'Manson's Lost Girls': So Happy Together With Charlie

Insane murderer Charles Manson gets the Lifetime Original Movie treatment in Manson’s Lost Girls, a Saturday-night special that almost makes you feel sorry for Squeaky Fromme.

The TV-movie, as befits Lifetime’s mission to its viewership, centers around the young women drawn to Manson (played by Jeff Ward) in the late 1960s. Thus the story is told from the point of view of Linda Kasabian (MacKenzie Mauzy), a single mom with an adorable little daughter. She’s recruited into the Helter Skelter Army by Fromme and Leslie Van Houten, and after a pleasant initial period of consuming mind-altering chemicals and playing ring-around-the-rosy to the soundtrack strains of period hits like the Turtles’ “Happy Together,” Linda discovers that life with Manson is no bed of roses. Oooh, that Charlie, with his violent mood-changes and talk of a “race war” — what a bummer he is!

Next thing you know, the hippie megalomaniac is ordering the women — who by now are presented as spirit-broken drudges — to execute Manson’s whims, which escalate from petty thievery to armed home invasion to the murder of actress Sharon Tate, among others.

The production also has a promotional gimmick: It’s stuffed with the children of bigger stars. Van Houten is played by Greer Grammer, daughter of Kelsey and a star of Awkward; Susan Harris is played by Eden Brolin, daughter of Josh; one of Charlie’s male cohorts is played by Christian Madsen, son of Michael.

Until things get really bloody, Manson’s Lost Girls almost maintains its tricky, young-mom-in-peril tone. (Kasabian, in case you forgot, ratted on the Manson “family” to the law and escaped with that adorable daughter.) Filled with primo Lifetime-movie-style dialogue (“How did the world get so crazy?”; “Dyin’ is easy — it’s livin’ that’s scary!”), Lost Girls doesn’t grant these women much agency, but they certainly know how to boogaloo to “I Put A Spell On You.”

Manson’s Lost Girls airs Saturday at 8 p.m. on Lifetime.