Manson

This documentary compilation stretches a little material an awful long way (it's padded out with 'lyrical' song sequences and redundant multi-screen opticals), but it does include all the extant footage of Manson himself, and some fairly lengthy interviews with those members of the 'Family' who weren't arrested for the Sharon Tate/La Bianca killings. The approach of the reporting is earnestly middlebrow; the commentary is tendentious when it takes statements at face value (like Squeaky Fromm's bland assertion that she was influenced by TV violence), but it's thankfully never sensational. In truth, the material adds up to nothing very much, but it's undeniably discomforting to see acid-scarred hippies insisting on their continuing reverence for Manson, or discussing the experience of having a lover blow out his brains at the moment of climax as if it were nothing out of the ordinary. Many people won't need to see the film to come to terms with the fact of Manson's 'philosophy', and the compilers do very little to compel attention; a fictional treatment of the subject like Barry Shear's The Todd Killings works out a good deal more provocative and suggestive.