Dan "The Movie Man" Wolfson
Look, if there's one thing I know, I know movies. And I don't know what to make of this. My film appreciation professor just showed it to me and I was really weirded out. I don't know if anyone else noticed, but the Bikers came across as a little gay. It's really weird that Elvis Presly and that guy who sang Blue Velvet would approve of this kind of stuff, but I guess they are in show business where gayness is like normal.Another weird thing, why did Charle Chaplin look all old and mad? Is it because this guy filmed him for the movie without permission? If that's the case, it's just not cool. It's amazing what make-up will do for some people, he looked really stern and scary! But there's a really sweet bike wreck at the end. You have to wait a long time to get into it, but this guy totally spills off his bike. So I guess that was cool. So I'm going to give it a 5.I don't know, you might like it better.
mrdonleone
I saw this movie when the Filmmuseum in Brussels held an Anger marathon, and I was hypnotized by this masterpiece of work from the very beginning, with that great soundtrack Fools Rush In (sung by Ricky Nelson, I believe) mixed with images of leather and bikes shot in a Brooklyn garage. It's really fascinating to see how 'Scorpio Rises'. But Scorpio isn't only the kind of hero in this movie, it's also the sign Anger has with 'Scorpio rising'. Interesting info. I enjoyed this movie, because I like biker movies, such as 'The Wild One' with Brando, and 'Rebel without a Cause' with James Dean. But I was a bit disappointed too, I found it not so homo-erotic as everybody thinks it is. Surely, there are some things like a gay party and the whole leather outfits, but I wasn't actually thinking that this was a gay film. Some other short films directed by Kenneth Anger I liked, Kustom Kar Kommandos and Lucifer Rising, for example. But nothing caught my eye the same way this one does. The thing I liked the most about 'Scorpio Rising' was the title shot. A red wall is seen on the background, and suddenly appears this man dressed in leather in front of the camera. We see his back, 'Scorpio Rising' spelled in very big letters. I'll never forget these opening credits. I recommend this movie to everyone, but if you're not keen on leather or bikes, please do not see this movie.
lost1-1
I saw this movie in a community college film study class filled with dopey surfers, jocks, and hicks. Our professor was from a more cultured area and decided we needed to experience experimental, underground film-work that helped shape the way we view films today. The lights went out. The projector went on. We were brutally raped by images that we'd never seen before, only heard about. Many of the students were offended by it and didn't return to the class. The few of us who stuck around afterward learned about Kenneth Anger, what he was trying to say and the way he used film as a tool of expression rather than a story telling medium. This movie I will never forget as it reached out and smacked the viewer in the face and still does even by today's standards.
mr.smith-2
When Jonas Mekas, Alfred Leslie, etc sat down to compose the mainfesto of "The New American Cinema" in 1961, the amount of films made under this artistic statement doubled. Out of this period, we see the creation of some of the greatest underground films the world has seen. Taylor Meed's The Flower Thief, Bruce Conner's A Movie and Report, and most importantly Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising.Scorpio Rising's devices are fundementally simple-didactic montage, ironic sountracks, and archival footage. What seperates SR from the realm of mediocre is its deep underooted message of sexual perversion, S&M, and the cruelty of sexuality to a point of Nazist ideology. Scenes such as young man with a smile on his face being "raped" by leather clad bikers is a point of sadio-estasy. To say that SR is not a 22 min. perversion is to ignore its fundemental principles and the principles of its filmmaker Kenneth Anger. Anger has emerged himselfin both the terror of the haunte monde of Hollywood in the 30's (hence the birth of his hugely read Hollywood Babylon- a study as perverse as SR) and the drug and sexually illusioned world of the 50's/60's lower bohemia.Scorpio Rising is a film of a generation. As Allen Ginsberg put it: "a generation starved on madness". It's signifigance ranks up there with Keroauc, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. Anger's film is a portrait of a world so far from our 90's train of thought- yet so strikingly fimiliar.
AD
