Jim Van Bebber’s The Manson Family (a.k.a. Charlie’s Family) opens with chaos.  The viewer is assaulted with a series of quick cuts and disturbing images.  The American flag flies.  The American flag is covered in blood.  Insane faces flash by.  We catch glimpses of blood squirting and we hear people screaming while two performers go through with some sort of S&M bondage ritual with a red, white, and blue dildo.  I have to admit the opening few minutes of the montage actually made me nuaseus.  That’s not necessarily criticism, though.  If anything, I imagine that was Van Bebber’s intention.  The opening announces that the viewer is not just about to see another film about the Manson murders.  Instead, The Manson Family is a plunge into the heart of darkness that beat at Spahn Ranch.  It’s not a film for those who cannot handle being shocked.

The disjointed nature of the film’s montage is carried over into the film’s narrative.  The Manson Family deals with two different time periods.  In 1996, a journalist named Jack Wilson (Carl Day) sits in the studio of his show, Crime Time, and watches grainy footage of the former members of Manson’s Family being interviewed.  Some of them still proudly have X’s carved into their foreheads and continue to parrot Manson’s hippie psychobable.  Others are interviewed from prison and try to play down their own roles in the crimes.  Tex Watson (Marc Pitman) and Sadie Atkins (Maureen Alisse) both appear to be in a prison chapel.  Tex, who was one of the most brutal of the murderers in Manson’s Family, comes across as mild-mannered.  Sadie — who was nicknamed Sexy Sadie when she was a member of the Family — now has gray hair, glasses, and the speaking style of a high school guidance counselor.  At first, only Bobby Beausoliel (played by director Van Bebber) seems to be willing to fully admit to what happened but even he eventually changes his story to seemingly protect Manson.  While Wilson watches the footage, a group of young Manson fans ominously wait outside of his studio.

During the interviews, the film frequently flashes back to 1969 and we watch as Charles Manson (Marcello Games) unsuccessfully pursues rock stardom and gathers the members of his so-called Family at the Spahn Movie Ranch.  While Manson’s followers talk about how charismatic and wise he was, the flashbacks reveal that Manson was actually a cowardly racist who ordered others to kill for him and who went into hiding after he shot a drug dealer because he was convinced that the Black Panthers were going to come after him.  The film suggests that Manson’s murders had less to do with Helter Skelter or any of his other hippie psychobabble and more to do with Manson’s anger over not being famous.  At Spahn Ranch, Manson lives like almost a parody of a rock star, complete with all the drugs, groupies, and sex that he could want.  But, ultimately, it doesn’t matter because, unlike his friend and follower Bobby Beausoliel, Manson can’t even get a record contract.  The murders are depicted and this is a very bloody movie but, to its credit, the film never attempts to make Manson or the majority of his followers into sympathetic characters.  Instead, by featuring the character of Jack Wilson putting together yet another exploitive TV show about Manson, the film examines how the media can even turn as scummy a loser as Charles Manson into an icon of sorts.

It’s a chaotic film, one that features its share of shockingly explicit footage.  When the incarcerated members of the Family say that the early days at Spahn Ranch were a nonstop orgy, Van Bebber doesn’t hesitate to show us what they’re talking about.  At the same time, there’s a constant threat of violence to be found in every scene.  Every shot feels just a little bit off-center, preventing the viewer from ever feeling like they can relax.  Even the moments that shouldn’t work, like Tex briefly turning into the devil, do work when viewed as being a part of the film’s portrayal of a world that’s spiraling out of control.  Throughout the film, we hear snippets of not Charles Manson but instead Jim Jones, exhorting his followers to commit mass suicide at Jonestown.  It’s a reminder that Manson was not the only cult leader who convinced his followers to do terrible things.  The Manson Family is a messy, raw, but effectively disturbing film of a death-obsessed culture.

The production of The Manson Family was, itself, a rather chaotic one.  Van Bebber spent ten years filming the movie and, indeed, one reason why the character of Charles Manson disappears from a lot of the film is because the actor himself stopped showing up on set.  (Interestingly enough, that works to the film’s advantage as it makes Manson into a character who always feels like he’s present even when he isn’t.)  A rough cut of the film made the festival circuit in 1997.  The film, itself, didn’t get an official release until 2003.  One gets the feeling that the disjointed nature of the film’s production was reflected in the film’s equally disjointed narrative but again, that works to the film’s advantage.  Though not always easy to watch, The Manson Family is one of the better Manson family films to have been made.  If nothing else, watching the film makes it much easier to understand why so many people cheered when Leo DiCaprio set Sadie Atkins on fire at the end of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.