Series Review: Helter Skelter: An American Myth

Manson murder series on Epix MGM+

“[Mass murderer Charles Manson] often talked about ego and the need to destroy the ego,” one of Manson’s cult members recalls in Helter Skelter: An American Myth. This is the most interesting disclosure of the six-part 2020 series, which aired on Epix (part of MGM’s streaming app). Unfortunately, this crucial aspect of convicted murderer Manson’s altruist-collectivist, nihilist, racist, socialist philosophy is abandoned.

In fragmented 50-minute episodes, Manson’s murderous story is retold. Though the philosophical angle’s absent—except as it is coincidentally shown, reported or demonstrated in certain segments—early episodes show little-known parts of Manson’s impoverished upbringing in or around West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Manson’s mother was awful, to put it mildly. He was abused. The series, advertised with rare pictures, new interviews and footage as a “docuseries”, proves that Manson was fast-tracked to nothingness, thuggishness and a criminal mind.

Helter Skelter: An American Myth loses focus as it strains for attention. I can’t exactly recommend the TV series, though you can gain new knowledge if you’ve read the literary 1974 masterpiece Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, which I purchased and read 20 years after the August 8 (and later), 1969 Los Angeles mass murder. Bugliosi’s history is a sharp, insightful and chilling analysis with penetrating documentation of philosophy’s crucial role in man’s existence. As a prosecutor and investigator, Vincent Bugliosi charged, tried and convicted Manson of mass murder in a court of law. Manson was sentenced to death. Democrats later effectively reversed the death penalty, nullifying this sentence and allowing Manson to live in prison.

Helter Skelter: An American Myth, directed and co-produced by environmentalist-feminist producer Lesley Chilcott, who produced Al Gore’s propaganda film An Inconvenient Truth, evades or ignores the late Mr. Bugliosi’s vital role in the Manson case. The program tracks Manson’s life, from being released from prison to pursuing a career in songwriting, including his intellectual development in San Francisco, where he explicitly formed a nihilist philosophy with the New Left’s old ideals—recruiting a herd of hippies to follow “his growing traveling commune.” From the Haight Ashbury district to Los Angeles, Manson concocted for his mostly female cult the notion that he was a religious prophet, claiming that he was spurred by subliminal messages on a rock and roll album.

In the summer of 1969, preaching a coming war with blacks, getting stoned on drugs, indiscriminate sex—incestuousness and insularity in his family—rooted in daily diatribes against wealthy white Americans and capitalism, Manson practiced indoctrination, abuse, orgies and death tests. His goal to order the family to carry out his vision for mystical mass murder is among the most heinous acts of savagery and barbarism in the history of U.S. crime. Helter Skelter: An American Myth trivializes and distorts Manson’s anti-American, anti-capitalist philosophy, though it contains new disclosures, particularly about Manson’s troubled childhood. Lacking the clarity and consistency to merit a wide, general audience, it’s best to read Mr. Bugliosi’s book.