Address Los Angeles, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, explores the lesser-to-unknown corners of LA: be it an address, an artist, or a fleeting thought.
LIFE Magazine laid them out like a high school yearbook. 242 young men, “One Week’s Dead.” “The numbers of the dead [from May 28-June 3, 1969] are average for any seven-day period during this stage of the war.”
Back home in America, a savage biker gang by the name of The Satans are busy terrorizing the deserts of California, raping and murdering, taking what and whom they want. It’s “the most vicious & violent film of the decade,” a “wild rebellion,” and “wild beyond belief.” If the cover of LIFE, the face of a single one of those 242 soldiers, is too heavy, the film Satan’s Sadists is having it’s second world-premiere in Montgomery, Alabama, at the Jet Drive-In, June 7th, 1969.
Out in California, Sidewalk Productions is on the front cover of that morning’s Billboard magazine, heralding a music production agreement with five major labels, as well as the soundtrack and scoring for a number of upcoming films. Only in passing, and incorrectly named, is their work on “The Satans” mentioned.
25 miles northwest of their offices, at 23000 Santa Susana Pass in the town of Chatsworth, on the near-derelict ranch where the film had been shot only a few months prior, a maniacal and sadistic man has transfixed a small band of people swept up in the drugs and mystical nature of 1969. They’d loitered around the set, walking around or watching the filming with a glazed stare. The father of this family fixed a couple of dune-buggies for the film. His follower’s devotion to him is absolute.
15 hours ahead, into the morning hours of Sunday, June 8th, 1969, the singer of the theme song to Satan’s Sadists is in Vietnam. He's cut his tracks with the people at Sidewalk — his old friend Harley Hatcher and future Acting-Governor of California Mike Curb — after basic training, but before shipping off.
Two months and two days later, the film is starting to gain some momentum, playing at more and more drive-ins across the country — and Sharon Tate, along with 6 others, have been murdered in a mass killing the police are calling “ritualistic.”
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