Guest blogger Victoria Waghorn was treated to an advance viewing of Leslie, My Name is Evil, which has its Australian premiere at the Festival on Saturday. Here are her thoughts on the film...
There’s a hybristophile in all of us waiting for the right social triggers to release our inner beast...
Reginald Harkema’s much anticipated film, Leslie, My Name is Evil investigates this premise via real life character Leslie van Houten known as Lulu by her friends in the family. The Manson Family that is. Although uncharacteristically Charlie, himself never deigned to give her a pet name.
John Waters slammed it without seeing it which has to be a red flag for those who adore offending camp sensibilities. In retrospective horror he has gone to the lengths of apologising for his infamous comic references in his own past films to the related murders citing irresponsibility in the name of shock value. And that's what this film potentially does. With equal measures of less and more subtlety than some of Water’s notorious graphic asshole acrobatics and canine faecal sampling [that’s eating dog shit for the uninitiated] to name a few.
Leslie, a lost disenchanted girl at nineteen teetering on the status quo borderline is arguably seduced by the dark side in a polarized world of 1950s artificial Christianized sensibilities versus the freedom offered by dropping out and drifting into the sexual revolution. Today, 40 years on she is still incarcerated for her part in the laBianca slayings, conducted when she was in the twilight teen years desperately trying to prove her merit to the all powerful Manson who constantly overlooked her. A wayward princess ironically trying to fit in via the classic gang initiation rite.
A visually juxtaposed film effectively mixing iconic video and audio stock footage with new produces an exaggerated stylized Lichtestein larger than life caricature effect loosely based on the Charles Manson trials focussing on Leslie, one time cheerleader, prom queen then murdering nymphomaniacal acolyte. A snapshot of her journey and the representation of worlds colliding as she luridly exploits her sexuality and forces one frustrated juror to question his morality in the face of hypocritical demonization.
Despite the camp OTT delivery this film is much more social satire than schlocky pulp but it’s happy to flippantly traverse both worlds. It does ask important questions and raises problematic Hobbes-like contextual comparisons.
Who does have license to kill, in a world where right wing moral crusaders under Nixon’s leadership espouse the mass murder in Vietnam and the protection of the righteous white path? If the nature of man is the nature of war [in search of peace] when is murder wrong when its being publically pimped as socially, politically, and religiously acceptable. When is a person a gook and not a pig?
Leslie, My Name Is Evil has its Australian premiere at Dendy Newtown Saturday 7th August at 6:30pm, followed by the Fight The Power! Party.