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"The Lost Tapes" is an odd title for tapes that are clearly found. And the 2-hour time slot, which I would estimate resulted in maybe 80 minutes of content sans commercials, was far too much. The show also had a fairly plodding documentary style. I learned a few things as someone with a casual knowledge of this saga. Others may learn nothing new. Current interviews with a few cult members add to the re-telling. The repeated use of a few clips is annoying and indicates that content is lacking. Altogether, a fairly lackluster effort.

This was in major theater chains in the 70s. I doubt they had to look too long to find this.

I found this interesting, as I did not know the entire story of Manson and his Family before. I'd say it was a decent overview of what happened.

This thing is full of lame dramatizations. Repetitive usage of "lost tapes," even though there are supposedly 100 HOURS of the stuff. Just show the original footage!

I didnt have much faith in this being a good doc but I was surprised. It's actually a somewhat unique and refreshing look at Manson and his cult.

Windy Buckley who apparently was a ranch hand at the Spahn Ranch steal the show with her interviews.

The downside are the reenactments with actors who look nowhere close to the people they are portraying.

The "lost" tapes amount to some 16mm silent footage of the cult members, some reel to reel audio tapes of Manson briefly talking and some professional footage of former members of the Manson Flock.

From the 16mm footage it appears these members were hippies high on LSD most of the time. Manson was one crazy dude who somehow was able to get a bunch of young hot chicks to do his will. Nutty what brainwashing can do to a person.

Actual footage doesn't lie! There's been a lot of docs concerning Manson however lots of new footage here never seen. I found it worth the watch!

Any one that has followed the Manson cult and its zany followers knows that in the mid 70's a home movie surface called The Manson Women. The movie contains interviews withe left over hold outs from the family; gypsy, squeaky, Mary, and others explaining how Manson loves everyone and that the family will stay together etc etc. The awful dramatization of charlie meeting Dennis Wilson is so fake and terrible. Producers seem to forget, Manson was 5 feet 6 inches, the actor portraying Manson, is well over the height of the other actors. Pure exploitation, absolutely nothing new, interview with Peter Coyote, the actor adds nothing to the narrative and comes across fake. The manson girls was released on vhs in the early days of the video boom with the creepy manson singing as background noise while hippies danced naked which they don't show in this lame piece of new information. Don't waste your time. In fact I believe the "lost" film is posted on YouTube .

The show opens with a "dramatization" segment and a civil rights expert and goes downhill from there. Supposedly, over a 100 hours of lost never before seen tape is proclaimed.. instead we get a film containing half dramatizations, part interviews with unknown useless "experts" interjecting PC opinions, and the same rehashed footage that has been used over and over again in every documentary related to this case. Some of the interviews with former members are kind of interesting I guess, but what do you expect them to say.. its all "It was a different time back then and we were young impressionable, brainwashed and on drugs"... duh. Alrighty then.

Add to that the censorship of language (and even many Manson family members faces are blurred out) and absolutely no nudity or gory photos (again dramatizations are used in place of actual film and case files).. um, hello?! Have the people behind this film not watched TV in the past decade? Nudity, gore and foul language are common place on prime time network public TV dramas today ffs.. not that I personally want or need that stuff for a show to be credible, but when its a serious and famous case study like this, with precious groundbreaking "lost film", to censor it just doesn't make any "sense" at all. We're adults, we're used to the "stuff", show us the unedited footage or dont bother making a damn film about it. Sheesh.

Now that Manson is dead and gone, I am sure there are other documentary films in the works that will eventually surface.. hopefully, they get it right this time by focusing on facts, actual film and case files, interviews with the key people still alive etc., because this one is far far too dumbed down.

EDIT: Answered my own question regarding the censorship... this is a Fox and "Naked" entertainment production, both of which are guilty of entirely unnecessary nudity and language in shows they've produced.. so why they chose to censor this is simply beyond baffling and absolutely hilarious!

Half of these so called lost tapes are not lost, they have been available for years on other shows and the other half are essestially fraudulous because they are not recordings of (what is presented here to be) Manson assosiates talking about Manson. Instead (for example the scene with the 3 girls in identical motorcycle jacket, turning to the camera with knives, etc) they are scenes which the origional co-maker of the footage (Laurence Merrick) filmed for his movie ''Black Angels'' in 1970. (a film about rivalry between a white and a black motorcycle gang).

While Diane Lake was a relevant member of the family, why was she assigned Linda Kasabian's role in this documentary?

This copy paste documentary (and even managing to make it worse) is a rip off of the original 'Manson' documentary from 1977. It is available and has been available to watch for years. That one is a great documentary, this so called 'lost tapes' one is not. Funny how it's made by someone who makes Ross Kemp, Bear Gryllis 'documentaries'. Anyway it is extremely dramatized, and -funnily enough- very manipulative.