‘CHAOS: The Manson Murders’ Review: Errol Morris tries to magnify conspiracy, gives us tangents in new Charles Manson doc

TV-MA, 96 minutes
Director: Errol Morris
Featuring: Tom O’Neill, Stephen Kay, Errol Morris, Bobby Beausoleil (voice)

At some point mining for new angles and information has to reach an end with Charles Manson, right? After dozens and dozens of documentaries, dramatizations, books, and TV specials what more can be said, shown, or sensationalized? Apparently, famed documentarian Errol Morris (The Thin Blue Line) figured mining the Manson murders had not reached rock bottom, so if anyone were to hit the last bit of pay dirt he should be the one.

I was gung ho, skeptical and curious to see if CHAOS: The Manson Murders could divulge anything new about Charles Manson and his brainwashed acolytes. This Morris documentary feels like flipping through an abridged coffee table book with archive photos, vintage soundbites from Manson and his “family,” stylized printouts with highlighted text, and psychedelic imagery to match the time and temperament of the hippy, free-love drug culture of the 1960s. It’s a crime-art project; Morris presenting a blood-red veneer as he recapitulates what is already well established about Charles Manson and the Tate–LaBianca murders.

Morris builds the history of Manson to an interview with Tom O’Neill, the author of CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, to explore a conspiracy theory. How the Family could have been brainwashed into performing the killings. Did Manson, a street hustler who violated parole by traveling up to San Francisco, exploit strung-out youths and make himself into a cult leader? Yes, he did. But O’Neill conjures a theory based on hunches that ties the Manson murders to the CIA’s dark, clandestine program known as MKUltra.

Launching in 1953 – the same year the CIA helped overthrow a democratically elected Iranian government – and lasting twenty years, MKUltra wanted to identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. They also wanted to see if LSD could be used to program people into assassins. If you’ve seen John Frankenheimer’s classic thriller The Manchurian Candidate, to which Morris references a few times, you can imagine an overlap. But that’s the problem. It’s all conjecture.

As Morris goes through the timeline of events with Manson in San Francisco and settling into the Haight-Ashbury scene where he found his followers, we also see the CIA setting up shop with Dr. Louis “Jolly” West, a psychiatrist who was part of the MKULtra program and who recruited his own hippie subjects. O’Neill never found any evidence that placed Manson and West together (records of the program were destroyed in 1973), but the time and setting was as good a hunch as any to make the suggestion.

Even though the CHAOS novel is a dense work topping 500 pages, CHAOS the documentary is a slim 90 minutes with mostly tangents that explore other facets about Manson. Like how he was an aspiring musician and almost had a recording contract thanks to his friendship with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys. Music producer Terry Melcher (son of actress Doris Day) actually came up to Spahn Ranch to audition Manson but ultimately rebuffed him. The rejection was a key motivator for the murders. The first murders took place at the home Manson thought was Melcher’s address.

CHAOS is too conspiratorial and not concrete enough for a recommendation. Not even generational boomers who grew up on the Manson murders will glean anything new. Such a shame, considering Errol Morris is responsible for arguably the greatest true crime documentary ever made. The Thin Blue Line was profound. CHAOS is just postulating. No theory tested, no conclusions reached.

Grade: C-