The Manson Family is a 2003 American true crime horror film written and directed by Jim Van Bebber. The film covers the lives of Charles Manson and his “family” of followers. The film had a long and troubled production history. Director Jim Van Bebber personally financed the production starting in 1988, and then continued to shoot it sporadically on weekends and off days. In 1998, Creation Books published Charlie’s Family: An Illustrated Screenplay, in the UK.
Despite support from various people, including members of the band Skinny Puppy, who provided a musical score (in the form of Download‘s Charlie’s Family album) that was released separately years before the film itself, the film remained incomplete. It screened on video as a work-in-progress at a number of film festivals during that time. Phil Anselmo of Pantera, Down, and Superjoint Ritual provided his voice as Satan.
The Manson Family is a cross between fictional story and documentary, overseeing the crimes of The Manson Family as led by Charlie Manson. The fictional story centers on a Crime Scene-esque TV series of the same name and its host, Jack Wilson (Carl Day). It is filmed in semi-experimental style and focuses on the early days of the Spahn Ranch including Manson’s attempts to record a music album, and the Manson family crimes, with little emphasis on courtroom drama regarding the trial, although some scenes depict Manson’s follower’s outside the courthouse.
Dark Sky Films stepped in with the funds to finish the film properly, and it has since been released theatrically and on home video. On June 11, 2013, Severin Films released a 10th Anniversary Blu-ray + DVD combo. This includes:
- Audio Commentary with Director Jim VanBebber
- Gator Green – Exclusive First Release of VanBebber’s latest short
- Exclusive New Interview With Phil Anselmo
- The VanBebber Family – Uncut Version of ‘Making Of’ Documentary Featuring Interviews with Cast and Crew
- In The Belly of The Beast – Documentary On the 1997 Fantasia Film Festival
- Interview With Charles Manson
- Deleted Scenes
- Theatrical Trailers
Read article: Coming Down Fast – Charles Manson on Screen
Reviews:
“The Manson Family pulls no punches in its handling of these gruesome events. Van Bebber’s only concession to restraint occurs when he cuts away from the mutilation about to be inflicted upon Sharon Tate and her unborn baby. All this excessive bloodshed has a point though; it’s never intended as gratuitous shock tactics. In a manner analogous to John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the unsparing violence is meant to demystify and de-glamorize acts of carnal savagery that otherwise might register as little more than the routine slaughter found in your average slasher film. Violence, Van Bebber wants to say, is always ugly.” Budd Wilkins, Slant
“What Van Bebber does accomplish is to make a film true to its subject. It doesn’t bring reason, understanding, analysis or empathy to Manson; it wants only to evoke him. It is not pro-Manson, simply convinced of the power he had over those people at that time. In a paradoxical way, it exhibits sympathy for his victims by showing their deaths in such horrifying detail. In its technical roughness, its raw blatant crudeness, it finds a style suitable to the material; to the degree that it was more smooth and technically accomplished, to that degree it would distance itself from its subject and purpose.” Roger Ebert
“The greatest success of the film is actually that of the generally almost forgotten deaths of the LaBianca’s later that night (which have become almost an afterthought due to the ‘fame’ of the ‘Tate Murders’) which are covered in truly horrific detail and in fact their deaths are the hardest to watch of all, the brutal, sadisti, c multiple stab wound demise of Mrs LaBianca (even to the grotesque desecration of her body by uncovering, and then stabbing, her naked buttocks) is in fact by far the most explicit and uncomfortable death in the whole film. And that’s of course exactly as it should be, and it makes us feel exactly like we are meant to feel… shocked and sickened.” Beardy Freak
” … schizophrenic, bad-acid-trip of a movie retells the Manson legend from inside the family. The film actually looks like all of those terrible 60s grindhouse movies, with deliberately mismatched 16mm film stock, and drug scenes straight out of Alice in Acidland. However, this is a film with a deadly serious intent, sucking the viewer into the free love and drugs ethos of the 60s. We watch how this dream turns into a nightmare of grotesque violence, all at the hands of a very convincing Charlie Manson.” Tony O’Neill, The Guardian
Cast:
- Marcello Games as Charlie Manson
- Marc Pitman as Tex Watson
- Leslie Orr as Patty Krenwinkel
- Maureen Allisse as Sadie Atkins
- Amy Yates as Leslie Van Houten
- Jim Van Bebber as Bobby
- Tom Burns as Clem Watkins
- Michelle Briggs as Linda Kasabian
- Sherri Rickman as Snake
- Nate Pennington as Shorty
- Carl Day as Jack Wilson
- Corral Day as Franklin Riley
Wikipedia | IMDb | Official website
