Mike McPadden of Crime Feed wrote of the film: "By way of sloppily arranged depictions of a nonprofessional cast engaging in fake-looking orgies and faker-looking gore murders, The Manson Massacre conjures the notion of a "movie" only in the fact that it's shot on film and, remarkably, once played to paying audiences in theaters. Makee K. Blaisdell plays Manson stand-in Invar, a monk-robed occult guru who sleeps in a coffin and cohabitates with five young women. They get freaky — and not just by driving around in a hearse (although they do that). They also engage in group copulation, grave robbing, and even the shoplifting of sex toys." Film scholar Ric Meyers deemed it "a poor excuse for a film," while Stephen Thrower noted it as "inaccurate and unconvincing" in its depiction of the Manson killings' aftermath.
