HELTER SKELTER 1976 Review

 HELTER SKELTER 1976 

 

“Helter Skelter” is a movie that came out in 1976, which was a re-enactment of the book of the same name, by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry.

I think the movie did a pretty good job casting certain people for roles in the movie, though some people, were questionable. I wonder if some of these people were cast in certain roles, so as to protect the real life versions of the people they were playing. For example, the actors for Susan Atkins and Charles Manson were cast very well. The actors did a good job, and looked very much like their real life counterparts. On the other hand, people like Ronnie Howard, Danny DeCarlo, Short Shea, Kitty Lutesinger, and William Garretson didn’t look like their counterparts. I figure that for the innocents in this film, it was better not to have their likenesses shown to the masses. Considering how the film came out less than 10 years after the killings, I’m sure that there were people who would have tried to find, and potentially harm, the real life people who testified in this case. I noticed that some of the police characters in the movie kept calling Kitty Lutesinger, “Kitty Lassinger”. I’m not sure if this was because they couldn’t read, or it was just a way to protect the real Kitty’s identity. 

I did find it funny how the actor who played Bugliosi had more hair than his real life counterpart. 

Watching the movie, it appears that they went to some of the real life locations, or areas close to, the actual crime scenes or places of interest with The Manson Family. There was definitely a shot of what looked like the actual house at Waverly Drive, the LaBianca house. The movie doesn’t depict The Spiral Staircase, or Gary Hinman, though of course, this is in line with the book. Bugliosi wasn’t on that investigation or trial. 

Seeing that the actual physical work that the police had to do, from their perspective, I can see why The Manson Family really seemed to think that they wouldn’t get caught. This was before computers and digital archiving like we have today in 2026. Back in 1969, it definitely would have seemed impossible to connect all of the ties between all of the people involved at Spahn Ranch, and the murders. Even though this movie was re-enacting many of the real life events, it still put into perspective how complex this case was, and nearly impossible to correctly categorize who did what. Considering how daunting a task it was, completely analogue, I understand why there were people back when the trials started, who were legitimately afraid that the killers would go free. 

Further in the movie, I could tell that some of the names to other characters were changed, as stated before. Sandra Good and Squeaky Fromme. I imagine that the reason why they changed the names for these two was likely due to Squeaky’s attempted assassination of President Ford, which had happened only a year before the movie came out. I imagine that if they stated Squeaky’s real name, Lynette, it probably would have scared audiences even more, potentially not even allowing the movie to be shown anywhere. 

I liked how the actor who played Bugliosi portrayed him. He did a really great job in showing how meticulous and detailed the real Bugliosi was. The movie also does a great depiction to how unsettling the Manson Family appeared to normal people. In the decades since the actual murders, this has been of the things to understand. For me, it’s never really been emphasized, about how horrifying The Manson Family was to the average person.  As someone born after all of this went down, I just didn’t understand the terror it put in the everyday person.

In fact, when I’ve tried to talk to older people, those who were young, or young adults back when the murders happened, most don’t even want to go too far into it. I remember one person telling me, they just didn’t understand how people could fall for Charlie’s Bullshit. But I suppose that’s my answer, right? The Manson Family was so scary to people, that even in old age, they don’t want to think about it. One woman did tell me, that after the murders, all the parents in her neighborhood would call their kids back home when the streetlights turned on, and everyone would lock their doors. That’s how scary The Manson Family was to regular people. 

One thing I found really interesting in the movie, was how Bugliosi’s character was talking to another lawyer, who was supposed to be Aaron Stovitz, but looked nothing like the real version, who told Vince that it’d be hard to keep Charlie in custody, and hard to convince a jury that Charlie was the one that orchestrated the murders. This scene was very telling to me, and you can see where the idea of the “Helter Skelter theory” started to form. This scene was like foreshadowing, in a sense. You could see that Bugliosi obviously had something in his head, trying to formulate a way to connect Charlie to these murders. It confirms to me something that I’ve thought ever since reading through many of the court transcripts. 

My thought is that, the “Helter Skelter Theory” isn’t necessarily fake, it’s just the main one they used, so that they could put Charlie away. If you read through the court transcripts, Leslie Van Houten even stated that she was offered a deal to basically give up Charlie. To me, it’s clear that the police had been watching Charlie for a while, which they were, (you can go onto mansonblog.com to read more about that) but they never had anything that they could use to put him away for a long time. Charlie kept getting locked up, then let out. He was constantly slipping through their fingers.

There’s multiple instances of proof that obviously, law enforcement had been watching Spahn Ranch, and Manson himself. There’s more crimes from that area which are never even talked about, a lot of sex crimes, but because no-one would sell out Charlie, before Tate-LaBianca, police couldn’t legally do anything to arrest him.  So once again, I feel like much of the legal approach to “Helter Skelter”, was a way to put Charlie away forever. I feel like, unless you read the court transcripts, you probably wouldn’t question Bugliosi. At the end of the day, the killers were locked up, right? But once you start looking for the truth, that’s when the “Helter Skelter Theory” starts looking funny. 

This is just my opinion, but I don’t think Bugliosi expected “Helter Skelter”, the law theory, to be seen as the end all be all for this case. I don’t think that he expected people to care about it decades after. So in a strange way, it’s like he too, put himself in a bottomless hole with this. Because, the “Helter Skelter Theory” doesn’t explain everything, and much of the actual truth doesn’t make sense in comparison to this. I don’t want to get too deep into this, because I want to keep this a review about the movie; but I will say, that there are parts of the truth that the “Helter Skelter Theory” seems to deny. One of these, is how Tex Watson and Susan Atkins were on drugs when they were at Cielo Drive. For some reason, as seen in Susan’s 1978 parole hearing, Stephen Kay denied this. But I suppose that was to “ensure” that Susan wouldn’t be let on parole under the excuse of “Oh it’s okay, I was high.”. So, there are things which the “Helter Skelter Theory” didn’t get right, but to me, it was the only way to convict Manson, and put him away for life. Of which, Manson was definitely doing other crimes during the time period, which he was never brought to court for.

Anyway, back to the movie.

What’s interesting, is how they changed the names of the people who were at the Russian Roulette scene where “Zero” shot himself. In the movie, they changed the name to “Boots”, and I believe another person’s name was changed, potentially Bruce Davis’. 

I found it interesting how the movie depicted Vince and the others not wanting to actually give Susan Atkins the deal they originally made with her. I, and other people, had never understood why they gave her the immunity deal for her grand jury testimony, but here in the movie, it seemed more like a reluctant legal deal, which I understand. The grand jury scene did a great deal to show Susan Atkins as horrifying, which I truly believe she was. I wish that they left in the part from real life, where the real Susan called Steven Parent “The thing in the car.”. But I suppose if they left that in the movie, they probably wouldn’t have been able to show it anywhere. 

I think it was very interesting how the depiction of Susan’s Grand Jury Testimony did not show her crying once. Just like in real life. Not a single tear shed, while recounting the bloodshed. The movie brought up a good point, when Susan sold her story to the press, where her doing so would have made finding a jury difficult. I never thought about this until the movie, but I see now how this could have been a move done, to potentially prevent a trial from nearly happening at all. 

The movie goes on to show that Vince actually struggled with creating a case against Charlie. The movie has his character even saying that the case against Charlie was weak. It makes me wonder, if in the decades after this movie came out, if Bugliosi potentially regretted this being admitted. The movie also helped me realize how so many people ignored what were obvious signs to the crimes, because once again, the crimes were so ridiculous and outlandish, that a normal person wouldn’t have originally connected certain things, such as the spiritual aspects of The Manson Family. To people who have no experience with drugs and some of their spiritual contexts, majority of the details pertaining to the Manson Family made, make no sense. 

But of course, no sense makes sense. 

I found it interesting too, how Bugliosi’s character had pointed out that people were only looking at conventional signs and clues about the crime, when of course, nothing about this was conventional. And to a point, I agree. Though, there are still aspects I will always feel were brought up by Bugliosi, as a far stretch to barely prove his legal points. 

The scene where Bugliosi and Paul Watkins were in the room together was also interesting, as it was used to tie in much of the “Helter Skelter Theory” together. Many people doubt the theory, and I’ve read online where they say that the whole idea stemmed from Paul to begin with, that it was never Charlie’s. I don’t know how many people believe that Charlie believed in Helter Skelter. When I first ever read about the idea in Jeff Guinn’s book, it seemed too far out of pocket to even make a slight smidgen of sense. What was interesting, was how Paul’s character pointed out that they used the Catholic Bible, which is something that I had totally forgotten. The point of this, was because apparently, the “Hole in the earth” thing referred to Abaddon, and in the Catholic bible, this demon was also referred to as “Exterminans”. The King James version doesn’t mention this, and upon looking this up, it’s true, the differences between the bible I mean. 

To quote the book “Helter Skelter”:

To members of the Family the identity of that fifth angel, the ruler of the bottomless pit, was never in doubt. It was Charlie. Verse II reads: “And they had a king over them, which is the angel of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon.”

The king also had a Latin name, which, though it appears in the Catholic Douay Version, was inadvertently omitted by the translators of the King James version. It was Exterminans.

Exterminans, t/n Charles Manson.

Further in the movie, it appears that they also renamed Irving Kanarek, who represented Manson, to a man named “Scoville”. Considering how Scoville units are what are used to measure the heat of chili peppers, I find that this was appropriate for Kanarek, who I’m sure would have done something legal to oppose this movie using his real name. Later on, Ronald Hughes is mentioned in the movie, though his name is changed too. I believe it was “Terry Milich”. It seems that all of the defense lawyers’ names were changed. 

The movie doesn’t seem to show the switch from Aaron Stovitz to Stephen Kay, probably for good reason. From what I understand, Stephen Kay wanted to distance himself from the trial after it was over. Understandably. 

The movie also doesn’t talk about the switch to Maxwell Keith for Leslie Van Houten.

What I appreciate about the film, is how it depicted the insanity and circus that the trial was. Of course, “Helter Skelter”, the book, talks much about the trial, but many movies, even to this day, don’t. Few movies have ever depicted the insanity that went on, and what’s seen in the film isn’t even that far off from the real thing. In fact, they had to leave out things, from what I’ve read through the court transcripts. The movie also did a good job at showing how Susan Atkins was much more into the cult than she would ever admit in her book. 

The depictions of the insane outbursts and the defendants being taken to separate areas of the courthouse to listen to the rest of the trial is accurate too. The movie even showed the part where Manson tried to attack Judge Charles Older. 

What was really interesting, was how the last part of the movie shows Charlie and Bugliosi talking, and they take Charlie’s words from the “interview” track that’s on the album “Lie”. In the track, Charlie stated:

“You can't fight for peace, and you cannot capture freedom.” 
The interviewer asks, “Then love is the total answer?”. And Charlie replied,“If someone beats you with a whip, and you love the whip, what’s he doin’? Makin’ a fool outta himself! ” To which he laughed.  The phrase about the whip is what is stated in the movie.

The movie ends with a depiction of the Manson members with shaved heads, including some of the people that were outside of the courthouse, which was true to real life. Since this movie came out in 1976, this was before the convicted were eligible for parole in 1978. The film ends showing the characters and stating that they’d be eligible, in what was barely 2 years at the time. I’m sure that for any of the people who watched this when it originally came out, and remembered the crimes in the news, this was a frightening thought. I give credit to Bugliosi for having the film depict it this way, because without that fact, some of these people could have gotten parole very easily. 

I know that many people disliked Vincent Bugliosi, and I know that he wasn’t a perfectly good guy. He definitely wasn’t the squeaky clean lawyer that his public persona tried to uphold; but in a strange way, I couldn’t see anyone else being able to try this case, and getting the death penalty like he did. I will always think that it was a shame, and a miscarriage of justice, that the death penalty was overturned a year later. Even still, the justice system still had the last laugh in many ways. Susan, Leslie, and Patricia all admitted that they were ready to die for their beliefs, and what they did. But were they ready to live with it? In Susan’s book, “Child of Satan, Child of God”, Susan was struggling with the fact that she’d be locked up for the rest of her life. In the short film “Life After Manson”, Patricia admitted that she wasted her life. The irony is not lost on me, how death would have been too easy on them. The real struggle, is life. And isn’t that something Charlie and the other girls mentioned on his album “Lie”? Right before the track “Arkansas” starts, someone who sounds like Squeaky Fromme says “We struggle and we struggle, and we struggle.”, almost like a badge of honor. 

So I suppose, it was quite fitting for Susan, Patricia, and Leslie to struggle, because isn’t that the life they chose?

What I find interesting, is how the movie showed how Bugliosi knew it would have been hard to convince a jury. Ironically, considering how the defendants all acted in the court room, I really think that their behavior had something to do with their guilty verdict. In articles from some of the jurors after the trial was over, it was clear that many of these people were just so tired, and that it ran longer than it should. One juror even called Manson a “shrimp”. 

The film had some interesting names in it, in my opinion. For example, Vince Bugliosi was portrayed by George DiCenzo, and Linda Kasabian by Marilyn Burns who had been in “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” only 2 years before! There were some other names from old Hollywood, such as Skip Komeier, and Ray Middleton. I think it’s easy to say, that this was a pretty big deal, and there was definitely genuine interest in people portraying the events to this. In a way too, I imagine it must have been hard trying to cast people in this film at first, considering that it was about murders that happened in Hollywood. One article stated that it cost 1.4 million dollars to create this film.

The movie originally came out as a 2 part made for TV series, though apparently in some places it was shown in theaters. Looking through the newspaper archives, it appears that there were people who felt the movie was sort of exploitative, and in some ways, was a way to help boost Bugliosi’s budding political career (which didn’t go anywhere). I think it was fair to question whether or not the movie was a potential ticket to paint Bugliosi in a good light, as he had very ambitious career goals. From what I understand, despite the commercial success of his book, many people just wanted anyone and anything associated with the trial, to go away. I couldn’t help but question it myself. What was the point of this being made into a movie? It wasn’t surely done out of the purity of Bugliosi’s heart, as a way to help more people easily digest what is a 600-700 page book? I did feel, in many ways, that the movie was aggrandizing for Bugliosi. He was the main character. He was the one that created the motive for the crimes, connecting it all together. He was the one that created the book which the movie is based off of. It all comes together to make him look like the undeniable good guy, to those that don’t know anything more about the case, than from his book. Obviously, the movie is an advertisement for the book. We can’t act like it isn’t slightly suspicious that the prosecutor to the case ended up creating the best selling true crime novel of all time, thanks to Charles Manson. 

Bugliosi’s method of being on the trial, then making a book about it, is something that other lawyers would go on to do. One example are the lawyers for John Wayne Gacy’s case!

Even though Manson wasn’t a good person, we can’t act like Bugliosi was either. In fact, Bugliosi had a mistress around this time, and he was violent with her, to put it easily. 

There weren’t too many true reviews for the film when it came out. The ones I found usually just summarized it, or went off about Charles Manson himself…not talking about the movie. One article from a Canadian paper did bring up a good point though, where they said how Bugliosi’s book and movie ended up making Charles Manson a star, famous inadvertently. And I agree with that. I truly believe that Bugliosi unintentionally “Streisanded” himself, before that term even became a thing. Thanks to his meticulous book of details about the investigation and trial, many more things about The Manson Family are remembered than if this case were done normally. 

I wonder now, if all that time Bugliosi spent working late, might have been due to preparing the book, that eventually became “Helter Skelter”. I honestly believe, that he took the case because he knew that it would be dollar signs. He wasn’t the first lawyer to hear about the case. Many others simply denied the job, before him, because it was too hard to prove. As stated before, I truly believe the main reason the “Helter Skelter Theory” even became a legal point, was just a way to get Charlie. This doesn’t mean that “Helter Skelter” wasn’t something that the Manson family talked about. If you read court transcripts it definitely seemed like a thought that some people had. But this group of criminals was surprisingly diverse, and some people were more spiritual than others. Linda Kasabian’s transcripts proves that, and they even lightly touch on this in the movie, where she said that she’d used Acid or LSD to get closer to God. 

It seems to me that Patricia and Leslie believed more in the spiritual aspects of what The Manson Family had going on, while Susan didn’t. I truly believe that Susan wasn’t actually into the Helter Skelter idea, not like Pat and Leslie were. In a way, her 1978 parole hearing confirms this, where Stephen Kay stated that Susan was found sharpening knives after Gary Hinman’s death…so the idea of a race war didn’t seem to believed by everyone. I know that people will disagree with me on that, but I want to leave “The Helter Skelter Theory” for a different video. 

Overall, I do think this is a good film, and one of the better ones, best ones? That talk about the murders. Of course, I wish there was more emphasis put on the victims, but I know that the movie was supposed to be about the book, which of course is everything that happened after the murders. I watched a 3 hour version of the movie, which in some old articles from 1976, it was said to be 4 hours. I don’t know if that’s just an error, or somewhere, there’s an extra hour of footage to be seen. Original versions of this were split into 2 “episodes” when it came out on TV. 

I don’t know if this movie is something that a person, totally unaware of the details of Tate-LaBianca, would find interesting. I will admit, that I think this film is more niche, for the people that are already deep in the rabbit hole, at least, when watching decades after the fact. I imagine that when this first came out, you didn’t have to explain the basic facts of the murders, because at that point, most people likely had heard of it through the news coverage. Interestingly, the actress who played Susan Atkins in this, had stated that she was out of the country at the time of the actual crimes, and didn’t know much about the trial at all. 

If you knew nothing about Charles Manson, I think this would be actually, very confusing to watch. The viewer isn’t really told much of anything about the victims, how it went down, or those details. In retrospect, it only bolsters the idea that the movie was to prop up Bugliosi. We’re supposed to see Vince as the undeniable “good guy”, and Charles Manson as the undeniable “bad guy”. And yes, Charlie was not a good person, but as time as gone on, it appears that Vincent Bugliosi made some extremely questionable choices with this trial. One thing I found interesting, was how there was no scene about Dianne Lake. As far as this movie was concerned, Dianne Lake didn’t exist. And yet, in real life, Dianne’s testimony was the one thing that helped convict Leslie Van Houten. How strange is it, that Dianne’s testimony is not included in any of the court transcripts? It is among the things that are missing to this day. 

Anyway, I still liked the film and felt like it did a good job. At the end of the day, we can’t deny that these people were murdered. Despite Bugliosi’s attempts at fame, I do also believe that he actually wanted justice for the victims, because the more he found out about the defendants, I truly believe he became disgusted with them. Especially as the trial went on, and they did everything they could to be obnoxious, and prolong everything. Sometimes, I wonder if he asked for the Death Penalty, not because he saw it as right, but in a way, to send a message. Looking back, I wonder if he knew, or had an idea, that the death penalty would be abolished. If so, I guess he wanted it for the defendants to show that, even if they weren’t executed, they should have been. And of course, as a way to deter any potential wannabe criminals, from doing the same thing. 

Despite certain details being left out or names being changed, I think that this was a great retelling of the investigation and Tate-LaBianca trial. Of course, I wish they could have talked about Tex Watson more, but, it would be impossible to fit all of that in one video. I wonder if they considered doing a separate one just for Tex, but ultimately decided not to. It probably wouldn’t have been as interesting, in comparison to Charlie. 

This movie has now become rare to find, and as of writing this, it’s not available for stream anywhere. If you can find this, I’d say to watch it. Of course, you’d have to know about Tate-LaBianca to even understand it. I at least give credit to Bugliosi for creating a film on it, as others from that time period, and even after, weren’t very good. Despite Bugliosi’s own ambitious goals, many of the things in this movie are still true. 

4/5 stars


My video: https://youtu.be/y7Txv5g7BHQ