As the media’s love affair with reality shows and criminals’ quests for notoriety continues, it’s time to revisit the Ground Zero of celebrity-killers, Charles Manson.

Along with assassinations, Vietnam, bad drugs and Altamont, the Manson case not only sounded the death-knell for the optimism of the Sixties, but also seemed to encapsulate all the aforementioned ‘feel-bad’ factors. It would be pointless to give a crash-course in the details of the case, space prohibits and this film isn’t particularly interested in fact anyway.

Billing itself as a “surreal comedy filled with whimsy and camp”, it owes as much (if not more), to the work of John Waters and Rocky Horror as to document­ary and biography.

Perry (Gregory Smith, Ephram Brown from TV’s Everwood), is confused. Should he go to war? Work in a chemical factory? Remain a virgin and marry his repressed sweetheart? Or… fall hopelessly in love with a killer, Leslie (Kristen Hager), the titular Manson girl.

Fun – though confusing – it’s hard to tell whether the film is being gleefully eclectic or if the production just ran out of money, as the narrative is interspersed with news footage of the day and switches between black and white and colour, seemingly at random, within a single sequence. The courtroom scenes are a hoot, however, as Ryan Robbins (Caprica/Battlestar Galactica) plays Charlie as a “boggle-eyed loon” while his girls (and courtroom staff), wear skimpier and skimpier outfits (poss­ibly to represent Perry’s growing sexual frustration?) and the whole show threatens to turn into a tacky musical.

Ironically, although this film is so utterly indebted to the work of John Waters, he has denounced it – on the grounds that the real Leslie Van Houten (now 61) is his friend. Once again, Waters has upped the ante in bad taste.