The 1969 biker movie Satan’s Sadists was also directed by Adamson while the Manson Family was living at the lot. According to the film’s star, Regina Carrol, the family wore guns and harassed female cast and crew members until Adamson had them thrown off the set. Satan’s Sadists was the last major motion picture filmed at Spahn Movie Ranch until the fire which destroyed the sets in the fall of 1970. But it wasn’t the only film which blurred the lines between the Manson Family and the filmmakers.

Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil, who played Satan in Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother, appeared in a Western-styled softcore porn movie The Ramrodder. Directed by Ed Forsyth and starring Roger Gentry and Kathy Williams, the film also featured Catherine Share, who joined the Manson Family. Beausoleil would meanwhile go on to commit murder at Manson’s behest in the summer of ’69. He’s still in prison where he records music. Share, on the other hand, did not commit murder, although she did try to intimidate a witness in the Charles Manson trial, and after 90 days in jail she was sent to prison for armed robbery. She was then in prison until 1975 where she was released and renounced Manson and disassociated herself from the “Family.” Lena Dunham plays her in the movie.

Brad Pitt plays the stuntman Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. He may have been meting out revenge for real-life stuntman Donald “Shorty” Shea. “Shorty” worked at the ranch while the Manson Family was encamped there. The cops raided Spahn Ranch on Aug. 16, 1969, and Manson blamed Shea. Manson, along with Tex Watson, Bruce Davis, Steve Grogan, Bill Vance, and Larry Bailey hit Shea over the head with a pipe wrench, threw him in the back seat of a car and stabbed him. But not to death, the tough stuntman stayed alert until he was stabbed to death o a hill behind the ranch. His body was found eight years later. It had been cut into nine pieces and buried.

“Shorty” Shea had bit parts in two films shot by  Greg Corarito on the ranch, including The Sadistic Hypnotist (1969), which featured a different kind of lashing. The film followed an S&M cult led by the hypnotic Wicked Wanda, played by Katharine Shubeck in her only IMDb-credited film role. Adamson filmed the whip-smart Western, Lash of Lust (1972) about a man who “hears with his eyes and speaks with his gun” at the ranch, as well as the neo-fascist investigation film Hell’s Bloody Devils (1970), starring Broderick Crawford.

Filming continued at the ranch after the murderous events of August 1969. One More Train to Rob (1971) directed by Andrew V. McLaglen, and starring George Peppard and Diana Muldaur, was filmed at the ranch. The TV series The Secrets of Isis, about an amulet which turns an archaeologist, played by JoAnna Cameron, into the goddess Isis, filmed at the ranch. It should be noted that Peppard is called one of “The Three Georges” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and McLaglen is disparaged as a hack by Kurt Russell’s stuntman in the movie.

read more: A History of Charles Manson in Movies and Pop Culture