Manson Family (2003. Jim Van Bebber) dvd

"Where were you in '69?"

After anxiously waiting over 10 years (I saw the trailer for the movie in the early 90's and read the script in 1999 from Creation Books) I finally saw "Charlie's Family" a few years ago as the 'editor workprint' of 1995/96 from Video Vortex. And now it's finally out on dvd as "Manson Family". It's Jim Van Bebber's best and finest work to date, in my opinion. I enjoyed "Roadkill", "My Sweet Satan", "Deadbeat At Dawn" but this one is his "Citizen Kane"! Van Bebber seems somewhat inspired by the plot of "Cannibal Holocaust". Two elderly TV producers receive a tape (in 1996) with no address, and extremely eeire sick drama-docu/re-inactments of (almost) every Manson clip
we have seen on TV unfold. The 'scratchy-on-purpose' clips of the Family's sex orgies, rapes, drugtakin', and ultra-gory killings of Tate/Bianca and others are probably the most disturbing footage I've ever seen. The unknown Ohio actors look like real psycho dopefiends and are simply perfect, Van Bebber himself portrays musician Bobby Beausoleil, and Marcelo Games is superb as Charlie and bears a striking similarity to him. Meanwhile the producers are being watched by a gang of Richard Kern-like punks (we see "You Killed Me First" in a s&m/drug orgy scene) who break in and kill the producers, and later a teenager wearing a Manson T-shirt gets his head bashed in. Both scenes are ultra graphic and well-made just like the nightmarish scenes of the Tate/Bianca slayings. The editing is especially outstanding for a lowbudget production, and Van Bebber has really done his homework with the details of the 'Crime Of The Century' which many says annihilated the dream of hippies and flowerchildren. The focus is on the life within drugcrazed cult of misfits and not through the eyes of 'hero attorney' Vincent Bugliosi as in the "Helter Skelter" TV movie. There's no glamorizing of the Manson myth, this is raw filmmaking at its best. Forget Hollywood's halfass semi-ironic teen slashers, "Manson Family" is a modern sex, drugs & violence masterpiece of America's late 60s psycho culture, truly a must for any true cultfilm fan with balls of steel! 15 years in the making, and for once the (underground) hype was true....and then some. Give this man a decent budget, distribution and financing of his ideas and America would have no problem competing with the likes of Takashi Miike. But try telling that to the gutless CEO assholes and moronic pre-view screening audiences. The "Roadkill/My Sweet Satan" dvd features an inteview with Jim about the inhuman problems he faced during the 90s to get this movie made.

Jens