Charles Manson was a bore.

That was one of the first thoughts I had while watching 2024’s Manson: Summer of Blood.  The film opens with Charles Manson (Wes Gillum) sitting in a prison cell, with his long scraggly hair and his gray beard.  (Actor Wes Gillum doesn’t really look like Manson but he does possess a certain resemblance to Josh Brolin.)  Manson is being interviewed about his crimes by an almost unnaturally calm man named Jacob Cohen (Joseph Boehm).

Manson goes through the usual facts of his early life.  He talks about not knowing who his father was.  He talks about spending the majority of his life in prison.  Even before he became famous as the leader of the Family, Manson was a career criminal.  Manson talks about trying to pursue a musical career in Los Angeles.  He kisses Dennis Wilson’s feet.  He gets angry when he feels that record producer Terry Melcher (Chad Bozarth) cheated him out of a record deal.  He talks about picking up hitchhikers and making them a part of the Family.  And, as he speaks, he uses all of the familiar phrases.  He talks about how the members of the Family are “your children.”  Blah blah blah blah.

For all the attention that Charles Manson was given over the course of his life, he was essentially a third-rate intellect who picked up a few key phrases in the 50s and 60s and repeated them ad nauseum.  Manson’s words and justifications meant nothing but, because he said them so often and they were slightly more poetic than the usual career criminal blathering, there were people got into their heads that Manson was some sort of rebel philosopher.  The truth of the matter was that the only people dumber than Manson were the ones who decided to live with him at Spahn Ranch.

Unfortunately, dumb people can still hurt people.  That was certainly the case with Charles Manson.  The film depicts the murders of Gary Hinman, Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Voytek Frykowski, and, to a lesser extent, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca.  It’s difficult to watch and that’s the way it should be.  I remember, when Once Upon A Time In Hollywood came out, there were a lot of people who objected to Rick Dalton setting “Sadie” on fire in his pool.  If those people knew even the slightest details of what Sadie — real name: Susan Atkins — actually did and said to Sharon Tate and her unborn child, they would understand why she got exactly what she deserved in Tarantino’s reimagining of that terrible night.

As for Manson: Summer of Blood, my initial reaction while I was watching it was that it was another movie that exploited a real life tragedy.  I found myself wondering why we should care what Charles Manson had to say about himself and his crimes.  But that was before the final ten minutes of the film.  The final ten minutes of the film features a wonderful twist, one that truly gave that old bore Manson the ending that he deserved.  I’m still not sure that we needed another film about Charles Manson and his crimes but I do know it would be nice if most serial killer films ended the same way was Manson: Summer of Blood.