The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2
by Kenneth Anger
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DVD details
Actor: Kenneth AngerDirector: Kenneth Anger
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-10-02
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fantoma
DVD Reviews of The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2
DVD Review: An alienating trip through Anger's allegorical world of rites and invocations.
Summary: 5 Stars
Experimental cinema at its best. A real images-delirium, a sensorial experience where classical interpretation keys lead towards a sense of loss, indicating the road through a most complex and fascinating world where allegorical and hidden symbolisms create a strong feeling of restlessness and, sometimes, physical repulsion observing a dimension of rites, invocations and perversions.
Notable the 7 minute version of "Rabbit's Moon", the alienating "Scorpio Rising" and the mysterious/mystical "Lucifer Rising" (absolutely worth of listening, the highly evocative and psychedelical soundtrack by Bobby Beausoleil).
DVD Review: Anger's Influential Films Enter The Digital Domain
Summary: 5 Stars
Kenneth Anger--the name is instantly familiar among underground film fans, but most mainstream folks associate him with the scandalous Hollywood tome 'Hollywood Babylon'. What many don't know is that his fusion of subversive images with pop music, as in his seminal film 'Scorpio Rising (1963)' influenced many filmmakers from David Lynch to Martin Scorsese. The next time you watch David Lynch's 'Blue Velvet (1986)', just don't forget to watch 'Scorpio Rising' to see where Lynch derived his inspiration for that movie from (a great film, by the way). Plus, Martin Scorsese's penchant for fusing his violent scenes with sugary pop music originally saw its genesis in 'Scorpio Rising'. The many visual juxtapositions, frenetic editing, superimpositions also gave way to the modern rock video. Frankly, without Anger, I don't how MTV would've seen the light of day. But unfortunately, outside his cult circle--who've assiduously collected his films on bootlegged copies, battered VHS tapes etc--he's largely unknown.
Thankfully, his films have been restored digitally and fans can now throw away their inferior versions and replace them with this beautiful set, released in two volumes. This set, Volume 2, mainly concerns itself with Anger's post 60's work--including the seminal 'Scorpio Rising' 'Invocation Of My Demon Brother' Kustom Kar Kummandos' 'Rabbit Moon' 'Lucifer Rising' and also 'The Man We Want To Hang'. No doubt, this is the best they've ever looked--the colors are rich, contrast well balanced, deep blacks etc. Note that most of Anger's films were shot in 16mm, thus they are grainy; but they collectively add to the visual texture and mood of the films. After all, these are underground films, not your typical Hollywood pap. Plus, 'Invocation Of My Demon Brother' has an optional audio track, which you can choose on the menu; Mick Jagger's--yes, THE Mick Jagger's-- ominous, Moog synth track is also present--you can choose the preffered version.
Personally, if you are new to Anger's films, this is the best place to start. His earlier films like 'Fireworks' and 'Inauguration Of The Pleasure Dome' are included in Volume 1, so you'll have to buy it separately if interested. Yet in my personal opinion, this is the set to get as it contains his most notorious efforts like 'Scorpio Rising' 'Lucifer Rising' or even the 'Invocation Of My Demon Brother'.
My sincere thanks to all who made this collection possible!
DVD Review: Myth and Magic, Rite and Ritual: The Trance Films of Kenneth Anger
Summary: 5 Stars
I took an Avant-Garde Film class at UCSB in the early 1980's and it was there that I first saw many of these films. Anger was by far the most compelling of the American avant-garde filmmakers that I was exposed to in that class and seeing his films again on DVD I am reminded why that was so.
I have little patience for the generic characters and narratives that Hollywood manufactures and even less patience for the self-consciously artsy films produced by directors that are supposedly independent of the Hollywood system. Hollywood loves formulas and cliches and independent filmmakers also love formulas and cliches (just a different set of them). Because they are motivated by identical ambitions (riches and reputation) neither Hollywood nor the independents produce anything that I would call art. Its all commercial product.
For me the most fascinating thing about the American avant-garde is its acknowledgment that film is an inherently sensationalist and (sometimes) trashy medium and that it generates the interest that it does not because it is "the democratic art" but because it is all about decadence, excess, and spectacle. Anger was the first to really exploit Hollywood trashiness and he was followed by Warhol and Lynch. These directors do not reject Hollywood trashiness in fact these directors make Hollywood trashiness their focus. Anger and Warhol and Lynch craft trashy characters and storylines but what elevates what they do to the status of "art" is that they are winking at you as they do it. Some call what Anger and Warhol did "camp" but its not camp in the way Sontag describes it (according to Sontag true camp is never intentional). These directors strategically employ "camp" but when they do so they are making a comment on the artificial nature of Hollywood "styles" and "realities" and that places what they do in the category of art (as opposed to commodity).
The avant-garde is by its very nature subversive. However, the avant-garde does not really seek to explode Hollywood styles but to extend the ways in which we view and relate to them. Hollywood films were very much a part of Anger's education and they provide him with a rich vocabulary from which to draw. Hollywood artistry (costumes, sets) as well as Hollywood gaudiness (scandalous behavior) fascinate and excite him and he appropriates these for his own purposes. He is inspired by and draws from old and new Hollywood; his films look back to Hollywood's silent era (when the medium had a magic fetishistic quality) and forward to new ways film can be used to explore man's inherent need for ritual (Anger's pet theme). His own films can be viewed as elaborate rites and rituals but they are also deeply insightful as psychological portraits of society's discontents. Anger was influenced by those that came before him and Anger's influence can be detected in some mainstream filmmakers works. Like Anger's characters Martin Scorsese's characters reject normalizing rituals in favor of their own often anti-social (and sometimes sociopathic) rituals. The punk movement was also influenced by the avant-garde's examination of self-formation through rite and ritual.
Granted, many American avant-garde films acquire their reputation by showing what mainstream films will not or cannot show and so some dismiss them as being just as sensationalistic as mainstream film. But the American avant-garde does not exist merely to subvert or exploit Hollywood tastes and standards (Hollywood itself is constantly challenging its own tastes and standards and testing its own boundaries of what you can and cannot show). Rather the American avant-garde exists in order to make us aware of the untapped potential of film and of film as a medium with its own special knowledge.
Even if the content of Anger's films does not appeal to you there is an undeniable power to them that exists nowhere else (except perhaps in silent film and in some music). Few artists have more to teach us about the power of cinema, the ritual of art making and of imbuing objects and acts with magical properties/significance, and the way art both mediates old and produces new realities and rituals than Kenneth Anger.
Also recommended: Jean Cocteau, Pier Pasolini, James Broughton, Stan Brakhage, Donald Cammell, Derek Jarman, David Lynch.
DVD Review: The Most Influential Film Maker You've Never Seen
Summary: 4 Stars
To the general public Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Anglemyer in 1927 California) is probably best known for the book HOLLYWOOD BABLYON, which chronicles the less savory side of America's favorite "golden age" stars. But in fine arts circles Anger is best known for short films that mix lushly beautiful imagery with an often unsettling atmosphere--and while they have been seldom seen outside art house theatres and colleges, they have been extremely influential over the years. Until quite recently the only way to see an Anger film was on the big screen or in really bad video tape transfers. Fortunately, UCLA has restored many of Anger's films and they are now available in near-pristine condition on DVD.
THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOLUME II contains five restored Anger films: RABBIT'S MOON (1959; 1979 version), SCORPIO RISING (1963), KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS (1965), INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER (1969), and LUCIFER RISING (1970-1980); it also includes the unrestored THE MAN WE WANT TO HANG (1995-2002.) Although each film is quite different, each is similar in that it mixes remarkable images to poetic effect against a highly variable soundtrack--a fact that has made many refer to Anger as "the father of the music video." As the films progress they also tend to acquire a faintly claustrophobic, vaguely creepy quality in a way that is extremely difficult to define.
A longer cut of RABBIT'S MOON appears on THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOL. 1; Anger cut the film in several different ways at different points in his career, and many regard the much shorter 1979 cut included here as superior to all other versions. Although the longer version has its charms, I would agree with this; the film seems to work best at this length. THE MAN WE WANT TO HANG is essentially a video recording of an exhibition of art by Aleister Crowley; it is interesting only to the extent that one may be interested Crowley, offering nothing of Anger's own personal vision.
Of the remaining films, the best known is easily SCORPIO RISING, a film that slants Brooklyn bikers into a mixture of homoeroticism, fetishism, and Christian blasphemy. Like most Anger films, the impact relies on the juxtaposition of images and music, and the film builds to a highly unsettling collage in an abandoned church. KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS is similar in the sense that it mingles homoeroticism and fetishism, but although interesting in its own way it lacks the same impact. And then there is the infamous LUCIFER RISING.
Running just under half an hour, LUCIFER RISING is the longest film on the disk and easily the most glossy in terms of camera work (Anger notes that it was his most expensive film); it is also notorious for its use of Marianne Faithful as a performer, its Aleister Crowley-inflected attitude toward the occult, and the soundtrack supplied by Bobby Beausoleil--an associate of Charles Manson and a convicted murderer. And yet for all its notoriety, the film is actually among Anger's least interesting works, a slow repetition of images that I found unimpressive and to no particular point.
Anger is not a filmmaker for everyone. His films are essentially dreamscapes that acquire impact through the repetition and variation of images; there are no "stories," no dialogue, nothing but the visual fused with music. But for those who have an eye for such, he is a remarkable artist. The DVD contains the bonus of an audio track by Anger himself, which is sometimes fascinating and sometimes frustrating---much like the films themselves. Recommended, although I have to give THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOL. 1 an edge on the follow-up VOL. 2.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
DVD Review: Fantastic!
Summary: 5 Stars
Kenneth Anger is truly a cinematic magus and I was very grateful to finally complete my collection of his most renowned films, looking more lovely now than they probably ever have. They are life-changing in their surreal intricate beauty, treasuries of one man's irreplaceable imagination. I hope to enjoy them for years to come.
Description of The Films of Kenneth Anger, Vol. 2
Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, author of the infamous HOLLYWOOD BABYLON books and creator of some of the most striking and beautiful works in the history of film, Kenneth Anger is a singular figure in post-war American culture.A major influence on everything from the films of Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and David Lynch to the pop art of Andy Warhol to MTV, Anger's work serves as a talisman of universal symbols and personal obsessions, combining myth, artifice and ritual to render cinema with the power of a spell or incantation.
Covering the second half of Anger's career, from his legendary SCORPIO RISING to his breathtaking phantasmagoria LUCIFER RISING, Fantoma is very proud to complete the cycle with this long-awaited final volume of films by this revolutionary and groundbreaking maverick, painstakingly restored and presented on DVD for the first time anywhere in the world.
Contains the films:
Scorpio Rising (1964)
Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965)
Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969)
Rabbit's Moon (1979 version)
Lucifer Rising (1981)
Pleasure and terror commingle in this next collection of Kenneth Anger films gathered in Volume 2. Like those in The Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume 1, these shorts illustrate Anger's occult concepts with adept, fetishized poeticism manifested formally through Anger's luscious color experiments, avant-garde soundtracks, and radically inventive editing. Volume 2 boasts Anger's later, darker films that were allegedly magick incarnate: "Scorpio Rising," "Invocation of My Demon Brother," and "Lucifer Rising." "Scorpio Rising," about a biker gang as a symbol of savage ritualism, contains truly scary footage of an actual death-by-motorcycle, and is the most brilliant example of proto-metal culture that has by now infiltrated America's mainstream. "Invocation of My Demon Brother" stars the infamous Bobby Beausoleil, and is a gorgeous psychedelic recap of a theatrical black magick ceremony performed on stage during Anger's Haight Ashbury days. It features a stunning noise piece played on a Moog by Mick Jagger. "Lucifer Rising," too, is an infamous film, as it was made as a tribute to Lucifer's rejuvenating forces. Each film turns the concept of evil inside out, leaving one with a more complex notion of why Anger considered the camera a "magical weapon." Volume 2 also contains the slick "Kustom Kar Kommandos," about car club culture mirroring sexual fetish, a shortened version of "Rabbit Moon," and the not-as-exciting 2002 film "The Man We Want to Hang," about Aleister Crowley's paintings. The commentaries on each film offer indispensable, eloquent insights into the visionary motifs inherent to each piece. Notably, the booklet in Volume 2 contains essays by Guy Maddin, Gus Van Sant, and Bobby Beausoleil, who recalls his association with Anger, and how he managed to finish the "Lucifer Rising" soundtrack in his prison cell. For Kenneth Wilbur Anglemeyer fans, these DVDs sets contain welcome blessings, or curses, or both. -Trinie Dalton
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