Leslie, My Name Is Evil

This movie started out okay. Until it cuts to a scene with the girls sitting out by a fire and talking about how they are from divorced families and looking for a purpose in life. It was so corny and stupid, I had to laugh. The rest of the movie has that feel. I think the guy who played Manson could have pulled it off well, had he gotten a good script to work with. I was waiting to see how they would portray him and knew it would be amusing. Just like how the media portrayed him. It was pretty pathetic how he was presented, like some demonic possessed god-man. In the first scene, he is up on a cross, like that is his normal thing to do. The script for this movie is awful, what were they thinking. It's almost directed like a play, not like a movie. A lot of this is also do to the terrible acting by the girls, some of it is okay, but when they speak, it can get very bad. I liked the real vintage clips that were inserted. A lot of the music was good, I heard The Black Angels, 13th Floor Elevators, good stuff. They portrayed the racist, pro-war conservatives pretty well. I think the movie had some pretty well done scenes. Just failed in executing the characters better, leaving you with a flawed feeling while watching it.

Leslie (Kristen Hager) is one of Manson family on trial and Perry (Gregory Smith) is interviewed to be one of the jury. He has to postpone his wedding as the jury gets sequestered. In flashbacks, the two characters journey through two different sides of America after the JFK assassination.

This is trying to be a surreal telling of the trial. It has some good potential but the director has no skills to pull off the surrealism. There is no style to it other than a faltering attempt at being off-kilter. It's clunky and poorly executed. This is like Oliver Stone without the filmmaking skills.

Maybe it's my fault for not reading the synopsis before renting, but the title and cover image lead me to believe this was going be a movie primarily about Charles Manson maybe in the vein of "Summer of Sam". What I was hoping to see was maybe a historical account of the events that took place surrounding the "Manson Family", instead it was yet one more movie seemingly priding itself on a sarcastic stab at morals & ideals of a "Christian Nation" when confronted with the horrors of war. The main character is a young boy who was brought up in a Christian home and pretends, & maybe tricks himself into thinking he is a Christian because its what his father expects of him and also what he must be to be with his girlfriend. The film is much more artistic, musical and lighthearted than you would expect for this story. I do not enjoy movies that portray such evil people in a less than negative light and so overall I did not enjoy this movie.

LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL largely focuses on the trial of Leslie Van Houten, a member of the infamous Manson Family, and a young male juror, Perry, who is seduced by her eyes and smile and feels sympathy for her plight. There are two worlds explored here: that of the typical middle-class conservative family of the 1960s and the underworld of Charles Manson and his cult followers. We watch Leslie being seduced into a cult of violence in one back-story while the other has Perry struggling with his desire to stay out of the Vietnam War against the wishes of his very overbearing and patriotic father. Perry then meets Dorothy, an attractive "All-American" Christian girl, who wants to marry him one day but also believes that Perry should serve his country in war first. The last half of the movie shows Perry, now a juror (better than going to Vietnam!), struggling about whether Leslie should be sentenced to death. Naturally, Perry's family expect him to sentence her to death before the trial has even begun. It's a hyper-artistic movie, for example the defendants sometimes show up to court dressed very provocatively, rather than in jumpsuits, nearly everyone behaves inappropriately and there is an enormous PATTON-style U.S. flag on the back wall during the trial. There are also many montages throughout the film that re-create the look & feel of the 1960s.

This film may offend some viewers for different reasons. First of all, the film obviously questions how conservative Americans can demonize those on trial for murder while simultaneously supporting an unpopular war, even after the My Lai massacre. This exploration of acceptable versus unacceptable violence is the whole point of the film. Secondly, it paints some of Manson's followers in a sympathetic light. I didn't get the impression that that was the director's intention, but it will probably receive some criticism if it ever gets wide distribution.

Leslie, My Name is Evil is an extremely stylish film with lots of montages, satire and quirky dark humour. There are very strong physical resemblances between all of the actors and the real people they portray, so the production team obviously searched hard for their cast; the quality of acting was overall quite good. The style and theme reminded me slightly of NATURAL BORN KILLERS, but obviously the subject matter is radically different. Unfortunately, this film won't get any of the marketing hype that an Oliver Stone movie would receive and these types of Canadian films always struggle at the box office. I really enjoyed this movie and plan to watch it a second time someday.

First off, if you're looking for realism, see Helter Skelter (1976) instead. This movie is not, nor does it attempt to be an accurate retelling of events.

The movie focuses on the Manson girl Leslie, and the young juror Perry. Perry is about to get married to a Christian girl, but is having doubts about Vietnam, his faith and the values his father has taught him. Causing him to question if Leslie should receive the death penalty, and if he himself would have behaved differently, had he been in Leslie's position.

The movie unfortunately is so badly made, that while it tries to be social commentary it ends up as being a parody. With a parody of a cult, a parody of a murder, a parody of an all American family, a parody of a Christian girlfriend, and a parody of a trial. The only 'real' people in the movie seemed to be Leslie and Perry. But given the subject matter, the meaningless slaughter of innocent people, the joke is either not there or it isn't funny.

I would call this movie a guilty pleasure. Kristen Hager and Gregory Smith both deliver a good performance, but they cannot carry the movie all by them self.