Scorpio Rising (1964)

Scorpio Rising

It has become almost routine for me by now to watch experimental movies. I cannot say that I am entirely inured to them, it is more a sort of apathy I am feeling. Whatever, another round of useless junk.

This time it is “Scorpio Rising” by Kenneth Anger.

“Scorpio Rising” is a 30 minute film in which we see some dude fixing his bike. There is also some guy (same guy?) dressing up in a biker outfit better suited for rough gay sex. There is a group of revelers waving their dicks (yeah, dicks again…), the biker dude is waving a nazi flag and some clips from an old movie about the life of Christ.

In terms of point, I think I get it. This is about breaking as many taboos as possible in 30 minutes and Kenneth Anger tries really hard. Does he succeed? Maybe by 1964 standard. In 2018 it just looks comical and pathetic. In glimpses I would even say it is funny, because it is so over the top, but I doubt that was the intention.

The most (maybe the only) interesting thing about the movie is that it uses a soundtrack of contemporary pop music. This was apparently the first time such a sound track was used in this way and it worked quite well, if for no other reason than that the music was good.

An interesting fact about the movie is that, according to Wikipedia, the American Nazi party was protesting about the use of their flag. I will just let that stand for a moment…

When this movie arrived in the mail it turned out that I had bought a dual format, three disk box set of Kenneth anger stuff. Essentially his entire catalogue! Ugh. I tried to watch a few of them, but, ah… it did not really do it for me. However, the box set also included a 70 minute interview with Kenneth Anger and that was actually interesting. I was surprised how sympathetic and interesting this guy actually is. Such a difference to the movies he made. I almost felt like watching them after all. Almost.

The bottom line is that unless you are a nazi gay, or a devoted rebel against anything, this is another movie one can easily skip, and so I move on to the next movie on the List.