By Lee Pfeiffer
Severin Films has released the definitive version of the cult movie The Manson Family (aka Charlie's Family) as a Blu-ray special edition. If you've never heard of the movie, don't feel bad: most main stream moviegoers have not. However, the film, which became an obsessive dream project for director Jim VanBebber has been a legend on the indie movie circuit for many years. The Severin release is one of those rarities in which the bonus extras equal or exceed the value of the main feature. VanBebber began shooting the movie in 1988 and, in the tradition of all true independent filmmakers, periodically would run out of production funds. He worked in low end jobs and sacrificed anything approaching a reasonably comfortable lifestyle in order to put all of his financial resources into finishing the film. (VanBebber once had to resort to giving blood in order to raise a few dollars.) The process took fifteen years, leading to the actor who was playing Manson becoming so fed up that he finally walked away from the project. (VanBebber had fortunately shot most of the essential scenes involving Manson by this point). After principal photography finally was wrapped, VanBebber went into years of post-production work, showing the movie at film festivals and trying to perfect a final cut.
As a finished work, The Manson Family is impressive on a number of levels. The film eschews giving us any major insights into how Manson and his "Family" got acquainted, nor does it attempt to delve into the personal backgrounds of the key members of his inner circle. Instead, the movie simply presents us with how the Family was eeking out an existence in 1969 on a remote ranch that had once been used as a location for Western movies. The place, owned by a aging and naive businessman, is run down and rarely used for filming any longer. Instead, Manson and his followers have basically appropriated the property as their own and they spend their days drinking, smoking weed and indulging in group sex. As Manson's paranoia becomes more pronounced, this seemingly benign existence comes to an end as he encourages his followers to engage in increasingly violent behavior. (VanBebber theorizes that Manson's shooting of a black drug dealer exacerbated his actions because he mistakenly thought he killed the man and thus became convinced that black radicals would try to avenge his death. Ironically, VanBebber concedes that this segment in the finished film also implies that Manson killed the man, when in fact, Manson never personally murdered anyone.) Manson ultimately orders his followers to commit the Tate/ LaBianca killings, which are so gruesomely depicted that one only realizes later that VanBebber insisted upon showing "restraint" in filming the actual butchering of the pregnant Sharon Tate. (The victims are all incidental characters and are not even referred to by name.) Until this climactic sequence, the film is a rather fascinating depiction of life among the misfits and losers who comprised Manson's inner circle. The story is told in "Rashomon" style with contemporary interviews with the key figures looking back on this period of their lives. The documentary style format works well and it's a credit to VanBebber and his unpaid cast of unprofessional actors that you come to believe you are watching the actual people involved in these notorious events. Where VanBebber goes over the top is in the bloodletting. There probably isn't a tasteful way to depict the brutal murders of innocent people, but VanBebber's insistence that restraint would do injustice to the true horrors that took place does not excuse his pornographic closeups of every aspect of these tortures and murders. I found myself looking away from the screen more than once. Still, The Manson Family is a remarkable achievement considering it was constructed by amateur filmmakers and cast members. There isn't a false note in the performances and their dedication extended to full frontal nudity, which does add a certain courageous quality and authenticity to the production. As director, VanBebber is quite impressive, even though some of the camera angles and shooting techniques now look somewhat cliched and dated. VanBebber intersperses the story of the Manson Family with sequences of a contemporary group of goth thugs preparing to carry out a murder of their own, having been inspired by Manson. VanBebber's intention was to show that Manson's evil legacy still has tentacles into contemporary society, but the device is rather confusing and off-putting to the viewer.
For all of VanBebber's troubles, The Manson Family has received scant recognition among movie-goers. The film had a brief theatrical release in England in 2004 but was savaged by critics and died at the boxoffice. Other theatrical screenings have been very limited and VanBebber vowed to never make another film until he had funding firmly in place. Over the years, however, the movie has built a cult following of loyal supporters including the late Roger Ebert (click here to read his original review, which is the very definition of "mixed feelings"). However, on the cult movie circuit, the film made VanBebber a legend among fellow travelers in the indie trade and those who admire his Ahab-like quest to conquer his own great white whale: a final cut of the film that had obsessed him for more than a decade.
The Blu-ray edition is superb and provides fascinating insights into the long, arduous path to completion that the film underwent. (Most of the materials were presented on a previous DVD release in 2005). There is an extended version of a 2003 documentary titled The VanBebber Family in which the cast and crew reflect on their memories of making of the movie. It's a warts-and-all affair that doesn't stint in making VanBebber occasionally appear to be more insane that obsessed in his quest to bring the film to completion. VanBebber appears throughout, in uncharacteristic short hair, smoking and drinking as he relates his tales of woe. He also provides an insightful audio commentary that depicts the making of the film in highly personal terms. The Blu-ray also has a new interview with Phil Anselmo, who created the impressive musical score for the movie. There are also some deleted scenes shown as raw footage on a monitor because funding had not been available to make clean, finalized footage of these sequences. Original theatrical trailers are included as well. However, the crown jewel in this edition is a 2001 documentary titled In the Belly of the Beast that covers the action at the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal. The festival is apparently like Mecca for indie movie makers who embrace the "anything goes" atmosphere and capitalize on showing their latest works or works-in-progress. The documentary dispassionately uses hand held cameras in confined spaces to get inside the heads of these filmmakers. It's a pretty sobering experience. Almost without exception, they choose to depict the ugliest aspects of humanity, with their low-budget productions dwelling on gory closeups of autopsies, butchering, torture and other cringe-inducing sights. They seem like reasonably nice people in interviews, but you have to wonder what the hell is going on in their minds. They know their films have zero chance of getting wide distribution or even making their money back, but they want to indulge in carnage for the sake of carnage. They find appreciative audiences at the film festival with zombie-like fans cheering and applauding during the most gruesome depictions of human behavior (at one point, VanBebber discusses the fact that some audience members laughed during the sequences in his film that re-enact the Tate/La Bianca murders). These are not people you want to be stranded on a desert island with. Yet, one must have admiration for the filmmakers themselves. Regardless of how distasteful their subject matters may be, you have to admire their sheer determination and grit in pursuing their dream projects over a course of years at a cost of all their financial resources. It's a dilemma not uncommon even among major filmmakers today, with big "names" sometimes having to use web-based Kickstarter campaigns to fund their next project. One "professional" director interviewed throughout the documentary is Richard Stanley, but his success is only relative to those whose names will never be known. Stanley had a couple of cult film hits with Hardware and Dust Devil before having been given the opportunity to go mainstream by directing the remake of The Island of Dr. Moreau starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. It was a dream project but Stanley couldn't or wouldn't play nice with the mainstream studio forces around him and was fired after only four days. In his interviews, Stanley shows clips from documentaries he was working on relating to the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion and another fascinating topic, a Nazi propagandist who was Jewish. I'm sufficiently intrigued enough to now search these out.
The Blu-ray also features interview clips with Charles Manson conducted in the 1980s and the debut of Jim VanBebber's latest short film, Gator Green which centers on a young couple who dabble in drug dealing. When they are lured to a remote bar on the edge of a forbidding swamp, things go wrong immediately and they are captured by a group of backwoods sadists that make the two hillbillies from Deliverance look like Boy Scouts. The story is set (for no appreciable reason) in 1973 and the villains are (for no appreciable reason) demented Vietnam War veterans. The film, which runs only 15 minutes, starts off moody and atmospheric. The setting is a foreboding bar designed to look like an alligator because it sits next to an alligator preserve. The promising premise quickly disintegrates into a mindless gore fest with the couple subjected to unspeakable tortures. I was a bit disappointed to see VanBebber devolve to this. He is certainly a talented filmmaker, as evidenced by The Manson Family. One hopes that fate affords him the opportunity to use his talents on future projects for something other than presenting the most vile human behavior.
In all, the Severin Blu-ray is to be highly recommended. It is outstanding on all levels.
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