Reginald Harkema casts a heady spell of violence in Leslie, My Name Is Evil.

Even amid the oversized litany of abhorrent acts of the 20th century, the Manson Family crime spree stands out as bewilderingly despicable. In Leslie, My Name Is Evil, opening here Friday (May 21), Vancouver-raised filmmaker Reginald Harkema reduces the Sharon Tate murder and subsequent trial to a stylized theatre piece, implicating the surrounding society for a climate that encouraged crazy excess in all directions.

Now based in Toronto, Harkema is a disciple of the Jean-Luc Godard school of fragmented storytelling; he draws you to the tale’s artifice without skimping on the psychology that makes even the most grotesque aspects ring true. Or perhaps they’re only convincing because we know they happened.

In any case, this writer-director is concerned not just with that infamous burst of malevolence but in the mushroom cloud of violence that surrounded it in the late 1960s, with the Vietnam War raging, the U.S. government crushing its own citizens, and silent-majority types seeing Manson as confirmation of what those filthy hippies were up to.

But the initial inspiration supposedly came from a song.

“I brought a stack of records back to Vancouver,” Harkema said in a hotel, visiting his hometown for the film’s local debut. “And I constantly listened to them while I was editing something to help pay off my last movie, Monkey Warfare. This band Pink Mountaintops have a tune called ”˜Leslie’, and the chorus keeps repeating [what sounds like], ”˜My name is Evil.’ ” (The lyrics actually say, “Leslie, my name isn’t Eva”.)

He also stumbled upon a copy of Helter Skelter, the best-selling book by Manson prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi.

“I found a mint first-edition copy at a Value Village in New West,” the tall, bespectacled filmmaker recalled. “I had read it when I was, like, 11, and then only because I was such a Beatles fan. But now I flipped through it and noticed that the hottest Manson chick was this Dutch Christian girl called Leslie Van Houten. Well, I grew up in a Dutch Christian household, and my mom is basically the same age as Leslie Van Houten, and that, plus the Pink Mountaintops song, made me start thinking about ideas of evil and redemption and how my mom could have been a hippie-cult murderess.”

The film depicts the spell its Leslie (Kristen Hager) has on a fictional juror (The Patriot’s Gregory Smith), whose world is rocked by the trial.

“I’m curious to see how the movie is received by people who actually lived through it, because it’s really about the mythology”¦That’s one reason there are no last names in the film. I wanted you to feel like you were witnessing a morality play—or maybe it’s The Manson Family Bedroom Farce.”

Of course, that sort of humour was bound to offend, or at least get lost on many viewers, even on the fest circuit.

“I’m learning that now. For me, it was mainly an experiment in recontextualization. But my friends just shake their heads at my naiveté.”