Helter Skelter

Year: 2004 Rating: TV Overall Evaluation: 9.0 Significance Suppositions Story Style 10.0 / 10 10.0 / 10 7.0 / 10 9.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

This made-for-TV movie does a decent job of showing the horror of murder without resorting to gore. In fact the gore is barely shown although a few bloody shots are filmed they are not overly long or gratuitous. No nudity or cussing. There are some sexual scenes but the more degenerate acts are implied more than shown.

Story

This is based on the true story of Charles Manson and his "family" of murderers. Manson is a self-described messiah (Jesus himself, actually) that somehow manages to surround himself with disillusioned former prom queens and student council members who are so taken in by him that they become willing to go out and murder innocent people at Manson's whim. His delusions include the belief that a race war is coming, started by the blacks, that will subjugate the white man. He and the family are to go into hiding to wait it out and then take over themselves once it is over (because blacks won't know how to run the world without whitey). He gets this information from the Bible and the Beatles (Manson calls the war "Helter Skelter" from the Beatles song of that title which is actually referring to a big slide in England). The murders are a "kick-start" to show the blacks how to begin. They eventually get caught and are all found guilty (Manson alone pleaded innocent) - primarily on the testimony of the only person to escape the family.

Suppositions

Being a true story there is little suspension of disbelief. Being a TV movie it is not the most accurate in the world but they did a good job.

Significance

The obvious message is that murder is evil and those who promote it are as well. This should be obvious, but for the current generation of idiots who think Manson is some kind of hero the movie shows them that he is not a messiah, not Jesus, and not unfairly jailed. He isn't even smart, insightful or gifted. He's just a sick, albeit charismatic, man who gathered some gullible 60's druggies into doing his evil work. One other aspect that I liked about this version of the film (the original was in 1976 and is also fairly good if I remember correctly) was that it goes into Manson's twisted mind a bit more and uncovers the bizarre thought process that he used - the part where he explains Helter Skelter being a message from the Beatles who are the four beasts of the book of Revelation is particularly good. It shows how easily bad interpretation can be used to sound good to the willfully ignorant, and how horrible the consequences of false ideas can be.