DVD -26 Music Video Distributors In a direct counterpoint to films like ...
Music Video Distributors
In a direct counterpoint to films like Helter Skelter (either version) in a year that marks both Manson's 70th birthday and the 35th anniversary of the Tate-LaBianca murders, there's Charles Manson Superstar.
I've never been a big fan of Nikolas Schreck's, who always struck me as a kind of Satanic starfucker. Still, his adamantly pro-Manson documentary from 1989 is fascinating at times, in spite of its sloppiness. It's frustrating at times, too, and boring at others, but worth taking a look at, if nothing else, for its audacity.
The bulk of the film consists of a long interview with Manson, in which he rambles on about music, nature, religion, his childhood, prison life and, briefly, the murders (which he claims he had nothing to do with). At times he's quite lucid and makes a lot of sense regarding, say, power structures in the world. At other times he ends up sounding like a pathetic acid casualty.
The extra-interview material seems to have mostly been taken from Schreck's book, The Manson File. In his narration, as in the book, he takes it upon himself to counter, if not dismiss entirely, a number of the myths that have risen around Manson over the years.
Manson was a child of the 40s, not the 60s, he claims, and so that whole "Beatles" business was nonsense. Nor was the Tate house chosen because it once belonged to music producer Terry Melcher. Manson never auditioned to be one of the Monkees, and the Process Church connection isn't nearly as important as some people (i.e., Ed Sanders) made it out to be. At the same time, he creates myths of his own-noting various historical events that took place on August 9, and really stretching to create some sort of magical Manson/Church of Satan/Sharon Tate/movie-industry connection.
Yet his argument that Manson was innocent as a newborn babe, a man who "never killed anyone" begins to crumble when you notice that the name Shorty Shea never comes up. He also ignores the "impending race-war" claims, while concentrating quite a bit on a Manson-Hitler connection. He goes so far as to interview James Mason, founder of the neo-nazi Universal Order, looking for insight.
Still, Schreck does do a good job of studying Manson as a cultural figure, charting his changing image in the public mind through the use of Manson iconography in movies, advertisements and books. In the end, though, his attempt to create a portrait of an important visionary who's been screwed over by the world becomes more a portrait of a lost and ruined old man, whose public image is far more interesting than the reality.
Jim Knipfel