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Manson Family, The
Dinsdale Releasing


4.0

based on 17 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 5 votes
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Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: Not Rated

Starring Marcelo Games, Marc Pitman, Leslie Orr, Sage Stallone, Maureen Allisse, Samuel Turcotte, Amy Yates, and Jim Van Bebber

For the first time a motion picture accurately, honestly and openly explores the Manson family's life prior to the infamous murders. (Asmodeus/Mercury Films)

GENRE(S):	Horror
WRITTEN BY:	Jim Van Bebber
DIRECTED BY:	Jim Van Bebber
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 26, 2005 Theatrical: October 22, 2004
RUNNING TIME:	95 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Film Threat Graham Rae

The actual performances during the film range from excellent to somewhat amateurish, but this amateurism is easily absorbed by the sheer power of the imagery on display.

Variety Dennis Harvey

Its own mythology aside, this flamboyant, graphic and disturbing quasi-docu reenactment of a notorious chapter in U.S. counterculture life is a fascinating if peculiar accomplishment.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

This is not a "horror" film or an "underground" film, but an act of transgression so extreme and uncompromised, and yet so amateurish and sloppy, that it exists in a category of one film -- this film.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

See it - if you dare.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Hard, ugly and nasty yet a stylistically vigorous and often insightful piece of work.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

The Manson Family, with its attention to historical detail and chronology, is more effective and disturbing than those grade-Z shockers: It's a genuine look at unmitigated madness and evil. Needless to say, don't bring the kids.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

An acid movie flashback a la Oliver Stone.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Van Bebber's film is tough, difficult, sporadically brilliant cinema, to be sure, and I doubt he'd have had it any other way. And as strange as it may sound, neither should the audience.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The film evokes how homicide became the ultimate orgasm for kids who had turned themselves into zombies of flesh.

Chicago Reader J.R. Jones

Seriously gruesome docudrama.

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

A film the family might've made themselves: sophomoric, hagiographic, amateurishly strobe-happy, and thoroughly hippiefied.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Harrowing and imaginatively made.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

Finally, though, Mr. Van Bebber seems more interested in recreating the grainy look of scratched 1970's film stock than in reflecting on the horrors he depicts, making this a difficult sell for all but the strongest stomachs among connoisseurs of vintage gore.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

Van Bebber is out to capture the mood of a generation-long bad trip and succeeds with unnerving accuracy by telling the story within the family circle.

LA Weekly Scott Foundas

The movie is monotonous, and by the time it gets to its climactic re-enactment of the Tate-LaBianca killings, it seems little more than the heir to "Survive!, The Zodiac Killer" and other unsavory 1970s horror cheapies that tried to turn a quick buck on real-life tragedy.

Los Angeles Times Kevin Crust

The less-than-persuasive result is like mediocre leftover psychedelic '60s underground cinema.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

There's no real journalism here, just the sort of appalling revisionism that can turn a bloodbath into a beach party.

The average user rating for this movie is 4.0 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Byron G. gave it a2:
This was the bloodiest film I'd ever seen. I had to turn it off a few minutes before the end, I just couldn't take anymore killings. I watched most of it, though, and I belive it failed to offer the viewer any genuine understanding of its characters' motives, even and especially those of Manson himself. It was not clear whether the "interviews" were staged or with the real people involved, as they are today. It also didn´t explore Manson´s links to the theology (if you can call it that) of the Process Church and to Scientology. The imagery was brutal and extreme, but mostly unnecessary for the intelligent viewer. It left me feeling upset, but without really understanding why all of this happened - if there wasn't a social / historical aspect to the theme, it would be just a second-rate excuse for more exposure pornographic and viloent imagery. Definitely a must-miss. Read a book about cults instead.

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Manson Family, The Dinsdale Releasing

Manson Family, The
Dinsdale Releasing