizing, which jumps from one imaginary plot to the next, the myth of Charles Manson persists.

Back to Table of Contents

IV. Manson Family Dramas

The Manson Family has inspired a whole library of dramatizations of their crimes. Like the many salacious documentaries, Manson Family dramas have largely focused on Manson himself and reinforced the myths around him.

Anyone looking for a straightforward retelling of the Manson Family and the Tate-LaBianca murders would probably be best served by the 1976’s television miniseries Helter Skelter. This series was adapted from the book by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi and it dramatizes the investigation and the trial while keeping the romantic notions of Manson to a minimum. Steve Railsback turned out an electrifying performance as Charles Manson and Helter Skelter was the most watched made-for-television movie ever broadcast to that time. An inferior remake of Helter Skelter was released in 2004.

1976’s Helter Skelter handled its subject matter tastefully but that proved to be the exception in many Manson Family dramas. A lot of these films – and there are many – played up the gory details. Here is a look at some of the more notable or infamous titles.

One of the wildest Manson films was Jim Van Bebber’s picture The Manson Family. The film gained its reputation after an uncompleted work print was shown at a film festival in 1997. It was finally released in 2003. The Manson Family featured phantasmagoric visuals and explicit sexuality. The content doesn’t have much to do with the facts but the movie is a visceral and sleazy depiction of madness.

One of the persistent rumors about the Manson Family was that they shot video footage of themselves committing murder. The 1984 underground film Manson Family Movies was an attempt to imagine what that murder footage would have looked like. It was shot on 8mm film and was supposedly photographed in the same locales where the Family resided. Manson Family Movies was part of a niche of what might be called “death porn” in the VHS market of the 1980s, a subgenre that included titles like Faces of Death and purported to show forbidden footage that was oftentimes fake.

The fusion of documentary and dramatic filmmaking styles is a popular motif in the Manson movie subgenre. 1971’s The Other Side of Madness (also titled The Helter Skelter Murders) employed a similar approach as Manson Family Movies and attempted to simulate amateur photography from the late 1960s. Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes, a television movie broadcast in 2018, was a composite of interviews and archival footage with dramatic recreations.

Charles Manson has also recently figured into several television programs. Aquarius focused on two police detectives working in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. While they investigate various crimes the Manson Family operates in the background. The show was cancelled after two seasons with the story abandoned before the Tate-LaBianca murders. The seventh season of American Horror Story, subtitled Cult, included Charles Manson and other members of the Family and the second season of Mindhunter featured sequences of FBI profilers interviewing Charles Manson and Tex Watson.

2019 saw the release of two films that were tonally very different but had a remarkably similar gimmick. The Haunting of Sharon Tate was a very low budget production starring Hillary Duff in the title role. The film posited that Sharon Tale had supernatural premonitions about her murder and the film culminates with the home invasion of 10050 Cielo Drive. Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood places the Manson family in the background of a story about a washed up actor and his stuntman. (Notably, Manson was played by Demon Herriman in Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood, reprising the role from Mindhunter.) The Haunting of Sharon Tate is not good while Tarantino’s movie is a success of both craftsmanship and ironic commentary but both The Haunting of Sharon Tate and Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood share a similar ending in which history is rewritten.

The Manson Family has inspired a whole genre unto themselves. The sheer number of these movies is astounding and a little depressing. No real life murder has been depicted on screen more frequently – and more exploitatively — than Sharon Tate and her companions. However we may feel about these movies, there is something about Charles Manson and the Family that keeps drawing filmmakers and the public back to these events. Some of that is pure show business—it’s a story that sells—but it may also be that, as a culture, we’re still working this out.

Back to Table of Contents

V. The Women of the Manson Family

In recent years there has been a spike in films about the Manson Family. Some of this may be driven unscrupulous producers attempting to cash in on the fiftieth anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders. But one of the interesting developments in this subgenre has been a shift in emphasis from the Manson Family’s eponymous leader to the young women who devoted their lives to him.

The 2009 film Leslie, My Name is Evil was focused on Family member Leslie Van Houten. The movie posits a fictional relationship between Van Houten and a juror at her murder trial. When it was released on DVD the movie’s title was changed to Manson, My Name is Evil and the cover art featured a close up of actor Ryan Robbins’ face as Manson (which seems to be the default design for nearly every Manson film).

One of the dominant themes in these movies is how the women became disillusioned. Manson’s Lost Girls was a 2016 Lifetime movie focused on Linda Kasabian, a member of the Family who became the key witness for the prosecution. 2019’s Charlie Says (from Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner, the director and writer of American Psycho) was about a graduate student who contacts Leslie Van Houten, Patricia Krenwinkel, and Susan Atkins after their murder convictions and assists them in coming to terms with what they’ve done. Krenwinkel’s story is also told in the 2014 documentary film Life After Manson.

The shift from Charles Manson to his followers is a welcome change. For one, it allows for a new take on these events after so many recapitulations of the same old material. For another, it puts the focus on the people who actually did the killing. Despite his violent public image, Manson did not actually murder anyone at the Tate and LaBianca households. If we want to get beyond the bloodshed and achieve an understanding of why this happened then we have to consider why these young people, many of whom came from stable middle class backgrounds, were led to commit such horrific acts.

And that may reveal why there is a renewed interest in the Manson Family and especially in its female members at this particular time. We are living through a period of extremism. For almost two decades, the United States has dealt with the aftermath of the 9/11 attack and has been engaged in ongoing military conflicts with Muslim fundamentalists. At home, America has contended with radicalization of so-called incels, white supremacists, and political extremists who have committed acts of terrorism at schools, nightclubs, museums, movie theaters, and houses of worship. The story of the Manson Family may offers clues as to what drives people to such extremes.

Back to Table of Contents

VI. Echoes of the Manson Family

The Manson Family was robustly represented in cinema through both documentaries and dramatizations. But the Family’s influence on cinema went much further than that and percolated throughout a variety of movies from independent shlock to major Hollywood releases.

Before the Manson trial even reached a verdict, killer cult and crazy hippie movies were already underway. Manson himself wasn’t really a hippie and in fact he was disowned by many people in the counterculture. But mainstream society had trouble telling the difference, especially when it was whipped up into a frenzy of fear, and a lot of movies got made in the ensuing years in which murderous groups of young people led by a charismatic leader preyed upon law abiding citizens and lured naïve young women to join their ranks. Among some of the notable titles were I Drink Your Blood, The Cult, Snuff, Sweet Savior, and The Night God Screamed.

Adjacent to these films was Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left. A reworking of Igmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, the 1972 movie was about a group of criminals who torture and murder a pair of young women. While not featuring killer hippies, the female member of the gang was named Sadie which was the nickname of Manson murderess Susan Atkins.

A more mainstream film to channel Charles Manson is Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The movie was a Vietnam War film about a colonel who has gone insane in the southeast Asian jungle. At one point, a character opens up a newspaper to reveal the headlines of Manson’s arrest with the cult leader’s face in full view. Colonel Kurtz’s monologues echo Charles Manson’s rants including his ideas about morality and murder.

The influence of the Manson family showed up in some unexpected places. The villain of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is a longhaired cult leader with a persecution complex who is surrounded by beautiful young women whose costumes echo the fashions of the 1960s counterculture. Khan actually predated the Tate-LaBianca murders; he appeared in an episode of the original Star Trek television show where his hippie resemblance is even clearer. 

In the 1990s, Oliver Stone directed Natural Born Killers from a story by Quentin Tarantino. Woody Harrelson and Juliet Lewis play a pair of lovers on a mass murder spree. Halfway through the film they are incarcerated and a sleazy tabloid television personality played by Robert Downey Jr. interviews Harrelson’s character from prison. The filmmakers have admitted that this sequence was based upon Geraldo Rivera’s interview with Charles Manson.  

Musician turned filmmaker Rob Zombie has regularly referenced the Manson Family. He covered “Cease to Exist” and Zombie recently collaborated with Marilyn Manson on a cover of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter.” His films have also made references to the Manson Family, most obviously The Devil’s Rejects and 3 From Hell which very blatantly invoked Manson and his followers.

It’s been fifty years since the Manson Family’s rise to national infamy. These various references and allusions to the Family together with the ongoing dramas and documentaries on the subject demonstrate the way in which, right or wrong, the Manson Family continues to be a cultural touchstone.

Back to Table of Contents

Back to Commentary Index