“The Manson Family” is several years old, having been released in 2003, but the subject matter itself is timeless. Like it or not, the mythos of Charles Manson just grows more epic as the years go by. Nearly thirty-eight years since the Tate-LaBianca murders took place and Manson’s name reverberates with nearly as much menace as “Hitler.”
But why?
Even indirectly, Manson can hardly be held responsible for the deaths of more than fifteen people. Hitler was responsible for millions, and I bet you can’t even remember how many people Cho Seung-Hui killed.
Wait, you don’t even remember who Cho Seung-Hui is? He killed 32 people and wounded 25 others in a shooting spree known as the Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007. This is twice as many people as Charles Manson killed and Seung-Hui murdered them all directly. Yet Seung-Hui’s name already grows hazy in public consciousness while Manson’s looms larger and larger. Just what exactly is the enduring appeal of Charles Manson?
The movie “The Manson Family” comes reasonably close to delivering a straight-forward answer, and I will use it as a jumping off point for my own musings on Charles Manson and his twisted, yet now notorious and legendary deeds.
Early on, the film makes it clear that the film will be using the conventions of a horror movie to tell a true story. The opening scenes of an American flag and white flowers convey the perfect look of the late sixties, and for a moment you could almost imagine that it is contemporary to its subject matter. However, within moments the rain starts—and then turns to blood, dripping and falling over the flowers in a surreal and stylized manner.
The movie is whetting our appetite. As ghastly as it sounds, we now want to see Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and the all the rest brutally stabbed, shot, and murdered. This movie is set-up that way. Even though it does a fairly good job of sticking to the facts of the Manson case, it firmly plants itself on the side of a horror movie and the famous Tate/LaBianca murders are held to the very end like a juicy-ripe cherry on top.
Don’t now assume I have natural morbid tendencies. I don’t. I’ve never had more than the most passing interest in horror movies, serial killers, or any sort of true crime. What makes this movie interesting to me is just how American Charlie Manson is and why he grows more popular today, thanks in part to bands like Guns and Roses doing covers of Charles Manson songs you can buy on iTunes, Trent Reznor, recording in the old Tate house, and of course Marilyn Manson stealing Charlie’s name. What is their fascination with Charlie? It must be similar to ours. This movie is not afraid to investigate the darker side of human desire. Why do we crave violence?
The murders are atrocious. 
That is clear. As a young woman myself I would not want to be stabbed weeks before I was to give birth, but unlike his victims, the legend of Manson does not die. Even now, almost 40 years later, who can hear the song “Helter Skelter” without sensing the insane and sinister subtext implanted there by Manson and his followers. It’s not the Beatles fault at all, having named their song after a British amusement park ride, but it’s there nonetheless.
As Americans, we are ALL left with the stench of Manson on our identity. We don’t have to be happy about it, but we can see if it makes a good movie or not and more importantly: Can we learn anything from it?
This movie realizes all these things about Charles Manson and is in many ways “self-referential,” which is a fancy way of saying the movie is aware that it is part of the Manson equation. The idea of who Charles Manson is cannot be separated from the media that launched him to infamy. The media fed off Charlie and Charlie reveled in the media. Even Polanski has admitted to using media sensation surrounding Tate’s death; he posed for an interview in the very room where she was murdered in hopes that it would help track down the killers. The police at that point were still convinced it was drug dealers and that the Tate murder was unrelated to the LaBianca murders (yeah, can you give me a “D,” a “U” and an “H”! Let’s here it for DUH!)
At its heart that is the grisly truth of this movie: Somehow we all created the beast called Charles Manson and somehow we are all still feeding him.
That is part of the grim irony of this movie, and why it is ultimately a thought-provoking film and not merely exploitation.
“You better wise up. The time is gonnna come when all men will judge themselves before god. It will be the worst hell, the worst hell on earth. It’ll make Nazi Germany look like a picnic. you gotta be ready for that. Right now. Right here. Right now. Just like that.
And That’s where we’re at all the time.”
-– Leslie Van Houten
These lines occur during an opening scene of the movie, and they are critical into understanding the mental state of Manson and his “family.” Manson instilled an “end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it” belief into all his followers. This tactic is seen in most world religions (and in modern media, i.e. avian bird flu epidemics and global warming), but Manson really ratchets it up for the happy-go-lucky band of hippies he kicked around with and who eventually became known as his “family.”
Manson predicted impending “race wars” between blacks and whites which would destroy the earth. This sense of impending doom—or of an inevitable climax—was palpable to followers of Manson by the time they were all living on the Spahn Ranch, which is where much of the movie takes place.
It took the director purportedly 14 years to make this film and the scenes on the Spahn Ranch are some of the best. These early scenes capture the love, the caring, the innocence of Manson and his followers before the paranoia and violence crept in and took over.
The scene where Manson washes the feet of one of his female family members in a Christ-like fashion shows how Manson and his family seemed to have a genuine caring for each other, as well as illustrating the subtle beginnings of Manson’s insidious brainwashing (first for comparing himself to Christ without ever saying it, and second for “submitting” as a way to gain their sympathies and therefore dominate.)
“Charlie was like an answer to an unspoken prayer.”–Linda Kasabian.
In this movie, Charlie is pla
yed with more innocence than any other Charles Manson movie (both made for TV Helter Skelter [1976 and 2004 respectively] versions for example) gives him credit for. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it was plausibly and charismatically played by Marcelo Games.
One thing I agree with this movie about is the way the directing illustrates how much time there was for Manson’s followers to make alternate decisions. These people all had a real chance to handle these situations any way they saw fit. Especially with the first, and less-known, murder of Gary Hinman. Manson hinted, suggested and cajoled, but when it came down to it these people (Susan Atkins, Leslie Van Houten, Tex Watson, Patricia “Katie” Krenwinkel, et. al) committed the crimes alone without Manson, and they had every chance to change their actions or to back out (like Kasabian did), but instead they were just too much like children and wanted to impress Charlie even to the point of going against their own conscience.
Charles Manson made himself the only real thing in his family member’s minds. He taught them to live in the moment only, taught them that there was no need to fear any long term consequence to their actions because of the impending “race war”, drenched himself Christ imagery, had his followers constantly dress up and play different roles, and many other propaganda techniques that seemed to come so natural to him.
This idea of brainwashing is one of the most disturbing ideas presented in the movie. What’s frightening is that we all suffer under this most insidious form of domination and manipulation. Modern media is our Charles Manson and we are the media’s “family.”
Today is a different world than the brainwashing totalitarianism of Hitler. Back then, you could argue the power to brainwash an entire country was limited to three people (Goebbels, Goering and Hitler). Now, however, the people doing the brainwashing are multitudinous–whether it’s coming from Hollywood or Madison Avenue. Those producing our films and television commercials are brainwashed as much by each other’s propaganda as we all are. There is no one standing outside the bubble of brainwashing. We are all enveloped in the massive brainwashing of humankind—maybe we always have been. It’s what the Hindus call Maya.
It’s hard to imagine how violence would not sooner or later have descended into the naïve abandon of reckless lovemaking that covered not only the Spahn ranch, but the entire hippie movement. The seed of violence was born not just within the oft violent and unhappy childhood of Charles Manson, but was already around them in the black-white tensions at home and in the Vietnam War abroad. As in Haight-Asbury, where the peace and love of pot and LSD gave way to the paranoid violence of methamphetamines, communes were doomed from the start because human nature dictates that someone will come in and pervert good intentions for their own self-aggrandizement—similar to Hitler’s rise to power.
That’s the most heartbreaking thing about this movie, and that of the Manson murders—human selfishness killed the free love of the 60s—and Sharon 
Tate and her unborn child are the perfect symbol for that end.
At this point, I might interject that I wonder how much of Manson’s lasting fame is due to Roman Polanski’s own brand of notoriety. Having recently frightened a cinematic world with Rosemary’s Baby (1968), his own child was murdered just weeks away from birth. Coincidence or did Polanski somehow invoke the demon of Manson upon his own family? This topic is outside the scope of this particular blog entry, but it is clear that much of the original notoriety of the Tate murders had to with Polanski himself.
A key to understanding this movie was given to me when I caught a snippet of R. Kern’s underground masterpiece, “You Killed Me First,” (1985) which I remember as originally being the finale of a collection of his short films entitled Hardcore Vol. I. These short movies by New York photographer and filmmaker Richard Kern are as raw, visceral, violent and sexist as anything you are likely to find around. Abhorrent and vicious, these short films are awash in raunchy sex and cheesy violence, and yet ironically enough, this just makes the sex more beautiful in a dark and twisted way and transforms the violence into something much more disturbing. Certainly the underlying stark vision of glorified violent sex contributes much to its lasting interest to fans and reviewers even now. “The Manson Family” pays homage to this raw, visceral element of Kern’s, but polishes it up and makes a clearer and more realized statement about society, violence, and what has changed between the youths of the 1960s compared to those of today.
Towards the end, before the murders, there is an elaborate sex ritual scene around a bonfire at night, including a lot of drugs and blood that turns into wine. The vision and film style of that scene is very reminiscent of another underground filmmaker named Kenneth Anger, which again heightens the ominous theme that arises from the “the Manson Family” regarding the titillation value between sex and violence as being part of something deeper. I don’t think even the movie pretends to have this part figured out completely, but there is a theme that watching violence is both therapeutic and real-life violence inspiring, depending on the circumstances, i.e. the subplot of the modern teens killing the television producer vs. the vast majority of people who watch violence as entertainment. Who will deny that America’s lasting interest in Charles Manson is not at least in part fueled by dark fantasies?
There is a place in human nature that longs for a connection between sex and violence, and the final scenes of “The Manson Family” turns the Tate/LaBianca murders into a very bloody, extremely graphic and 
squishy-sounding climax. The Helter Skelter phantasmagoric comes off as quite sexual even though, as in the real murders, there was no sex directly involved. Susan Atkins later called her part in the murders “the most exciting sexual experience” of her life.
As touching as some of the early scenes in the movie are, in the end we know that the real Charles Manson cared only about his own hide. He did nothing to try to save the any of the three girls from jail—quite the opposite–and to this day he still denies his own culpability in the Tate/LaBianca murders.
This is similar to Hitler who ordered all food and equipment to be destroyed in the face of Allied forces closing in on Berlin. “Germany was to made one vast wasteland. Nothing was to be left with which the German people might somehow survive their defeat.” ( p. 1432, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by Shirer)
I do argue that Manson came a lot closer to reaching his goals than Hilter whose “Thousand Year Reich” barely
lasted twelve. Charles Manson wanted to be a folksy pop singer and attain lasting fame. He has come quite close to the former attainment, and probably surprised his wildest dreams on the latter goal.
Charles Manson albums are available for purchase at fine headshops everywhere and his songwriting skills can be bought on iTunes: “Look at your game, girl” covered by the aforementioned G’n’R. He is more famous now than all but the most legendary bands of the 60s. More people can certainly tell you who Charles Manson is, than say, the Turtles.
On a final note, it turns out that the LaBianca house is only a few blocks from my home in Los Feliz. While researching this blog I walked around outside it and pondered my own mortality. The house number has been changed and it has had some renovations, but unlike the Tate house which was torn down, the original structure is intact.
*iza
“Into the Wild” is an powerful and inspiring movie that made me even more happy to be alive than I already am.
