Hippy horror — the women STILL under Manson’s monstrous spell
No crime novelist, no Hollywood director could depict anything more evil than the two freshfaced young women with shorn hair and assault ri f les, talking dreamily about slaughter.
captured in washed- out Kodachrome colours on rescued Sixties footage, manson Family disciples Sandy Good and Brenda Pitman talked with druggy detachment about death on Manson: The Lost Tapes (iTV).
‘if we were unarmed, we would chew their necks off, anything, claw their eyes out . . . what’s the big deal, you know, five or six people get killed — freak out!’
Asked how she felt about the murder of actress Sharon Tate, stabbed repeatedly while she was heavily pregnant, Sandy Good shrugged and said she was pregnant, too: all unborn babies were alike, she added, and the soul of the dead foetus had simply been absorbed into her own child.
The softness in her voice and the vacancy in her eyes froze my blood.
Perhaps the most chilling aspect of this astonishing film was that other members of the charles manson death cult had already committed their killing spree in Beverly Hills — yet these girls were living free and armed to the teeth.
Slamming hunting knives into a wooden bench, they snarled at the lens: ‘We’re ready.’
The tapes, shot by film-maker robert Hendrickson and largely unseen since 1969, had a decayed beauty, as if the colours had been baked and slightly melted. We watched manson’s hippy cultists at their remote ranch, dancing wildly on LSD and smoking dope beside desert waterholes.
Their voices kept telling us what a trip it all was. The sensation was one of sliding into their nightmare.
Two of the women, now in their 70s, agreed to be interviewed after watching the film. The grip manson still has over them, though he died last year, is absolute.
catherine Share, or ‘Gypsy’, said: ‘There were some happy times in the desert, it doesn’t bring out any bad memories.’
catherine, who escaped the Holocaust as a baby, understood manson was a monster, but she remembered him as ‘good-looking, dreamy eyes, cleft in his chin’.
Dianne Lake, known as ‘Snake’, had been raped by manson when she was 14. He terrified her, and she hated him, but still she said: ‘ it was magical, like it was meant to be.’
This compelling documentary, the first of two, gave a unique insight into how a psychotic control freak could take possession of vulnerable people through hallucinogenic drugs and sexual abuse, and manipulate them for the rest of their lives. This was a nightmare from which there was no waking up.
on a much lighter note, a mischievous joke was hidden in Gareth Malone’s All Star Music Quiz (BBc2). contestants were challenged to Name That Tune from just the first four notes — and former Shadow chancellor ed Balls looked aghast to recognise the intro of Seven Nation Army by The White Stripes.
The tune is much better known, of course, for the moronic chant of ‘ooh, Jeremy corbyn!’
ed proved himself a competent keyboardist. He began learning the piano in his 40s — and whatever you think of his politics, you have to admit his optimistic attitude to middle-age is inspiring.
This fast-paced pilot made raucous entertainment. Players including cold Feet’s John Thomson (drums) and Upstart crow’s rob rowse (guitar) had to recognise songs played backwards, or pared down to just the bassline.
‘We don’t just say the answers, we play the answers,’ chirruped Gareth. He was good fun, too.