Trailer: 'Doctor Who' star Matt Smith transforms into cult leader Charles Manson

The first trailer for Charles Manson movie Charlie Says has landed, and it finds Doctor Who star Matt Smith transformed into the infamous cult leader.

With flowing, shaggy hair, the British actor embodies the manipulative killer who would lead his followers into a series of bloody murders in the late 1960s.

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The movie, helmed by Canadian director Mary Harron, who made the cult hit I Shot Andy Warhol in 1996, finds a graduate student interviewing some of the young women Manson recruited to his commune in the California hills.

Game of Thrones star Hannah Murray plays Leslie Van Houten, Sosie Bacon plays Patricia Krenwinkel, Suki Waterhouse plays Mary Brunner, and Marianne Rendón plays Susan Atkins, all of whom went to prison for their roles in Manson’s ‘family’.

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Krenwinkel and Atkins were directly involved in the murder of Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s wife, and three of her friends on August 9, 1969, on the instructions of Manson.

The movie made its premiere at the Venice Film Festival last year, though it received some pretty mixed reviews from critics.

It’s due out in the US in May.