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Death Scenes 1: Manson
DVD/APPROX. 86 MINS/1989/USA UNRATED
DVD/APPROX. 86 MINS/1989/USA UNRATED
3
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Well to begin with – apart from anything else - the title is misleading. Okay, so you’re a true crime fan, with a penchant for the uber-weird, and you
want to find out some background story on Charlie and the bunch of drug addled nutters and homicidal mentalists he hung around with at the end
of the 60s, right? You see a disc naming itself after this icon of reprehensible, senseless murder, and what do you get? A film where Charlie and
the family aren’t even name-checked until about minute 52, and even then are only on screen for 8 minutes. And with no real examination of why
they did what they did – just some courtroom footage of Tex, some footage of Sadie and Squeaky walking down a hallway escorted by prison
guards, and a whole bunch of rather gruesome photos of the corpses of Sharon Tate, the La Biancas, and the other victims. This is not what I
would call a particularly edifying experience. Z-grade exploitative tat – yes; something for the serious student of true crime – no.
A serious investigation of one of the century’s pivotal crimes this is not. What Death Scenes 1: Manson gives you is a tour of public domain
footage of death and disfigurement. A bunch of totally unrelated images of dead bodies is the name of the game, and while some of it is quite
affecting (the black and white photos of World War One soldiers are truly horrifying), the majority is delivered in a way that is little better than the
truly execrable August Underground films. I found myself being slowly sickened by the whole experience, and for a man for whom there isn’t a
movie invented I can’t take, the utterly exploitative nature of this “film” made this an experience I’d care to forget.
Seriously, this is a film for the kind of person who likes to slow down to watch road accidents – a fitting metaphor given that a substantial part of
this film is given over to US driver education films from the 50s and 60s – films played to high school students showing the real results of speeding,
drink-driving and the like. Just in terms of my personal context, I found these to be an extraordinarily bizarre experience – not just because of the
real gore and blood, but because of the fact that I work with teenagers in my day job, and there is NO way these things could ever be shown in
high schools today without somebody being fired.
What starts out as a linear “documentary” of death in the twentieth century – images of WW1, gangster violence in the 20s, 30s and 40s, WW2,
the 50s, Korean War, the 60s, Vietnam – soon becomes a random assortment of US-centric crime scene photos and accident or murder scene
footage cobbled together by the director into a mish-mash of post-mortem extremism, leap-frogging back and forth between decades as the
makers of the film deemed fit. Much of the footage will be familiar to fans of these kind of Mondo films (Kennedy’s assassination, the Buddhist priest
self-immolating as a protest against the war in Vietnam, the Vietnamese general shooting the VC soldier in the head point-blank, R Budd Dwyer
committing suicide on national TV, and worst of all, Vic Morrow and the two children being slaughtered on the set of the Twilight Zone movie; this is
especially horrible – not only do we get the scene from a range of different angles – the terrible cunts who made this film give us a frame-by-frame
slow motion show of the helicopter blades sawing Morrow and the kids into pieces – well, not so much pieces, as a bloody spray of liquefied body
parts), and the rest should be consigned to some kind of garbage bin, so as never to soil the eyes of any unsuspecting viewer ever again.
A minor element of these films that made me hold them in utter contempt was that they aren’t even numbered in the right order. The first one of
these most egregious offences to the eye ever committed to celluloid, is now the third in the series – and at the start of this one – supposedly the
first in the series – they even discuss how Anton LaVey (the late head of the Church of Satan) narrated their previous effort – how exactly does
that work? Death Scenes Zero? Oh, wait, now I get it – release your most reprehensible piece of filth first, hook in the gullible gore-hound (such as
myself) and then release them in whatever order you feel like.
Some trivia for those interested: Nick Bougas, the director, does some vocal work on an Anton LaVey CD called “The Devil’s Holiday”, and directed
a documentary on LaVey, called “Speak of the Devil”. The music for this film is done by Peter H Gilmore, who is the current head of the Church of
Satan, after LaVey’s death some years ago.
Quite frankly, this film made Faces of Death look like Citizen fuckin’ Kane, and the sooner I can forget the whole experience, the better. Honestly, I’
ve had bowel movements I look back on more fondly.
Extras: Minimal, would be one way of putting it. You can watch a startlingly brief interview with Anton LaVey, which amusingly climaxes with him
sitting at a bank of keyboards a la Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer playing the kind of music that’d make you want to kill yourself
instantly rather than listen to, or you can watch trailers for Death Scenes 1, 2 and 3.
want to find out some background story on Charlie and the bunch of drug addled nutters and homicidal mentalists he hung around with at the end
of the 60s, right? You see a disc naming itself after this icon of reprehensible, senseless murder, and what do you get? A film where Charlie and
the family aren’t even name-checked until about minute 52, and even then are only on screen for 8 minutes. And with no real examination of why
they did what they did – just some courtroom footage of Tex, some footage of Sadie and Squeaky walking down a hallway escorted by prison
guards, and a whole bunch of rather gruesome photos of the corpses of Sharon Tate, the La Biancas, and the other victims. This is not what I
would call a particularly edifying experience. Z-grade exploitative tat – yes; something for the serious student of true crime – no.
A serious investigation of one of the century’s pivotal crimes this is not. What Death Scenes 1: Manson gives you is a tour of public domain
footage of death and disfigurement. A bunch of totally unrelated images of dead bodies is the name of the game, and while some of it is quite
affecting (the black and white photos of World War One soldiers are truly horrifying), the majority is delivered in a way that is little better than the
truly execrable August Underground films. I found myself being slowly sickened by the whole experience, and for a man for whom there isn’t a
movie invented I can’t take, the utterly exploitative nature of this “film” made this an experience I’d care to forget.
Seriously, this is a film for the kind of person who likes to slow down to watch road accidents – a fitting metaphor given that a substantial part of
this film is given over to US driver education films from the 50s and 60s – films played to high school students showing the real results of speeding,
drink-driving and the like. Just in terms of my personal context, I found these to be an extraordinarily bizarre experience – not just because of the
real gore and blood, but because of the fact that I work with teenagers in my day job, and there is NO way these things could ever be shown in
high schools today without somebody being fired.
What starts out as a linear “documentary” of death in the twentieth century – images of WW1, gangster violence in the 20s, 30s and 40s, WW2,
the 50s, Korean War, the 60s, Vietnam – soon becomes a random assortment of US-centric crime scene photos and accident or murder scene
footage cobbled together by the director into a mish-mash of post-mortem extremism, leap-frogging back and forth between decades as the
makers of the film deemed fit. Much of the footage will be familiar to fans of these kind of Mondo films (Kennedy’s assassination, the Buddhist priest
self-immolating as a protest against the war in Vietnam, the Vietnamese general shooting the VC soldier in the head point-blank, R Budd Dwyer
committing suicide on national TV, and worst of all, Vic Morrow and the two children being slaughtered on the set of the Twilight Zone movie; this is
especially horrible – not only do we get the scene from a range of different angles – the terrible cunts who made this film give us a frame-by-frame
slow motion show of the helicopter blades sawing Morrow and the kids into pieces – well, not so much pieces, as a bloody spray of liquefied body
parts), and the rest should be consigned to some kind of garbage bin, so as never to soil the eyes of any unsuspecting viewer ever again.
A minor element of these films that made me hold them in utter contempt was that they aren’t even numbered in the right order. The first one of
these most egregious offences to the eye ever committed to celluloid, is now the third in the series – and at the start of this one – supposedly the
first in the series – they even discuss how Anton LaVey (the late head of the Church of Satan) narrated their previous effort – how exactly does
that work? Death Scenes Zero? Oh, wait, now I get it – release your most reprehensible piece of filth first, hook in the gullible gore-hound (such as
myself) and then release them in whatever order you feel like.
Some trivia for those interested: Nick Bougas, the director, does some vocal work on an Anton LaVey CD called “The Devil’s Holiday”, and directed
a documentary on LaVey, called “Speak of the Devil”. The music for this film is done by Peter H Gilmore, who is the current head of the Church of
Satan, after LaVey’s death some years ago.
Quite frankly, this film made Faces of Death look like Citizen fuckin’ Kane, and the sooner I can forget the whole experience, the better. Honestly, I’
ve had bowel movements I look back on more fondly.
Extras: Minimal, would be one way of putting it. You can watch a startlingly brief interview with Anton LaVey, which amusingly climaxes with him
sitting at a bank of keyboards a la Keith Emerson of Emerson, Lake and Palmer playing the kind of music that’d make you want to kill yourself
instantly rather than listen to, or you can watch trailers for Death Scenes 1, 2 and 3.
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