Jim Van Bebber's The Manson Family is a grotesque masterpiece. A cornucopia of sex orgies, bloodiness, senseless, unjustifiable violence, and prolific drug use for good measure. It's quite contrary to what one has likely seen and heard about the Manson family murders up until this day, which comes heavily from the news, reporters, and eye witnesses to the madness. Rarely publicized and explored is the point of view of the actual "family" members, those who worshiped the elusive Charles Manson as a Christlike figure in the face of uncertainty.Before watching the film, I was sure to do two things. One is acquaint myself with Van Bebber's personality and view on cinema. The other is watch several of Van Bebber's nineties short films. I watched four films by the director and found them all to be rewarding in some way. Just from the first few minutes of one of Van Bebber's shorts, I fell in love with his grindhouse-style qualities immediately. In an interview I watched, the man himself stated that his charm may be a bit indifferent now that gory, graphic horror films have dominated the genre. "Underground has become mainstream," Van Bebber states in an interview, and mentions how "the Eli Roth phenomena" has effectively made underground films not as incredible or as unique as they once were.Nonetheless, The Manson Family is a nasty, mean-spirited shocker, and it's all the more surprising that those traits lead it to work so well. I did probably the best thing I could've done to prepare for the film that wasn't research the Manson family; it was acquaint myself with Van Bebber's guerrilla style of filmmaking with four of his shorts that were released on DVD years ago.Van Bebber's style can be summed up as relentless and renegade. Relentless in the regard that the amount of violence and graphic content never seems to be enough and the man is always trying to make a story as extreme as it can be, and renegade in the sense that, for the time, it was very different from the kind of horror films seen in America and it still is today in some ways. Even as torture porn climbs the box office when it has the opportunity to, the cheap quality of Van Bebber's audio and video recordings can only be replicated and never duplicated. The home-movie quality of his shorts is the one trademark he still has in 2013. You can bring as much fake blood as you want to the party; I dare you to shoot something on film in the style of August Underground or My Sweet Satan with as much depravity and gore.The Manson Family does what a mockumentary on America's most brutal family should, which is show the sickness and horrifying violence the group of people unleashed upon their victims. It offers no catalyst, justification, reason, or psychological analysis as to why they committed such atrocities, other than that their self-absorbed, cocky, drugged-out nature got the best of them. When there's not vicious murder occurring on screen, there's a sex orgy or a series of disjointed video showing the weirdness of the group as a whole.The culture the Manson clan supported and practiced was the hippie culture, which was smoke enough pot and drop enough acid until it all comes clear to you before you lose it - then repeat. Van Bebber shows this by infusing the film with dizzying episodes of sex, drugs, drug-fueled rage, inexplicably graphic scenes of murder, peer-pressure, and questionable brainwashing techniques. The scenes - as hard as they are to watch - are very professionally captured and boldly detailed. Van Bebber uses extreme, graphic detail in these sequences, which will be the basis of viewer's praises and complaints.The final half of the film is devoted to the Tate/LeBianca murders, which have gone on to be well-known and discussed even to this day. Van Bebber's choice to show them in horrifyingly explicit nature is probably for the best, as it surprisingly evokes sympathy for at least some characters in the film. I felt the same sort of silent, sustained awkwardness watching these scenes as I did for Faces of Death, the iconic film that features several vignettes of reportedly authentic death sequences. How does one exactly respond to scenes of this nature? Van Bebber began directing the film in 1988, but numerous budget constraints and the loss of financial backing by investors caused him to delay the project often. He screened numerous rough cut scenes and incomplete footage at several festivals (which often would surface the black market as bootleg versions) until 2004 when Dark Sky Films assisted Van Bebber financially to complete the film and release his film Deadbeat at Dawn and his numerous short films.Should The Manson Family have been made or was it better left incomplete? Some will say it is one of the foulest, most reprehensible films they've ever seen. Others will certainly regard it as a depraved masterpiece in cinema. I'd like to show this to the same group of people who call the most recent PG-13 ghost movie as the scariest film they've ever seen. This is where I cease telling you my opinion and you're left with a choice to make on whether or not to watch this film; just know I haven't described the half of it.Starring: Marcelo Games, Marc Pitman, and Leslie Orr. Directed by: Jim Van Bebber.

Being no expert on Charles Manson or his murderous cult, I cannot vouch for the factual accuracy of Jim Van Bebber's The Manson Family. However, having seen more than my fair share of nihilistic, low-budget, ultra-violent horror, I can safely say that this film is one hell of a messed up piece of film-making: a raw, violent, orgiastic, drug-fuelled, psychedelic hell-ride quite befitting of it's subject matter.Van Bebber's visually arresting account of the events leading up to the infamous Tate/LaBianca murders is filmed in a pseudo-documentary style that is highly reminiscent of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, and like that film, it cleverly utilises a variety of film stock, post-production filters, and gritty editing tricks to help convey the unstable, acid-fuelled, collective state-of-mind shared by the enigmatic Charlie and his hippie acolytes. The result is harsh, uncompromising cinema, made all the more unsettling by the fact that what is being shown actually happened.But Van Bebber doesn't stop there: by inter-cutting his reconstructed footage and faux interviews with a contemporary parallel story, in which a modern day 'family' continue the killing, the director also manages to pass comment on the the ever popular 'Cult of Charlie', which has resulted in Manson's likeness becoming a recognisable and marketable pop-culture icon.I don't think that ignorant kids deserve to be shot for glamourising a mass murderer on their T-shirt, but it's food for thought nonetheless.

Manson Family, The (2003) *** (out of 4) A fake documentary by director Jim Van Bebber about the times of Charles Manson (Marcelo Games) and what led to his imprisonment. It too the director nearly fifteen years to complete this film because he had trouble getting funding but this actually helps the film because it makes the Manson footage look older than what it actually is so there's no problem getting into the "documentary" type feel. We've heard the Manson story countless times but this film looks at the infamous murders in a different way. We see the murders through the eyes of the people who thought that these killings were the right thing to do. The film is unlike any other film I've ever seen and that's what makes it so interesting. I was somewhat familiar with the story but I couldn't even blink my eyes during the movie, although some of the brutal murders made me want to turn my head away yet I couldn't. I can't say I enjoyed watching this film but I think Roger Ebert hit it perfectly with this quote from his review: We come to the question of a star rating. Convention requires me to assign stars to every film. Do I give "The Manson Family" four stars because it does what it does so successfully and uncompromisingly, or do I give it zero stars, for the same reason? I will settle on three, because it is remarkable enough I do not want to dismiss it. That doesn't mean I think you should see it.Everyone knows the story of the infamous two murders but what the director does with them here is downright shocking, vile, deranged and in the end very, very sad. The director doesn't hold back on the killings and he shows us in graphic detail the brutality of the crimes, which was very hard to watch. Thankfully the director cuts away from the Tate murder but her pleas for her unborn child gets the message across. The Manson Family is an incredibly strong piece of work but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone. The way it was made in its cheapness adds a lot to the story and the director never blinks with the story. As Ebert said, I could give this four stars since it did what it was meant to. I'm just not sure I'll ever want to see it again.

Many years in the making this is, if ultimately rather sad and depressing with a confused ending, an involving documentary style depiction of what life may well have been like within the notorious 'family'. At the beginning there is a fair mix of youngsters held together largely by sex and quasi religion. Largely it's the girls that talk of Jesus whilst disrobing and the men of, f***ing. Fuelled by dope and acid they go their merry way for a while but then interestingly Charlie reckons a mix of blood and death will keep the group alive. And so it does but always of course spiralling hell bent towards the inevitable, 'helter skelter'. The best and worst of the hippie movement is depicted here in what was essentially it's death throws. Bebber makes considerable play on the racist slant to the 'family' belief structure and their fear of a black takeover, none of which have I been aware of before. Very interesting with lots of gore and bare flesh with much emphasis on the meaning/meaningless of words, gullibility and the mighty power of the promise of sex and violence.