36 FT383occultly marvellous” across the decade.^3 By
1969 and the start of the 1970s, this thinking
had spread out from the counterculture,
takenroot within the culture at large and
had, in certain quarters,veeredverymuch
towards the dark side.The Tate-LaBianca
murders crystallised this mood.When
Manson’s wild-eyed, intenseface appeared
on the cover ofLifein December 1969 under
the banner ‘The Love and Terror Cult’ it
came to symbolise an inversion of thevalues
which had been associated with ‘the Sixties’
and itsyouth-led counterculture: peace,
pacifism and harmony. When he entered
Cielo Drive, ‘Tex’ Watson is purported to
have told a startledFrykowski that hewas
there to do “the Devil’s business”.For the
readers ofLife, Mansonwas the Devil-in-
chief, the Prince of Darkness who set the
diabolical plot into action and loomed
ominouslyover the late Sixties. He appeared
to have descended on theworld like the
portentous enemy of the decade: anevil
spirit of the age that embodied all its
anxieties andworked for its downfall.^4
The crimes of the MansonFamilywere
indeed atrocious, but what HunterS
Thompson called the “bad craziness” of the
late 1960s and early 1970swas not limited to
their assault on Cielo Drive. In conducting
“the Devil’s business”, Mansonwas wilfully
leading theFamily towards a dark cloud,a cloud thatwas alreadyforming as the
decade came to an end, and which hovered
particularly close to RomanPolanski.THE ROSEMARY’SBABY CURSE
In 1969Polanskiwas best knownfor the
Satanic horrorfi lmRosemary’s Baby(1968).
He had previously madeThe FearlessVampire
Killers(1967), during thefi lming of which
he had met SharonTate.Vampire Killersdid
not lack the bleakness of earlierPolanski
features likeRepulsion(1965), but itwas
Rosemary’s Babythat – in a thoroughly
domestic manner – took his vision to
apocalyptic levels. Based on Ira Levin’s 1967
novel and featuring MiaFarrow as theyoung
NewYorker RosemaryWoodhouse, thefi lm
charts her nightmarish pregnancy in the
shadow of an occult conspiracy emanating
from the city’s Bramford Building.The
fi lm takes placeveryspecifically between
1965 and 1966 withPolanski taking care to
bookend the plot with two actualevents:
the visit ofPope Paul VI to NewYork on 4
October 1965 and the publication ofTime
magazine’s controversial cover feature ‘Is
God Dead?’ on 8April 1966. Rosemary’s
pregnancy and theeventual birth of Satan’s
son on Earth thus take place between
the fi rst papal visit to America and the
widespread circulation of an article
detailing the struggle of theologians tokeepreligiousworship relevant in the modern
world. It is as ifreligious authorityweakens
as the birth approaches. Unsurprisingly, the
fi lm generated criticism from the Christian
right andPolanskiwas also mindful of
its pull in the other direction.When he
was interviewed by the LAPD in the
aftermath ofTate’s death, he suggested that
‘witchcraft’ mightwell have been a motive
in themurder. Polanski thought he could
have been the target of agroupfi xated on
the occult themes of thefi lm.
The alleged ‘curse’ ofRosemary’s Baby
further cemented this link between cinema
and Satan.William Castle, thefi lm’s
producer and Hollywood’sgrand master of
lurid and ‘outlandish’ publicity, claimed
that soon after the completion of thefi lm, a
series of tragedies affected those involved.
There wassometruth in this. InApril 1969
composer KrysztofKomeda succumbed to
an aneurysmfollowing a head injury he
received in late 1968. At the same time,
Castlewas hospitalised with kidneyfailure.
Soon after, he heardabout Tate’s murder and
went on to claim that the entire production
ofRosemary’s Babyand its aftermathwas
“controlledby some unexplainableforce”.
Polanskiwas more sceptical.Witchcraft (in
someform) might have been a motivating
factor in the deaths at Cielo Drive, but he
did not admit to a belief in it. Eitherway,ABOVE:17 August 1969: The Dutch-born clairvoyant and psyhcic detectivePeter Hurkos studies the bloodstained living room of 10050 Cielo Drive, Beverly Hills,
where pregnant actress SharonTate and others had been found brutally murdered by Manson Family members a week earlier.JULIAN
WA
SSER / THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES