11. Charles Manson – The Strangers
The Strangers was written and directed by Bryan Bertino. The movie, which was released in 2008, starred Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman as a couple who are attacked in their summer home by three intruders. The opening of the movie announces that it is “inspired by true events”. Bertino said his inspiration for the script was a series of break-ins in his own childhood neighbourhood when he was growing up and also the Manson killings.
In 1968, the wife of movie director Roman Polanski, Sharon Tate, was 26-years-old and eight months pregnant when she was murdered at home. Members of the Charles Manson ‘family’ broke into Tate’s house then tied together her and four friends. They were then stabbed multiple times and the word “pig” had been painted in their blood across the walls of the house. Like The Strangers they were unable to get help because the main electricity and phone lines had been cut.
In November 1969, the murder was finally solved after Manson family member Susan Atkins was overheard boasting to an inmate that she was the one who had killed Sharon Tate. Atkins was then offered immunity from death row if she gave up the names of the others who assisted in the murders. She accepted the offer and named her accomplices as Charles Manson, Charles Watson, Patricia Krenwinkel and Los Feliz.
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