Manson: the Lost Tapes, review - A chilling insight into the bizarre Charles Manson cult

Charles Manson’s death last year went largely unnoticed, but ITV have now given us Manson: the Lost Tapes. This skillfully assembled slice of real-life horror leant heavily on film of Manson’s acolytes shot by director Robert Hendrickson between 1969, shortly after the California killing spree whose eight victims included the pregnant actress Sharon Tate,  and 1973, when the cult’s sorry remnants finally dispersed.

The Lost Tapes was intriguing and coherent, focusing on those who followed him, and why. Using Hendrickson footage both seen and unseen, it offered an uncomfortable journey into cult indoctrination.

Manson, on audio recordings made in prison, came across as a snickering creep, neither particularly charismatic nor monstrous; the Family members, however, were chilling, cradling rifles as they spouted their half-baked doctrine with blank eyes and beatific smiles.

“What’s the big deal? Five or six people get killed and you all freak out, put it on us,” protested Nancy “Brenda” Pitman. “Whatever’s necessary to do, you do it,” reckoned Sandra “Sandy” Good. “When somebody needs to be killed, there’s no wrong, you do it.” It was a mind-boggling insight into cult psychology.

The contemporary interviews with repentant former members Dianne “Snake” Lake and Catherine “Gypsy” Share were reasonably enlightening, demonstrating that the brainwashing was made possible by the damaged backgrounds of the dropouts and runaways Manson recruited. Manson was no evil genius, but his followers were vulnerable and suggestible.

Were the Manson murders an aberration, or did they tell us something profound? Perhaps next week’s second part will elaborate. There was certainly contemporary value in hearing how middle-class children might be radicalised. The footage carried an eerie charge, and it effectively evoked the disillusion and poison beneath the surface of the Summer of Love, so gruesomely exploited by its bogeyman. Ultimately however, the circumstances feel so uniquely bizarre that Manson’s crimes simply stand as a horrifying one-off. Perhaps he and his rancid philosophies should now be left to rot.