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Frankly, I don't even know where to start.

If you chose the book as your first option, you made the right choice. Extremely long, boring at times, or almost always, difficult to follow, and from the beginning, it promises something that will never deliver: the supposed truth behind the Manson Family murders.

If you chose the documentary, you also made the right choice. Its brevity doesn't make it better than the book; on the contrary, it makes it more chaotic and absurd, more gratuitous. Its "journalistic investigation" nature, which in the book is disguised through interviews, is completely lost here, and it seems more like a History Channel program than a professional investigative work.

The comparison with alternative theory programs about the official history of any subject covered on the History Channel becomes even more evident when Tom O'Neill says, like Giorgio Tsoukalos on his shows, that he doesn't believe that the story told by the prosecutors who brought the case against Manson and his girls is true.

Basically, that's his argument, both in the book and in the documentary: he doesn't believe Manson manipulated a group of psychologically helpless and mentally immature girls to commit the atrocious crimes against Sharon Tate and her guests. And since psychological manipulation is something O'Neill believes is impossible, he prefers to explore the entire absurd and irrational, unprovable world of MK Ultra conspiracy theories, even though in doing so he insults the memory of the true victims, Sharon Tate and her friends, and attempts to present the manipulative killer Manson as a victim of a larger, hidden plan operating in the shadows.

O'Neill should be reminded that this strategy is not only insulting to the real victims, who didn't kill anyone. Manson cannot be presented as another victim of the evil shadow government that framed him for his mind-control experiments.

When specifically questioned by the documentary filmmakers, O'Neill confesses that he doesn't believe Manson was manipulated into committing the murders, into ordering them to be carried out. Why does he say this? Not only because he can't prove it, but because, just like in the book, he is actually the true opportunist, the con artist, the one who writes a book knowing it contains nothing but lies and lacks any solid evidence or testimony, which is what he accuses the prosecutor who wrote the book "Helter Skelter: The Truth About the Manson Family Murders."

As we say in Mexico, quoting a Chespirito character, "La Chimoltrufia," a ridiculously caricatured woman, O'Neill "como dice una cosa, dice otra" - "as he says one thing, he says another."

His absurd investigation stems from an almost ridiculous and laughable fact: he doesn't believe in the prosecution's theory. He believes that information was withheld, and that this information, hidden and buried under seven seals, contains the truth. Where is that information? Why doesn't he present it? Because as with every conspiracy theory, the absence of evidence confirms the evidence. If we don't see what we want or what we believe, it's not because it doesn't exist, but because it's hidden somewhere.

In the book, every time O'Neill follows a "lead" that could lead him to the big revelation, to a key witness whom a third party is talking about and knows, and whom he claims has access to privileged information, every time he follows that "lead," time and again, inevitably, the witness suddenly disappears, refuses to talk, "turns a blind eye," misses the appointment, etc. Why? Not because he's hiding something, or because the power of the CIA and the shadow government pressured him. Because he actually has no proof, because he's just someone else looking for notoriety, his five minutes of fame, just like O'Neill himself. But that "someone" knows deep down that he has no basis in fact to back up whatever he might reveal, because his testimony would be inadmissible in any court of law in the United States.

O'Neill's voluminous book is disappointing in every way, but primarily because it fails to deliver what the cover claims it will reveal: the truth behind the Manson Family murders. There is no other truth that hasn't been proven in a court of law, which is where things matter and count, not in the washed-out pages of a tabloid or in a nonsensical book.

O'Neill confesses at the end of the book what any moderately informed reader would know: that he didn't find the big truth that would refute the prosecution's case. Oh, but what about the royalties from the sale of the book and the documentary? There, the guy didn't even blink.

It's a shame that O'Neill is unaware of the psychological manipulation exerted by political cults (Hitler), religious cults, or pseudo-religious cults (Scientology) and is unaware of the brutal damage they inflict on their victims, which is sometimes impossible for them to heal or overcome, as one of the Manson Family girls confesses years after the events.

I'm sure that, like O'Neill, many believe these conspiracy theories: because they lie, they hide things, they didn't follow this or that lead, they didn't interview that key witness, or because they were slow to react, or because they released this or that person earlier, or because they took so long to arrest or interrogate them, without understanding the complexity of a true police investigation, which must be based on hard, tangible evidence, as prosecutors and the American judicial system themselves say, that is beyond a reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt isn't that they didn't interview Juan Pendejo, or that they took so long to do this or that, or that they ignored what the parole officer did or didn't do, said or didn't say, or whether he scratched his butt with his index finger or his thumb, as O'Neill repeatedly claims. None of that is evidence of anything, except for people wasting their time on peripheral matters that have nothing to do with the only real, tangible fact. There was a gruesome murder in 1969 committed by a group of girls sent by Charles Manson in revenge for not getting a recording contract. That is the concrete, undeniable fact. Was the CIA, the FBI, or my uncle who went bald half a century ago involved in that crime? The answer is "NO."

Manson was the mastermind behind a heinous and vicious crime. He wasn't a victim. He got what he deserved: to live like a dog and never see the light of day again. That's the least he deserved. There's no mitigating factor in his atrocious behavior.

What O'Neill is up to is as heinous as what Manson did, but at least it's not a crime, a crime that deserves jail time. He only deserves our contempt. That's all.

This was not by any means necessary an original saturday night softcore movie, since there was hundreds of films with the same plot. Literally, you pick a stone from the ground and you will find a movie just the same as this. Shannon Whirry did a better one and an absolute classic of this kind of plot and era, and in the field of non erotic cinema, there are tons of stories like this, even Isabella Rossellini did it one.

In all this films, no matter what name you chose, there are one point you have to have it well: a good looking female lead actress, and like Metallica's song, nothing else really matters. If you have a good looking girl, nobody would pay atention to anything else. It could be or couldn't be nudity, you need a good looking female lead actress, even if she can't act, or act like Kramer on Seinfeld.

This is one in a zillion films over the same subject and more or less the same plot in more or less the same period of time, so you only have to ask your self one, and only one question. Do you like the girls depicted on screen? That's the only quiestion you have to have on your mind.

For what is my concern, I liked Sara Suzanne Brown in this paricular movie, but she never done anything more that could atract me besides this movie and another installment of the series starred by the one and only Shannon Whirry. A pretty decent girl, not even close to be the star of the year or something. Even in this, her best performance, is quite above average, much under what you can see on the same plot on Animal Instincts with Shannon Whirry or the other Shannon, Tweed, who played the exact same character on I can't remember what film, but who cares?

And, adding to this, for what I can recall, there is a brief scene with Janine Lindemulder and Lene Hefner on a parking lot, and since I have always a some kind of crush with Lene, that's enough reason to watch this film.

So, don't bother to use your brain, juts enjoy the girls.

Although this series has its values i.e. Production, and the background history it ca be denied, also has its flaws. My principal objection is that it has not to be necessary to embelish the events with such a sloppy script. The real drama we live as Mexicans back in the day it would be just enough.

I personally work as a volunteer in rescue tasks for the University, as many other Mexicans that days, and we all know that there was no such a ridiculous story of a newspaper reporter such as portayed here. I guess that for a non Mexican audience this could be easily compared with some kind of US reconstruction or representation of the Nine-Eleven events, the heroism that many saw and lived that days, and in terms of cinematic adaptation, that's make sense, there are plenty of stories that show more or less the same behaviour. But for me, is an insult that the writers take such a liberty on the portrait of characters involved. Not all what happened in that day involved class media people. For the Mexico city size and the hour of the earthquake, early in the morning, many of the people involved belong to virtually all kind of social origin, not only those who lived in affected areas. Specially many female workers in Colonia Obrera, for example, was poor women, in a very popular sector of the city, away from residential zones. Tlatelolco itself was not at the time a very nice zone to live in, just to mention two zones and kind of people not portrayed with adequacy in the series.

I remeber I was at the school, far away from the epicenter, and I was in disbelief of what news report that morning. I guess new generation of audience, millenials, need to see what happended that day in a new light. But I don't. I lived every hour, I was involved in rescue tasks, almost one month, during the emergency on which Mexico city almost stop at all every activity not involved in rescue.

So, I recommend that if yo not live those days directly, avoid the series. As usual with almost any recent Mexican production (no matter if its from Apple, Netflix or any other streaming service), it's made of bad acting and a sloppy script, not to mention a poor camera work. Its so obvious that this new Mexican producvers and filmakers doesn't know how to make the camera lens work not only as a credible whitness but also as a narrator, framing and using creative solutions for the POV.

Yes, the story is mindblowing, but what we see in this series is kind of an open disregard for the people who lived and died that days in Mexico city. As a Mexican who lived that days in the flesh, this series insult my memory, and the memory of those who died.

Some subjects would be treated with more professionalism and for people who really understand the tragedy and the pain lived by those who really lived those days, and not only write and produce some show for selling tickets or views on streaming.