True crime documentaries and docuseries proceed to thrive, particularly on Netflix. Whereas the themes and subjects at hand could also be completely different, virtually all of those docs share a well-known method: there might be speaking head interviews lower in between each archival information footage and classy dramatic recreations of occasions. As a rule, these recreations additionally comply with a well-known method: the faces of the actors portraying actual figures are often obscured, and their actions usually occur in sluggish movement for further impact.
When you’ve ever puzzled why a lot true crime materials sticks to this acquainted method, the reply could be traced again to Errol Morris’ groundbreaking 1988 documentary “The Skinny Blue Line.” Morris’ movie adopted the story of Randall Dale Adams, a person convicted of murdering a Dallas police officer. Morris’ movie made it clear that Adams was harmless of the crime, and the documentary was so efficient it really helped result in Adams’ exoneration a yr after its launch.
Whereas “The Skinny Blue Line” is held in excessive regard nowadays, Morris’ film was really controversial when it first arrived. When Morris made “The Skinny Blue Line,” he selected to make use of fashionable, dramatic recreations of sure of occasions, and whereas trendy viewers have a tendency to think about this method as normal (and even cliche) within the true crime documentary style, on the time the movie was launched, such an method was extremely uncommon. Some critics even claimed that the movie did not rely as a “actual” documentary because it used so many recreations. And but, regardless of all of this, the movie’s popularity solely elevated within the years since its launch, and its method to its materials grew to become extremely influential amongst different true crime doc filmmakers.
The Charles Manson story … with a twist
Due to the affect of “The Skinny Blue Line,” Morris could be seen as the daddy of the true crime documentary style — just about each trendy true crime doc is following his blueprint. Now, Morris is again with a model new true crime documentary, protecting a subject that might be very acquainted to aficionados: the Manson Household murders.
However Morris’ new Netflix movie, “CHAOS: The Manson Murders,” is not telling the identical previous acquainted story that was made so widespread by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry’s e-book “Helter Skelter.” As an alternative, Morris is tackling materials coated Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s e-book “CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret Historical past of the Sixties,” which affords up a reasonably surprising conspiracy concept that implies perhaps, simply perhaps, CIA thoughts management had one thing to do with the Manson murders.
Most individuals most likely know the essential particulars of the Manson story. Within the Nineteen Sixties, a brief, wannabe musician named Charles Manson gathered collectively a cult of principally feminine hippies to kind a form of commune in California. With hopes of beginning a race warfare, Manson despatched a few of his followers out over the course of two nights in August 1969 to commit a collection of ugly murders, together with the homicide of pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Whereas Manson did not bodily commit any of those murders himself, he was seen because the ringleader of your entire scenario. Manson was in the end sentenced to life in jail, and died in 2017 whereas nonetheless incarcerated.
Manson nonetheless looms massive over the popular culture panorama for numerous causes. His household’s crimes, coming in 1969, signaled a form of finish of the free love hippie period. The truth that the crimes additionally took the lifetime of a younger, stunning (and pregnant) actress additionally made them heavy fodder for media consumption, as did the sensationalized trial of Manson and his follows. The “Helter Skelter” e-book solely elevated this consideration, as have numerous different books and flicks, together with Quentin Tarantino’s current “As soon as Upon a Time in Hollywood,” which dared to supply an alternate historical past method through which Manson’s stab-happy disciples have been in the end (and violently) defeated earlier than they might damage anybody.
Did CIA thoughts management have something to do with the Manson murders?
Regardless of a lot media and popular culture protection of the occasions surrounding Manson, a number of unanswered questions linger across the case. The most important query that tends to get requested many times is: “How?” How, precisely, did Charles Manson speak a bunch of children into committing a collection of horrific murders? The widespread consensus, together with amongst Manson’s members of the family themselves, is that Manson was someway in a position to brainwash them. However once more, the query lingers: how?
In 1999, journalist Tom O’Neill was employed by Premiere journal to jot down concerning the Manson murders. O’Neill had three months to file the piece, however ultimately, he missed his deadline — and stored digging. The top results of O’Neill’s work was the sprawling e-book “CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret Historical past of the Sixties.” I’ve learn it, an whereas I discovered it fascinating, I additionally should confess that it gave me a little bit of a headache. O’Neill’s e-book goes down some wild avenues and finally ends up feeling just like the printed phrase recreation of the well-known “Pepe Silvia” second from “It is All the time Sunny in Philadelphia.”
Within the e-book, O’Neill and co-writer Dan Piepenbring posit that there is a likelihood that the Manson murders had one thing to do with the CIA’s notorious MKUltra program. Whereas it sounds just like the stuff of pulp fiction, MKUltra was very actual: the CIA actually experimented with methods to manage individuals’s minds through medication and different strategies. The “CHAOS” e-book tries to attach the dots by drawing in a determine named Dr. Louis “Jolly” West, a psychiatrist working for the CIA who was hanging out within the Haight-Ashbury space across the time Manson was lurking about, nonetheless assembling his household. The one downside is that regardless of his finest efforts, O’Neill was by no means in a position to join Manson and West.
CHAOS is value watching even when it takes a reasonably easy method
To be clear, O’Neill’s e-book by no means comes proper out and blatantly says one thing like, “Charles Manson was working with the CIA!” He is merely stating that Manson’s supposed brainwashing of his household, which concerned copious quantities of hallucinogenic medication, bears a placing similarity to the work the CIA was doing with MKUltra. It might all be a coincidence. Or it could possibly be one thing extra sinister.
Having learn the e-book, I used to be very curious to see how Morris would deal with the fabric of “CHAOS.” Disappointingly, Morris’ method is surprisingly easy. The filmmaker has labored with Netflix earlier than on the underseen and reasonably sensible “Wormwood,” a miniseries that blended documentary and fiction. That work felt really groundbreaking (and, like “CHAOS,” additionally targeted on potential CIA thoughts management components), whereas “CHAOS” is kind of an ordinary true crime doc laying out the case. Morris appears extra desirous about presenting the timeline of occasions reasonably than going too deep into the weeds of the thoughts management stuff, and it is fairly clear from the get-go that the filmmaker would not purchase into any of it.
“Do I imagine that Manson was programmed by MKUltra, by the federal government – a Manchurian candidate programmed to kill?” the filmmaker mentioned to The Guardian. “Not fairly. Can it’s confirmed? I do not assume so. However can it’s disproven? I do not assume it may be. One can present the requisite scepticism.”
Whereas I want Morris had been somewhat extra formally daring with this documentary, “CHAOS” nonetheless makes for a fascinating watch that may depart you with various uneasy questions.
“CHAOS: The Manson Murders” is streaming on Netflix on March seventh, 2025.
