As the title suggests, it focuses almost solely on the famous murders in the Tate house - interspersed with flashes of the preliminary court hearings and flash-backs to life on Spahn Ranch. These scenes at the ranch have an authentic kind of feel - due to a mixture of stuff (supposedly) being shot on the actual location and the film's own low-budgetness that works in it's favor... the actors all look and act like lost kids (although all are much better looking than the majority of the real Family members). The "documentary" footage the film purports to have seems isolated to one scene - a pretty good one, though: the hippie-rock-jam in the desert.. a real far-out scene, man... It's good and some of the Family actors wander in and out of it to connect it to the rest of the film. But that's it as far as documentary footage goes. The settings, however, have authenticity and a sense of place that give a good, if limited, glimpse into the L.A. of the time. The look of the film, in general, is really inspired - beautifully shot with many creative choices that, sometimes, get a little TOO arty... but, for such a seemingly low-budget movie - it does have a really polished look. (And a great soundtrack.. well scored and with good period-rock - including Manson's own recording of "Mechanical Man"...) It does, however, have some major flaws - the hardest to get past being the complete lack of characterizations... not one person has a personality. No one is developed - not even Charlie. This leaves us with a film we can only look at - there is no one to feel for - even the victims are only that: bodies that get victimized. In a way, it's interesting - we don't need or want to feel a human connection to these killers - but, by stripping all human-ness from everyone all we can do is watch. There's very little to FEEL, here - save a creepiness in the playing out of the murder scene. It is brutal and flatly played - and, maybe, that was part of the point in the film... it does have a strangely haunting quality to it. There's the real-ness of the settings and Family group, the disquieting night drives up the canyon - headlights on a dirt road - and the bleak, almost real-time playing out of the murders, themselves - that linger after it's over. Also, the unfamiliarity with any of the actors - none of whom seem to have done any thing other than this - give it an even creepier, too-real quality. There's a feeling that the filmmakers were trying to show a kind of "facts as they're known" at a time very close to the actual events - when not all the facts were really known. This adherence to what, supposedly, happened; combined with it's lack of characterization and lack of scope outside of just the night of the murders - leave the film somewhat one dimensional and, ultimately, drains it's emotional impact.
Review of The Other Side of Madness
