CHAOS: The Manson Murders - A Documentary Review: Errol Morris' and Netflix's Anti-Conspiracy Agenda

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

MY Recommendation: SKIP IT. Errol Morris makes a mess of his look into the Manson murders by never daring to search for truth. An intellectually incurious and vapid film that commits journalistic malpractice.

CHAOS: The Manson Murders is a new Netflix documentary from acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris based on Tom O’Neill’s expansive book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties.

Tom O’Neill was a magazine reporter given an assignment in 1999 to do write up on how the infamous Manson murders of 1969 changed Hollywood. O’Neill dove into the story so deeply that he was neck-deep in all things Manson for twenty years, and finally published his findings in 2019 in his epic Tome CHOAS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History the Sixties.

What O’Neill uncovered in his investigation is much too extensive and expansive to flesh out here, and most definitely too expansive to be given its proper due in a documentary that runs a measly 90 minutes, which CHAOS: The Manson Murders does.

Errol Morris is one of the more respected documentarians of our time but he is shockingly off his game and way out of his depth on CHAOS: The Manson Murders, which feels like a cheap and tawdry episode of Dateline rather than a serious documentary.

This flimsy and foolish documentary is so vapid and vacuous as to be guilty of documentary malpractice. The documentary ignores the majority of O’Neill’s work, obfuscates much of the truth he revealed, and instead of diving deeper or at least adequately stating O’Neill’s thesis and argument, it spends it’s time rehashing frivolities and pondering inane questions like “why are people so interested in these murders?”

For example, one of the many things O’Neill proves in his book is the corruption and moral and ethical bankruptcy of famed Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi – who also wrote the famous book on the case Helter Skelter. Morris doesn’t even mention Bugliosi until the final twenty minutes of his documentary, and never gets into any of the scandals that O’Neill uncovered and experienced first-hand in his reporting.

The biggest bombshell O’Neill uncovered in his book is the connection between Charles Manson and villainous government psychiatrist, Jolly West. Jolly West, for those who do not know, was a psychiatrist for the CIA who headed up MKULTRA, the CIA’s mind-control program. West seems to have been connected to many curious and nefarious events throughout his time as a CIA psychiatrist.

For example, when Jack Ruby was sitting in a Dallas prison cell waiting to be interviewed by the Warren Commission, he got a special visit from Jolly West, who spent the day with him and at the end of that day, lo and behold, Jack Ruby had lost his mind and West recommended he be institutionalized. How interesting.

Jolly West was in San Francisco working out of a free clinic in Haight-Ashbury during the “Summer of Love”, which also happened to coincide with the implementation of CIA’s CHAOS program - which was designed to co-opt and destroy the anti-war movement through the introduction of drugs and agent provocateurs. The FBI program COINTELPRO was designed to do the same thing and started at the same time.

Well, you’ll never guess who was in the Haight-Ashbury clinic of Jolly West once a week for a year during the late sixties…you guessed it…Charles Manson. Manson brought his girls in there for medical treatment and he himself met his parole officer in the same building. The same parole officer who, time after time, refused to have Manson’s parole revoked when he got arrested multiple times in San Francisco…and who even wrote letters urging judges not to imprison him. Curious.

Errol Morris shows little to no interest in the Jolly West intrigue, instead just shrugging his shoulders at the notion that the CIA was really up to no good with its MKULTRA program. Morris even says that ‘yes, the CIA wanted to do bad things, but it never succeeded’. Hmmm.

O’Neill then chimes in and corrects Morris by stating that there is documented proof (found in a document the CIA covered up for half as century) from Jolly West himself, who admitted in a CIA memo that he had mastered the ability to create a “Manchurian candidate” type of situation by implanting false memories in patients through hypnosis and various drugs. Morris replies to this information in shockingly flaccid fashion when he retorts, “well, Jolly West could be lying”.

This exchange perfectly encapsulates why Errol Morris is so out of his depth with this story. He is repulsed by “conspiracy theories” of any kind and prefers to embrace mundane explanations, even when the mundane explanation isn’t adequate and the “conspiracy theory” is well documented. This approach shows that Morris isn’t interested in truth but instead in his own respectability amongst the corporate media and “people who matter”.

Morris’ cowardice and journalistic impotence reminded me of a podcast I listened to a few years back about the RFK assassination titled The RFK Tapes. This podcast got a lot of traction at the time as the host of it did a deep dive into the conspiracy surrounding the RFK assassination. And just as the evidence had piled up to a tipping point in favor of conspiracy, the podcast host had a very abrupt change of heart and instead not only denounced the idea of a conspiracy surrounding the RFK assassination, he stopped investigating it at all. His reason for this change of heart (notice I say heart and not mind), was because, in essence, he felt bad people like Alex Jones believed in conspiracy theories and propagated them so he didn’t want to be a conspiracy theorist. So, in order to protect delicate sensibilities of the Sandy Hook families – which has no connection or correlation to the RFK assassination, this podcaster simply turns off his mind and turns his back on his research and his research partner.

This podcaster didn’t discover something that proved the conspiracy theory wrong, quite the opposite…but he did realize that he didn’t love the Truth more than he loves his reputation amongst the corporate media. This podcaster played it off as some sort of moral and ethical act of courage to do so…but it was an act of intellectual cowardice.

Errol Morris just did the same thing with the CIA’s connection with the Manson murders and Tom O’Neill’s expansive research. Morris has such an intense case of cognitive dissonance regarding O’Neill’s thesis he chooses to ignore the lion’s share of his research and expertise and instead elevates and gives the last word to Bobby Beausoliel, a member of Manson’s ‘family’ who was arrested for murder before the Tate-LaBianca murders occurred.

Beausoliel met Manson in Los Angeles about a year before the murders, and he was never in San Francisco with Manson and the family, and he has no first-hand experience about what happened regarding the Tate-LaBianca murders, as he had been on the run for ten days prior to the murders and arrested the day before they occurred. In other words, Beausoliel, who has been in prison since his arrest in 1969, is incapable of having a big picture view of Manson and who may or may not have “created” him and potentially “directed” him. But Morris still lets Beausoliel get the last word of the film by saying essentially, ‘people make too much about this stuff, the truth is simple…Occam’s Razor rules the day – Manson was just a bad dude out for revenge.’

Ultimately, Errol Morris is one of those intellectuals who can’t get out of his own way and is so crippled by his slavish devotion to institutionalism, establishment and his paymasters in the corporate media (like Netflix), that he is incapable of seeing what is right in front of his nose.

I know many people of a similar ilk, who are incredibly smart and successful but are incapable of thinking critically or of seeing what is obvious to those that have eyes to see and the courage to actually look.

Netflix has adamantly embraced the establishment’s anti-conspiracy position in its documentaries. Besides this Manson documentary there was The Octopus Murders documentary series which investigated the Danny Casolaro story and despite all of the evidence to the contrary, came to the conclusion that well there is no conspiracy because conspiracies are bad. Sigh.

I really, really wish CHAOS: The Manson Murders was good, or at least did an adequate job of presenting Tom O’Neill’s work, but it is really bad and it doesn’t do the least bit of justice to O’Neill’s work. This documentary is, quite frankly, an absolute travesty.

My recommendation for anyone, Manson aficionados or newbies alike, is to pick up O’Neill’s book CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, and read it.

The book isn’t perfect, in fact it can be downright frustrating because O’Neill refuses to speculate or project, but instead sticks to what he can prove. The book tells a fascinating tale and takes you down many tantalizing roads of inquiry but repeatedly comes up just short because the case is so old and cold and so many people associated with it are no longer alive.

But it is O’Neill’s journalistic restraint that gives the book credibility. This is not some wild-eyed exercise in wish fulfillment, this is a serious examination of one of the most curious cases in American juris prudence and cultural history, where the CIA, FBI, LAPD, LA County Sheriff’s Department, Bureau of Prisons, and the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, all behaved in the most bizarre of ways in order to enable Manson before his arrest, and pervert a free and fair trial after it.

If you’re interested in the reality of the world that you inherited and currently inhabit…go read Tom O’Neill’s CHAOS: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties, and skip entirely Errol Morris’ mendacious, deceptive, and deceitful documentary CHAOS: The Manson Murders, for it is a total waste of time.

©2025

Judas and the Black Messiah: A Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. A flawed but fantastic film that vibrates with a formidable vitality that also features two Oscar-worthy performances by Daniel Kaluuya and LaKieth Stanfield.

Judas and the Black Messiah, which opened in theatres and on the streaming service HBO Max on February 12th, recounts the true story of the betrayal of Fred Hampton, the charismatic chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers, by Bill O’Neal, an FBI informant.

The flawed but fantastic film, written and directed by Shaka King, features a fascinating story and scintillating performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as O’Neal, which makes it among the very best movies of this thus far cinematically calamitous year.

I have never been much impressed by Daniel Kaluuya as an actor. I thought Get Out was ridiculously overrated and thought his performance in it was too. But as Fred Hampton, Kaluuya utterly disappears into the role and creates as charismatic and compelling a character as has graced screens all year. Kaluuya’s Hampton vibrates with a natural magnetism and intensity that is glorious to behold.

As great as Kaluuya is, and he is great, LaKieth Stanfield actually has the harder job and does equally outstanding work. O’Neal is a tortured and tormented soul, and Stanfield masterfully shows us all his shades. Stanfield’s subtle, complex and detailed work is most definitely Oscar-worthy, and is a testament to his impressive skill and craftsmanship.

Other performances don’t fare quite as well as Kaluuhya and Stanfield though. Jesse Plemons, an excellent actor, does the best he can with a terribly under written role as an FBI agent, and Martin Sheen, also an excellent actor, is so dreadful as J. Edgar Hoover it is like he’s acting in a different, and much worse, movie.

The biggest issue with the film is that its secondary narratives, one which involves Hoover and the other involves Hampton’s girlfriend Deborah Johnson, lack a dramatic cohesion and power, and they distract from the main story and scuttle much needed momentum. The Hoover angle is distractingly cartoonish and the love story between Hampton and Johnson is uncomfortably lifeless, as Dominique Fishback is, to put it mildly, underwhelming in the role of Johnson.

Other issues with the film are that Shaka King’s direction was not quite as deft as I would have preferred. The script and the editing also could have been a bit tighter, but with that said, the film definitely has an undeniable energy to it and pulsates with a power that is impressive.

One final issue was the sound mixing. I watched the movie on HBO Max and the sound mix was utterly abysmal. Much of the dialogue, Daniel Kaluuya’s most of all, got lost under the music in the mix. This could be a function of HBO Max, which unfortunately is a horrible technical streaming service, or it could be I am going deaf, or it could be the sound mixing was atrocious…who knows…but it was irritating.

Predictably, most critics are using the film to connect the more recent Black Lives Matter movement with the revolutionary Black Panther movement of the 1960’s spotlighted in the film.

This is an intellectually egregious and mind-numbingly vacuous interpretation of the movie and its narrative.

The film isn’t about our current manufactured myopia regarding race, it’s about power and the great lengths those with it will go to subjugate those without it and maintain the status quo.

Infamous FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, embarrassingly portrayed in the movie by Martin Sheen in an obscenely amateurish prosthetic nose, deemed the Black Panthers “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” for among other reasons because their free breakfast program for kids wasn’t just for black kids but for all kids.

In response Hoover unleashed COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program) and its dirty tactics on the Black Panthers just as he had done previously to Malcolm X and Martin Luther King and other leftists.

As highlighted in the film, the Black Panthers/Hampton were seen as direct threats to the power structure of the U.S. because they worked to bring all poor and working class people together, be they black, Native American, Latino and even Confederate flag-waving whites, against a common enemy, the ruling class, which subjugated and abused them.

Hampton, MLK and Malcolm X weren’t targeted by COINTELPRO’s massive surveillance and infiltration operation and ultimately assassinated under extremely suspicious circumstances because they were standing up just for black people, but because they were working to bring all peoples together to fight against the corrupt and criminal political power exploiting poor and working class in America and across the globe.

In comparison to the towering revolutionaries of Hampton, King and Malcolm X, Black Lives Matter are shameless courtesans to the establishment.

The FBI obviously don’t see BLM as a threat, hell it is such a collection of useful idiots the feds probably started it in the first place. The power structure’s greatest fear is that poor and working class black and white people will stop directing their anger at each other and start directing it at Washington, Silicon Valley and Wall Street. BLM is a critical tool to thwart that impulse and keep the proletariat separated by race…conveniently divided and conquered.

This is how something as innocuous as “All Lives Matter” is transformed into a racial slur instead of a rousing rallying cry. BLM gives away its establishment protection game by so aggressively making enemies out of potential allies, proving they’d rather separate people than bring them together for a clear common cause – stopping police brutality.

There are other signs that BLM is the establishment’s controlled opposition.

For example, when a protest by QAnon clowns at the capitol building turned riot it was immediately labeled an “insurrection” and false stories about it were propagated throughout the mainstream media and the feds hunted down the perpetrators, but these same feds and media supported the BLM “mostly peaceful protests” that attacked police stations and government buildings and took over portions of major cities like Portland and Seattle and turned other cities into looted, chaotic, burning madhouses for months.

Another example is highlighted in the film when Hampton belittles the idea of a school name change as some kind of substantial victory. BLM specializes in this sort of self-righteous symbolism, empty sloganeering (Defund the Police!) and toothless grandstanding that intentionally doesn’t address the actual conditions under which poor people suffer. It is all style over substance, as BLM would rather bring down statues than hunger, homelessness or homicide rates.

What makes Judas and the Black Messiah so poignantly tragic is that it shows that the FBI, which the left now adores, have always been the frontline workers for American fascism and their victory over genuine dissent has been spectacular.

This is why we now have vapid, race-hustling racial grievance grifters like Al Sharpton instead of intellectual giants like Malcolm X and MLK. And why we got the “hope and change” charlatanry of Barack Obama, a maintenance man for the status quo who dutifully bails out Wall Street while Main Street crumbles, instead of the revolutionary Fred Hampton. And why we are fed the lap dog of Black Lives Matter play-acting at defiance while being whole-heartedly embraced by the corporate and political power structure, instead of the bulldog of the Black Panthers putting genuine fear into the establishment.

The Black Lives Matter contingent think they’re Fred Hampton, but they’re frauds, phonies, shills and sellouts, just like Bill O’Neal. And that’s why I recommend Judas and the Black Messiah…not just for the film’s cinematic dynamism or the standout performances of Kaluuya and Stanfield but because it rightfully exposes those bourgeois BLM bullshitters.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021