Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes

"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.

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.

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).

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!

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 .