Customer Reviews

Kenneth Anger Magick Lantern Cycle - Volume 3 - Scorpio Rising / Kustom Kar Kommandos / Puce Moment [VHS]

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November 2007 update: I will leave what I wrote before here, because the review is accurate, but I am quite WRONG -- the film "Scorpio Rising" HAS come out on DVD, just this year, and that makes this VHS copy unnecessary, so head over to the DVDs and look for The Collected Films of Kenneth Anger Volume 2 to get it. But this is what I thought a while back and my praise is still valid. Though someone says there are technical problems with the menu on the DVD and of course I have not bought it yet.

It is highly unlikely this video will ever be officially reissued and actually it is amazing it ever came out at all. Anger never got the "rights" to use the contemporary pop songs that he used as a soundtrack, and he edited the film very specifically to those songs. Back in the 70s, Martin Scorcese mentioned seeing Scorpio Rising years before and being shocked at the use of those pop songs -- this film very obviously influenced Marty's continuous use of pop music in his films, and he CAN afford to get those rights. With songs by Elvis, Ray Charles and many others, it would be prohibitively expensive to attain legal rights today. I do hope that somehow this can be resolved and this film can become available on DVD to influence more generations of artists. Until then, this Mystic Fire video is the only way to see this film, unless there are still cinema showings but I haven't seen one announced in ages anywhere. So I guess a good condition used copy for + or - $100 is worthwhile.

The film itself is an invocation of a new age. It is built around a gathering for a biker party. Yes, it is about homoerotica but it is much more than that. It is hysterically funny, in a way more evident today than forty years ago, but there is also a palpable sense of unease that builds to a violent and genuinely frightening climax. This is a devastatingly powerful work, one of the greatest films ever made in the history of cinema. It shows a completely new vision, a break with all pop culture of its time, which is why the music is so fitting and ironic.

This video also contains Kustom Kar Kommandos, a brief three-minute sequel to Scorpio (using a car instead of motorcycles), and I believe it also has the early fifties' Puce Moment.

There would never have been a movie like Blue Velvet, for instance, without Scorpio Rising.

Whatever it takes, if you have never seen Scorpio Rising, it's worth your time.