The real crime documentaries and documentaries continue to thrive, especially on Netflix. Although subjects and subjects at hand can be different, almost all these documents share a familiar formula: there will be head interviews spoken between the two archive images and elegant dramatic recreations of events. More often than not, these hobbies also follow a familiar formula: the faces of actors depicting real figures are generally obscured, and their movements often occur in slow motion for an additional effect.
If you have already wondered Why So many real criminal material sticks to this familiar approach, the answer can be traced to the revolutionary documentary of 1988 by Errol Morris “The Thin Blue Line”. Morris’ film followed the story of Randall Dale Adams, a man found guilty of the murder of a Dallas police officer. Morris’ film clearly said that Adams was innocent of the crime, and the documentary was so effective that he in fact contributed to the exemption from Adams a year after his release.
While “The Thin Blue Line” is held in high esteem these days, Morris’ film was in fact controversial upon his arrival. When Morris made “the slim blue line”, he chose to use elegant and dramatic recreation of certain events, and although modern viewers tend to consider this approach as standard (and even shot) in the documentary genre of real crime, when the film was released, such an approach was very unusual. Some criticisms have even said that the film did not count as a “real” documentary because it used so much leisure. And yet, despite all this, the reputation of the film increased only over the years which followed its release, and its approach to its equipment has become very influential among other filmmakers of Doc True Crime.
The story of Charles Manson … with a twist
Due to the influence of “the thin blue line”, Morris can be considered as the father of the true documentary genre of the crime – practically all the documents of the modern crime follow his plan. Now Morris is back with a brand new documentary True Crime, covering a subject that will be very familiar to aficionados: the murders of the Manson family.
But Morris’s new Netflix film, “Chaos: The Manson Murders”, does not tell the same old familiar story that was so popular by Vincent Bugliosi and the book by Curt Gentry “Helter Skelter”. Instead, Morris is attacking the book covered coverage Tom O’Neill and Dan Piepenbring’s book “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the secret history of the 60s”, which offers a rather shocking conspiracy theory that perhaps suggests, perhaps, CIA Mind Control has had something to do with the murders of Manson.
Most people probably know the basic details of Manson’s story. In the 1960s, a short budding musician named Charles Manson gathered a cult of hippies mainly female to form a sort of commune in California. In the hope of starting a racing war, Manson sent some of his supporters during two nights in August 1969 to commit a series of horrible murders, including the murder of pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Although Manson did not physically do any of these murders, he was considered the leader of the whole situation. Manson was finally sentenced to life imprisonment and died in 2017 when he was still incarcerated.
Manson is still looming in the landscape of pop culture for various reasons. The crimes of his family, to come in 1969, pointed out a sort of end of the Hippie Love Love era. The fact that crimes also followed the life of a young actress (and pregnant) of young (pregnant) also made them heavy fodder for the consumption of the media, as well as the sensational test of Manson and its follows. The book “Helter Skelter” only increased this attention, just like various other books and films, notably “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” by Quentin Tarantino, who dared to offer an alternative historical approach in which the disciples of Manson-Happy-Happy were finally defeated (and violently) defeated before being able to hurt anyone.
Does CIA Mind Control have something to do with Manson’s murders?
Despite so many media and coverage of pop culture of events surrounding Manson, several unanswered questions linger in the case. The biggest question that tends to ask again and again is: “How?” How, exactly, Charles Manson explained a group of children to commit a series of horrible murders? The common consensus, including among the members of the family of Manson themselves, is that Manson could somehow wash the brain. But again, the question persists: how?
In 1999, journalist Tom O’Neill was hired by the magazine Premiere to write about Manson’s murders. O’Neill had three months to drop the room, but at the end, he missed his deadline – and continued to dig. The final result of O’Neill’s work was the sprawling book “Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the secret history of the 60s”. I read it, a moment when I found it fascinating, I must also admit that it gave me a little headache. The book of O’Neill descends from wild avenues and ends up feeling like the recreation of the printed word of the famous moment “Pepe Silvia” by “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”.
In the book, O’Neill and the co-author Dan Piepenbring apply that there is a chance that the murders of Manson have something to do with the famous Mkultra program of the CIA. Although it looks like pulp fiction fabric, Mkultra was very real: The CIA has really experienced the means to control the minds of people via drugs and other methods. The book “Chaos” tries to connect the points by drawing a figure named Dr. Louis “Jolly” West, a psychiatrist working for the CIA dragging in the Haight-Ashbury region when Manson was hiding, always gathering his family. The only problem is that despite his best efforts, O’Neill was never able to connect Manson and West.
Chaos is worth watching even if it takes a fairly simple approach
To be clear, O’Neill’s book never goes out and saying in a blatant way something like: “Charles Manson worked with the CIA!” He simply emphasizes that the supposed Manson brain washing of his family, which involved large amounts of hallucinogenic drugs, has a striking similarity with the work that the CIA did with Mkultra. All this could be a coincidence. Or it could be something more sinister.
After reading the book, I was very curious to see how Morris would attack the equipment of “chaos”. Disappointing, Morris’ approach is surprisingly simple. The filmmaker has already worked with Netflix on the submarine and rather brilliant “Wormwood”, a mini-series that mixed a documentary and a fiction. This work was really revolutionary (and, like “Chaos”, ” Also focused on the potential elements of control of the CIA spirit), while “chaos” is more or less a real standard document that exposed the case. Morris seems more interested in presenting the chronology of events rather than going too deep in the weeds of the stuff of mind control, and he is quite clear from the start that the filmmaker buys nothing.
“Do I think Manson was programmed by Mkultra, by the government – a Manchurian candidate programmed to kill?” The filmmaker said to The guardian. “Not quite. Can it be proven? I don’t think so. But can it be refuted? I don’t think it may be. We can provide the required skepticism.”
Although I want Morris to have been a little more officially daring with this documentary, “Chaos” always makes a captivating watch that will leave you more than a few uncomfortable questions.
“Chaos: The Manson Murders” broadcasts on Netflix on March 7, 2025.
