“LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL” (Film Review)
Let’s face facts: the vacant, cross-eyed stare that lasers out of Charlie Manson mug shots is far more unsettling than any masked stalker or gore effect could ever hope to be. Thus Manson, notorious 1960s hippie prophet, murder-cult leader and Beatles obsessive, has been a reliable go-to bogeyman for many a horror filmmaker.
His image has haunted screens as the subject of a dozen documentaries and fictional retellings over the past 40 years. Like Billy the Kid and John Dillinger, he has become an icon of American crime culture whose story is destined to be told and retold down through the ages. Writer/director Reginald Harkema’s new film LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL (opening today in Canada) takes a fresh approach to the familiar tale by choosing to focus on Leslie Van Houten (played by Kristen Hager), a Manson “family” member caught in a hypnotic spiral of drugs, folk music and random killing excursions.
