After having meant to so for a while, I decided one day last month to
sit myself down and watch some Kenneth Anger’s short films. I thought that I
would watch them over the course of two or three days. Well, instead, aside
from a short interval walking the dog, I spent most of an afternoon and the
early evening watching through his Magick Lantern Cycle (by way of BFI’s
excellent 2011 Blu-Ray + DVD release). Now while there are four or five others
I could quite easily put in, I decided to go with Scorpio Rising. Like much of
Anger’s work, the film is silent as regards dialogue, instead featuring a
soundtrack of contemporary music by the likes of Elvis Presley, Bobby Vinton,
Ray Charles, The Angels, The Crystals and many more. Notwithstanding the music,
Anger, a filmmaker who understands the essence of montage, creates a brilliant
work whose thematic content references his interest in the occult, biker
subculture, Catholicism, Nazism and homosexuality. So controversial at the
time, in fact, that the American Nazi Party protested that it offended their
flag, and it was brought to the California Supreme Court on obscenity charges
(not Anger’s first dance with the Supreme Court. Sixteen years earlier, his
film Fireworks got him arrested on the same charges). It remains a startling
and provocative work to this day.
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