Inside the Manson Cult: The Lost Tapes

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

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.

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!

"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.

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 .