The first problem with this flawed but somewhat entertaining, semi-addictive serialized streaming binge-documentary HELTER SKELTER is there should have been four parts instead of six, making each segment last too long...
Especially the part that should/could have been the most intriguing centering on Manson as a kid, cutting back and forth to the same historian's interview and dragging much too long while repeating the same thing over and over: that Charles Manson grew up without a father and was basically, born to lose...
We don't, however, learn how or why he was born to kill, or in this case, born to make others kill... Which IS aptly centered on: the fact that Tex Watson, who hardly anyone has heard of, is the real killer, and had he really been hypnotized by Manson, he'd be innocent along with the other kooky Manson Family members and should have NEVER done jail time, which we all know is hogwash...
Let's face it... Charles Manson was able to collect a group of followers who were living on the streets when he meet them, and who were either addicted to drugs or simply wanted to take drugs and never stop taking drugs...
He gave these young people a place to stay, whether inside a bus in San Fran or at someone else's ranch in Los Angeles, or the floor of a famous drummer's drug pad... basically, they always found a place to rough-it and party themselves blind... so why not follow a guy who goes out of his way to provide a 24/7 drug binge?
And notice that things started to go badly for The Family after they basically ran out of other people's money, which is also the problem of socialism, which is what ALL hippies believed in, either dumpster-divers like The Manson Family or those artistic millionaires that lined the canyon, and who the Socialist/Environmentalist Family made butcher's cattle out of... which was done out of JEALOUSY more than anything else...
Bottom-line: Bad old fashion Class Envy is what killed Sharon Tate more than some silly story about a hard-rock Beatles song about a British amusement park ride representing a race war... please... that was a theory so that a prosecutor can become a millionaire writing a book...
And yet, despite the flaws, overall it's a nice addition to the whole Manson Killings, really the Watson killings... but since Tex is basically a boring shell of a human, everything relies on the crazy Charlie because he was hypnotic enough to be followed by hippie freaks, and, as the last part points out, he's hypnotic enough to keep our interest after sixty years...
It's a nice shift that we got to know about the other victims on night two, the LaBiancas, and some of the interviews, although redundant, shed light on aspects we haven't heard about but, overall, the truth about how you can only live of someone else's hard earned cash can only last so long...
But always remember, these people that the hippies murdered were all RICH and thus, considered PIGS: because that's what even the peaceful hippies thought about the capitalist pigs they despised... still do, in fact...
Maybe THAT IS WHY the Manson story is still relevant.
