Helter Skelter is a pretty good retelling of the histories of Charles Manson, his cult/family and the murders that made them famous. Mostly the archival footage mixed with interviews is presented in a way that coherently tells viewers how Charles Manson became who he was and how he managed to collect devotees that would one day commit murder for him. The documentary also does a good job of creating a sense of place. While watching I felt like I was transported back in time to stiflingly religious West Virginia, dopey and disjointed San Francisco during the summer of love, and contradictory Los Angeles which was both the glitzy entertainment capital of America and a smoggy tinderbox of racial anger.
But I had two significant issues with the series. The first was with the editing. Occasionally the presentation could be clunky where the viewer is taken out of the story because the choices made were ill-advised or the pacing was off. This is a minor quibble. But I have a bigger issue with the repetition of sections. Three different stories that I remember (the killing of Gary Hinman, moving into Dennis Wilsons house, and the first meeting of Charlie and Stephanie Schram) are repeated in different episodes. If you need to remind the viewer of something to maintain narrative flow you do it quickly and if you can without repeating yourself verbatim. This series makes the odd choice of showing large sections of identical video and audio during different episodes which gives the presentation an amateurish feel.
My biggest issue, though, is with the marketing of the series. The tagline "You think you know the story... you don't" and placing "An American Myth" under the title gives one the impression that the documentary is going to give an alternate motive for the murders different from the commonly known Helter Skelter race war narrative. But it doesn't. Two people in the show say they don't believe that Helter Skelter was the motive for the murders. But they don't say why or what they believe the true motive to be. The series gives information that could possibly be alternate motives but they don't take a stand on it. Besides this information isn't new. I'm a very casual follower of the case and I had heard that the more famous murders could have been done to help create doubt to Bobby Beausoleil's guilt in the Gary Hinman murder. The series also points out that the murder sights were the previous homes (or at least very near them) of former Manson acquaintances. But it doesn't give any meaning to this knowledge. So despite its bold claims it doesn't present a different point of view to the commonly known narrative of the case. It instead competently retells the same story that has been told many times before.
But I had two significant issues with the series. The first was with the editing. Occasionally the presentation could be clunky where the viewer is taken out of the story because the choices made were ill-advised or the pacing was off. This is a minor quibble. But I have a bigger issue with the repetition of sections. Three different stories that I remember (the killing of Gary Hinman, moving into Dennis Wilsons house, and the first meeting of Charlie and Stephanie Schram) are repeated in different episodes. If you need to remind the viewer of something to maintain narrative flow you do it quickly and if you can without repeating yourself verbatim. This series makes the odd choice of showing large sections of identical video and audio during different episodes which gives the presentation an amateurish feel.
My biggest issue, though, is with the marketing of the series. The tagline "You think you know the story... you don't" and placing "An American Myth" under the title gives one the impression that the documentary is going to give an alternate motive for the murders different from the commonly known Helter Skelter race war narrative. But it doesn't. Two people in the show say they don't believe that Helter Skelter was the motive for the murders. But they don't say why or what they believe the true motive to be. The series gives information that could possibly be alternate motives but they don't take a stand on it. Besides this information isn't new. I'm a very casual follower of the case and I had heard that the more famous murders could have been done to help create doubt to Bobby Beausoleil's guilt in the Gary Hinman murder. The series also points out that the murder sights were the previous homes (or at least very near them) of former Manson acquaintances. But it doesn't give any meaning to this knowledge. So despite its bold claims it doesn't present a different point of view to the commonly known narrative of the case. It instead competently retells the same story that has been told many times before.