CBS Manson film doesn't offer much

The actor playing Manson isn't very convincing.
By BILL DEYOUNG
SCRIPPS HOWARD
What does CBS' "Helter Skelter," airing tonight, have that the network's 1976 "Helter Skelter" didn't?
It has wild, MTV-style camerawork, brief partial nudity, better editing and sound effects and tells the story from a slightly different perspective.
That's about it.
What this new, three-hour film doesn't have is Steve Railsback, whose portrayal of cult killer Charles Manson was scary enough to make you forget everybody else's painfully wooden acting.
Instead, we get Jeremy Davies ("Saving Private Ryan"), performing the most laughable caricature of a bearded, brainwashing loser in hippie garb.
"I'm not a hippie," Davies' Manson says from behind bars, during one of many nonsensical spiels. "I hate hippies."
Of course, when actress Sharon Tate and her friends were murdered by Manson followers in 1969, the world took one look at the dirty, disheveled crew and assumed they were drugged-out hippies.
The truth was a lot harder to handle.
Life in the family
This made-for-TV movie goes to great lengths to show life at Spahn Ranch, where Manson -- whose "family" believed he was Jesus Christ -- held court on everything from drugs, theft and death to his favorite subject, a war between the races.
Unlike the 1976 version, this "Helter Skelter" -- also based on prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi's book -- spends a lot of time on the days before the murders. A frustrated songwriter and musician, Manson can't get producer Terry Melcher and Beach Boy Dennis Wilson to take him seriously.
He sends his people to Melcher's house with instructions to "kill them all," but Melcher has moved out. Sharon Tate has moved in.
The horrific crimes are seen in flashback, and nothing too graphic is shown, thank goodness, but it's hard to get a read on Davies' Manson. He's such a babbling downer -- a cross between Val Kilmer in "The Doors" and Ted Neeley in "Jesus Christ Superstar" -- why any of the gullible teens in his care would be drawn to him is baffling.
Doesn't have much
Davies doesn't have Manson's spooky stare (or even Railsback's); and his scenes with Bugliosi (played with minimal impact by Bruno Kirby) are oddly cordial and nonconfrontational.
Instead, the focus is on follower Linda Kasabian, played by independent film queen Clea DuVall. A guilt-ridden Kasabian left the family after the murders; DuVall, with her square jaw and flinty eyes, looks as if she was never really there in the first place.