Scorpio Rising
1963 · 28m · USA
Directed by Kenneth Anger
Genres: experimental
Tones: mythic, provocative, surreal
A hallucinatory montage of motorcycle culture, pop music, Nazi iconography, and homoerotic imagery follows a group of Brooklyn bikers preparing for a night ride, building to a ritualistic climax that fuses American rebellion with occult symbolism.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Bikers, swastikas, and pop songs as ideology — Anger basically invented the music video while making it dirtier than anything MTV would ever air. Page says copyright-claimed by some Japanese rights holder, which is its own kind of tribute.
Anger's pop-soundtrack collage essentially invented the music video and remains the foundational text for queer underground cinema. A copyright takedown is regrettable, but the work itself sits beside Brakhage and Smith in the American avant-garde canon.
The wall-to-wall jukebox of 13 pop tracks as sole narrative engine basically invents the music video grammar everyone steals from now. Page summary shows the YouTube copy is dead, but the formal innovation - using needle drops as cuts and meaning - is undeniable.
Reviews
A strong and, despite its unpleasant subject matter, beautiful movie.
The way Anger used music in that film, in such perfectly magical harmony with the images, opened my thinking about the role music could play in movies.
Festivals
- Knokke Experimental Film Festival 1963, Film Culture Award