HELTER SKELTER
Directed by Tom Gries
Written by J. P. Miller, based on book by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
Starring George DeCenzo and Stave Railsback
Released in 1976
Directed by Tom Gries
Written by J. P. Miller, based on book by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry
Starring George DeCenzo and Stave Railsback
Released in 1976
It's not quite like yesterday, but I can still remember with considerable clarity the night of April 1, 1976. The first half of the television movie "Helter Skelter" was being aired. VCRs and DVDs did not exist in people's homes in those days, so I filmed the TV set with my 35mm home movie camera. The finished product didn't turn out particularly well, although it was good enough for my purposes.
You see, I had a fascination with this case, one that only diminished slightly in the ensuing years. But we'll get to that a bit later. The reason I filmed the movie was so I could do a scene-by-scene analysis of it for my senior English class. I had a paper due under the general heading of process and development, meaning I was to write a paper about how some particular thing had come into existence and how it had then developed into something else. Because the teacher, whose last name I will not use here but whose first name was Virginia, had rejected my first proposal for a paper, on the grounds that the development of acne was not quite what she was looking for, I figured I'd do something else to freak her out. I picked that movie. Good Lord, I had no idea with whom I was messing, and I do not mean Charlie Manson.
It turned out that Virginia had spent much of the summer of 1969 living in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, not far at all from what was at that time 10050 Cielo Drive. Had I put actual effort into trying to find one subject that would send the teacher into frantic fits, I couldn't have done a better job. So let's be clear. I did not like this English teacher at all. I thought then and I think now that she was a mean-spirited, underfed woman who believed herself the victim of a cruel world because she had been relocated from the land of the hoi polloi and sunshine to the windblown acreage of central Ohio. She thought herself a supreme intellectual and a worthy critic of the presumably limited imaginations of those students she had the misfortune of instructing.
So, no, I did not like this Virginia woman.
I did not, however, know that she had been a neighbor of the Polanski family or that she had spent time under psychiatric care because of the fear the Tate murders had caused her. I really did not know this.
I selected my subject, as I say, because I thought it would mildly annoy her and because it was a topic about which I was a minor-level expert.
I filmed the movie's first half the night of April 1. I was duly impressed. The Vincent Bugliosi/Curt Gentry book had been one scary ride and I had been anxious to seen how things would play out on film. The next night I filmed the second half. Not quite as scary as the first, I thought, but still pretty intense.
The third night I sat down and played the damned thing back, once I picked up the developed copy at the photography studio. The quality was quite poor but I had enough clarity to plot out what was basically a storyboard of what had been on the screen. By the time the morning rolled around, I had over one hundred pages of notes and drawings, along with an opening and summation. While I had originally planned to shock Virginia with the subject matter, I ended up quite proud of myself for the effort I had spent doing this. I was fairly certain that she would approach it with grudging interest and I would certainly receive a fine grade for the course.
In the words of Puck the dancing fairy, "Oh what fools these mortals be."
She read no more than the first page. Her quivering hand reached out to me. She said, "This is unacceptable. You need to select a more traditional topic."
Well, that's the way it goes. My reaction got me suspended from school for three days, which is the only time I was ever in any real trouble in high school.
The exercise was good for me, all the same. It was way back then that I first began to understand that I had what I guess you could call a love affair with the movies. I loved the way one scene was constructed so that it would lead naturally into the next. I loved the fact that movies are typically filmed out of sequence. And I loved the ability of a group of people under the supervision of a director to put together a product that people could view in their own homes or in the theatre and be affected by it.
I think it goes without saying that I have watched the original "Helter Skelter" movie a few times over the following years, most recently just a few minutes ago. Compared to the remake, which came out in 2004, I suppose this seems rather tame. And yet the original served a purpose and still does. It has a degree of authenticity lacking in any of the follow-ups. For instance, director Tom Gries was able to use the actual LaBianca house for the murders of the second night. Likewise, the vehicle used by the "family" in the film was the actual Johnny Swartz Ford used by the real killers. Beyond that, however, Steve Railsback, who played Manson, and whom we last saw in The Visitors, did a good job playing a mass murderer for a TV audience. Granted, the camera didn't take us into the Tate house during the actual recreations of the killings, as it did during the remake, but the implied horror was even more intense if not more so because of the suggestion, repeated a few times near the conclusion, that these killers might soon be getting out on parole.
Some questions remain, even after all these years. First is the exact number of people murdered by Manson and his followers. It now appears we will not know the answer to this and that is a damned shame. In her jailhouse "admission" to Ronnie Howard, Susan Atkins stated that there were eleven murders committed by the family that the police would never solve. This admission took place within the context of a conversation regarding the murders of Gary Hinman and the seven Tate-LaBianca killings and so the logical inference is that she was not including those eight people in her head count. One of the eleven was probably Donald "Shorty" Shea, a laborer at Spahn Ranch. By pouring over old police records, trial transcripts, magazine articles, online sources and books, I have come up with a total of about twenty-two possibles, not including Tate-LaBianca. I believe many of these victims are known to the police who simply lack evidence to charge and prosecute. A search of the area surrounding Barker Ranch in Death Valley as recently as three years ago did not turn up any physical remains.
A second question that remains is: Who's eyeglasses were those left at the Tate murder scene? A follow-up question is: How did they get there? We know that the glasses did not belong to any of the victims and we know they did not belong to the killers. The logical inference is that they were left behind as a false clue. But by whom? Susan Atkins did not mention them in any of her admissions in Sybil Brand detention, nor during her grand jury testimony or during her testimony during the guilt phase of her own trial. Writer Ed Sanders has speculated that Manson himself placed the glasses inside the house after the killings. This would require him to have gone to the Tate house after the killers he sent returned to Spahn Ranch that August night, something that prosecutor Bugliosi thinks is unlikely because of the natural fear Manson would have had at putting himself at risk by entering the house at all. Susan Atkins knew whose glasses they were, but apparently no one in authority ever got around to asking her before she died.
The third question is: Why did they pick the LaBianca house? The house where Sharon Tate and four others were murdered was chosen for several reasons, chiefly being that Manson had a grudge against a former tenant there, Tex Watson knew the home's layout, and these victims were successful in areas where Manson himself had aspired and failed. But why go after the LaBiancas? Granted, Charlie and others in the Family had been in the house next door on several occasions, but nothing else has ever been presented that would shine light on why the husband and wife, Leno and Rosemary, were slaughtered by these people, other than a totally random attempt to start the race war known as Helter Skelter. Random just doesn't make it. There has to have been another reason.
Charles Manson, Charles Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten: one or more of these prisoners of the state of California must know the answers to these questions. And while it would be absurd to expect any of them to acknowledge or admit to participation in still other murders (Claudia Delaney, Marina Habe, Mark Watts, Doreen Gaul, Karl Stubbs, Darwin Scott, Jane Doe 59, and others), some of them must be able to exchange what they know for special consideration, giving the fact that, except for Van Houten, it now seems highly unlikely that any of them--or Robert Beausoleil and Bruce Davis, for that matter--will be released in this life time. That leads us to the final question that I have:
Will any of the convicted murders of Sharon Tate and the others ever be released?
I think not. Again, with the possible exception of Van Houten, who was along and a willing participant in the events of the second night, there is very little chance that any of the others will see freedom. Even if they were granted parole, no California governor with dreams of reelection would ever sign the executive release orders.
And so the story goes on. Steve "Clem" Grogan was released years ago. Squeaky Fromme is out. Most of the men and women, now quite gray and hunched, are settling into old age, hoping to put the past behind them, just as the families of the victims try to do the same. And yet, until the above questions are answered, I doubt we can actually take any comfort in telling ourselves that the events of August 1969 are completely over.
The original "Helter Skelter" movie is a good place to start your own curious mind to wandering. Just don't expect to get any sleep for a few nights.
You see, I had a fascination with this case, one that only diminished slightly in the ensuing years. But we'll get to that a bit later. The reason I filmed the movie was so I could do a scene-by-scene analysis of it for my senior English class. I had a paper due under the general heading of process and development, meaning I was to write a paper about how some particular thing had come into existence and how it had then developed into something else. Because the teacher, whose last name I will not use here but whose first name was Virginia, had rejected my first proposal for a paper, on the grounds that the development of acne was not quite what she was looking for, I figured I'd do something else to freak her out. I picked that movie. Good Lord, I had no idea with whom I was messing, and I do not mean Charlie Manson.
It turned out that Virginia had spent much of the summer of 1969 living in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, not far at all from what was at that time 10050 Cielo Drive. Had I put actual effort into trying to find one subject that would send the teacher into frantic fits, I couldn't have done a better job. So let's be clear. I did not like this English teacher at all. I thought then and I think now that she was a mean-spirited, underfed woman who believed herself the victim of a cruel world because she had been relocated from the land of the hoi polloi and sunshine to the windblown acreage of central Ohio. She thought herself a supreme intellectual and a worthy critic of the presumably limited imaginations of those students she had the misfortune of instructing.
So, no, I did not like this Virginia woman.
I did not, however, know that she had been a neighbor of the Polanski family or that she had spent time under psychiatric care because of the fear the Tate murders had caused her. I really did not know this.
I selected my subject, as I say, because I thought it would mildly annoy her and because it was a topic about which I was a minor-level expert.
I filmed the movie's first half the night of April 1. I was duly impressed. The Vincent Bugliosi/Curt Gentry book had been one scary ride and I had been anxious to seen how things would play out on film. The next night I filmed the second half. Not quite as scary as the first, I thought, but still pretty intense.
The third night I sat down and played the damned thing back, once I picked up the developed copy at the photography studio. The quality was quite poor but I had enough clarity to plot out what was basically a storyboard of what had been on the screen. By the time the morning rolled around, I had over one hundred pages of notes and drawings, along with an opening and summation. While I had originally planned to shock Virginia with the subject matter, I ended up quite proud of myself for the effort I had spent doing this. I was fairly certain that she would approach it with grudging interest and I would certainly receive a fine grade for the course.
In the words of Puck the dancing fairy, "Oh what fools these mortals be."
She read no more than the first page. Her quivering hand reached out to me. She said, "This is unacceptable. You need to select a more traditional topic."
Well, that's the way it goes. My reaction got me suspended from school for three days, which is the only time I was ever in any real trouble in high school.
The exercise was good for me, all the same. It was way back then that I first began to understand that I had what I guess you could call a love affair with the movies. I loved the way one scene was constructed so that it would lead naturally into the next. I loved the fact that movies are typically filmed out of sequence. And I loved the ability of a group of people under the supervision of a director to put together a product that people could view in their own homes or in the theatre and be affected by it.
I think it goes without saying that I have watched the original "Helter Skelter" movie a few times over the following years, most recently just a few minutes ago. Compared to the remake, which came out in 2004, I suppose this seems rather tame. And yet the original served a purpose and still does. It has a degree of authenticity lacking in any of the follow-ups. For instance, director Tom Gries was able to use the actual LaBianca house for the murders of the second night. Likewise, the vehicle used by the "family" in the film was the actual Johnny Swartz Ford used by the real killers. Beyond that, however, Steve Railsback, who played Manson, and whom we last saw in The Visitors, did a good job playing a mass murderer for a TV audience. Granted, the camera didn't take us into the Tate house during the actual recreations of the killings, as it did during the remake, but the implied horror was even more intense if not more so because of the suggestion, repeated a few times near the conclusion, that these killers might soon be getting out on parole.
Some questions remain, even after all these years. First is the exact number of people murdered by Manson and his followers. It now appears we will not know the answer to this and that is a damned shame. In her jailhouse "admission" to Ronnie Howard, Susan Atkins stated that there were eleven murders committed by the family that the police would never solve. This admission took place within the context of a conversation regarding the murders of Gary Hinman and the seven Tate-LaBianca killings and so the logical inference is that she was not including those eight people in her head count. One of the eleven was probably Donald "Shorty" Shea, a laborer at Spahn Ranch. By pouring over old police records, trial transcripts, magazine articles, online sources and books, I have come up with a total of about twenty-two possibles, not including Tate-LaBianca. I believe many of these victims are known to the police who simply lack evidence to charge and prosecute. A search of the area surrounding Barker Ranch in Death Valley as recently as three years ago did not turn up any physical remains.
A second question that remains is: Who's eyeglasses were those left at the Tate murder scene? A follow-up question is: How did they get there? We know that the glasses did not belong to any of the victims and we know they did not belong to the killers. The logical inference is that they were left behind as a false clue. But by whom? Susan Atkins did not mention them in any of her admissions in Sybil Brand detention, nor during her grand jury testimony or during her testimony during the guilt phase of her own trial. Writer Ed Sanders has speculated that Manson himself placed the glasses inside the house after the killings. This would require him to have gone to the Tate house after the killers he sent returned to Spahn Ranch that August night, something that prosecutor Bugliosi thinks is unlikely because of the natural fear Manson would have had at putting himself at risk by entering the house at all. Susan Atkins knew whose glasses they were, but apparently no one in authority ever got around to asking her before she died.
The third question is: Why did they pick the LaBianca house? The house where Sharon Tate and four others were murdered was chosen for several reasons, chiefly being that Manson had a grudge against a former tenant there, Tex Watson knew the home's layout, and these victims were successful in areas where Manson himself had aspired and failed. But why go after the LaBiancas? Granted, Charlie and others in the Family had been in the house next door on several occasions, but nothing else has ever been presented that would shine light on why the husband and wife, Leno and Rosemary, were slaughtered by these people, other than a totally random attempt to start the race war known as Helter Skelter. Random just doesn't make it. There has to have been another reason.
Charles Manson, Charles Tex Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten: one or more of these prisoners of the state of California must know the answers to these questions. And while it would be absurd to expect any of them to acknowledge or admit to participation in still other murders (Claudia Delaney, Marina Habe, Mark Watts, Doreen Gaul, Karl Stubbs, Darwin Scott, Jane Doe 59, and others), some of them must be able to exchange what they know for special consideration, giving the fact that, except for Van Houten, it now seems highly unlikely that any of them--or Robert Beausoleil and Bruce Davis, for that matter--will be released in this life time. That leads us to the final question that I have:
Will any of the convicted murders of Sharon Tate and the others ever be released?
I think not. Again, with the possible exception of Van Houten, who was along and a willing participant in the events of the second night, there is very little chance that any of the others will see freedom. Even if they were granted parole, no California governor with dreams of reelection would ever sign the executive release orders.
And so the story goes on. Steve "Clem" Grogan was released years ago. Squeaky Fromme is out. Most of the men and women, now quite gray and hunched, are settling into old age, hoping to put the past behind them, just as the families of the victims try to do the same. And yet, until the above questions are answered, I doubt we can actually take any comfort in telling ourselves that the events of August 1969 are completely over.
The original "Helter Skelter" movie is a good place to start your own curious mind to wandering. Just don't expect to get any sleep for a few nights.
