Charles Manson Superstar

I must say, this documentary/interview is the purest most uncensored look into the mind of Charles Manson I have ever seen on film. I you are one who is seeking knowledge on this subject, I would recommend "The Family" by Ed Sanders (the definative book on the subject) and this film, which charts it's way through a good part of the history, myth, and reality of Manson. Unfortunately, this video is a little hard to find. Check ebay or search whatever avenues you have to but check this one out.

This documentary is without doubt,for me,the best on the subject. Lots of great information presented from a point of view different than the usual. Add to that a lengthy,revealing,exclusive interview with Manson himself and you've got an exceptional video.Very informative!

I watched this movie because I was expecting to get an inside look into the real Charles Manson. I wanted to see if I could figure out why he did the things that he did and why in the world anyone would follow him.

This documentary begins with a very creepy voiced narrator telling you that basically this is Charlie's turn to explain things. All the songs in the film are very satanic. The whole thing has a very dark feel about it.

Charlie spends a lot of time preaching or teaching as he would call it. He compares himself with Richard Nixon and discusses how "everyone has Lucifer inside of them". The man really seems a mix of possessed and crazy to me. I did not really gain any understanding of why he did things that he did. I just got further proof that this person is exceptionally disturbed, not gifted as he thinks and as the film tries to persuade you.

The film takes you to the famous Spaun ranch and shows pictures of then and now. Charlie tells stories of the ranch and explains how his "world" is still there. He goes on and on about how he does not live in our world, he is above and beyond us. Our world and the United States is the devil, an evil machine.

I have watched a lot of documentaries about killers and criminals, trying to figure out why someone would do the things that they do, how they must reason it in their mind. This is unlike anything I have ever seen. At times, it is very boring, at times unbelievable. I got a very creepy feeling while watching it and confess, I did not finish the whole film. I lost interest in listening to Charlie rant and rave, he is clearly insane.

All in all, you get a feeling of perhaps what his followers heard and saw from him. I bet that his story has not changed much. It didn't make sense then, and it does make sense now.

The film itself is interesting to see because it's a great example of a documentary that gets across the exact opposite message of what the filmmaker intended (Triumph Of The Will is another). The basic film goes between two types of footage. One is made up of still photos and stock footage (sometimes "enhanced" by lame psychedelic effects) with narration. The narration, read in monotone, sounds about like what you might expect a pseudo-rebel middle school student to post in a Manson chat room - It's Manson's familiar history told with glowing admiration and peppered with phrases like "Manson only reflects the society that imprisoned him" and references to "the conditioned masses" that consider Manson to be the half witted turd that he is. The narration criticizes Manson's victims and his keepers, while praising Manson. The filmmaker, Nikolas Schreck, also managed to score a lengthy prison interview with Manson. The interview delves only slightly into what Manson is infamous for (the pointless, envious, brutal murders of his racist hate cult), and instead centers on Manson's "philosophy". Manson's philosophy, as anyone who has seen him interviewed knows, is basically that everyone is phony and screwed up except him. He really says nothing else in the interview, and whenever he reaches a point in his monologue where he might otherwise say something informative, he instead makes a contorted face and giggles or does some kind of karate dragon dance. He is un-chained and un-handcuffed in the interview and is free to walk around the room. Whenever the filmmaker asks a difficult question (though, not much more difficult then "say something to the camera that you have always wanted to tell people"), Manson masterfully intimidates him off the topic by standing and approaching him or touching him, at one point taking one of his hands and caressing it for several seconds. The entire thing is scored by bootleg recordings of Manson's tortuously bad music.

As one long fascinated by the Manson story, watching this documentary movie was a mostly disappointing exercise. The slightly somnambulistic narrative is based on some painfully dodgy research (for example, a woman who is most definitely not Manson's mother is shown, despite what the soundtrack implies), and an equally unfortunate tendency to get rather 'cosmic', in the sense of trying to create an air of malevolent apocalyptic convergence and doom. To this end we learn from the opening preamble that 'the time-grid we know as August 8th to 9th has always been a magnet for events of savage purification'. The narrator lists the bombing of Nagasaki and the inaugural meeting of the KKK, but suddenly runs out of legitimate examples and offers such desperate toe-curling makeweights as the birth dates of Ed Gein and Unity Mitford, and the 1985 LAPD announcement of their pursuit of the Night Stalker serial killer. Thus he proves that the time-grid we know as August 8th to 9th hasn't been a magnet for events of savage purification at all. On a positive note, it is good to see the actual geographical areas in which the original events took place. Thanks to the makers for driving around the LA hills with the camera out of the window. Anyway, we're here for more than just some ultra-cheapo graphics and a stoned-sounding narrator reading out a b minus high school essay, because a large percentage of 'Charles Manson Superstar' is taken up with exclusive prison interview footage with the man himself. Don't get too excited, though. Speaking entirely in vague generalities, Manson has only one thing to say and that is 'I'm an old man. I don't want to talk about my crimes and I don't need the world's attention on me, so I'm acting the crazy-man so that you'll just go away and leave me alone.' Over the decades many a journalist has taken the pilgrimage to go poke Manson and see if he bites, and all they get is the same 'crazy Charlie' show. Ask him something specific and at best he replies with a foggy metaphor. At worst he just starts into one of his elaborately pointless rants and ends up moving the viewer to tedium. True, there are moments when one can discern the sort of sinister persuasiveness, charisma and even the fatal personal charm which could conceivably convince a group of damaged and drug-messed followers to commit bloody murder, but he's on screen far too often blathering away unchecked and the forced familiarity soon breeds contempt and eventual disinterest. Which, one is tempted to believe, is exactly what Charles Manson desires.