Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Invocation Of My Demon Brother

WARNING: Watching the Kenneth Anger film I’ve included in this post might make you pregnant. Of course, it might only make you feel like you’ve just been fucked.

It’s hard for me to take Kenneth Anger seriously, or to view him as anything other than as a pretentious poser living off the sales of a successful book, Hollywood Babylon, in order to indulge the pastime of creating experimental, underground films of short duration. Most of the ones I have seen so far are forgettable, or as one commenter on YouTube noted about one in particular, “execrable”.

My brief take on the ones I’ve seen so far-

Rabbit Moon is possibly the most bizarre rendition of the old Italian art form of commedia del arte you could possibly conceive, and is made all the more incomprehensible by the inclusion of a soundtrack that sounds like something thrown together by a group of studio musicians and engineers for a kid-friendly Halloween “House of Horrors”. It’s not just bad, it’s silly-but so is the film.

Scorpio Rising purports to reveal the homoerotic undercurrent hidden beneath the tough-guy neo-Nazi facade of the early nineteen sixties biker sub-culture, but we get the idea that Anger is having us all on-including the subjects of this “documentary” snip-and-splice job that ends with the sound of police sirens somewhere in the distance. One might wonder if the sirens are an artistic yet obviously artificial device that Anger thought would constitute an appropriate ending. I wonder whether he simply called the police.

Even Lucifer Rising is a great disappointment, including (though perhaps understandably so) the soundtrack by Bobby Beausolleil. Although this, like Scorpio Rising, is of historical interest, it is unfortunately unwatchable, despite the presence of Marianne Faithful.

This brings us to the best of a pretty bad lot-Invocation Of My Demon Brother. Ignore the irritating Moog Synthesizer "soundtrack" by Mick Jagger and you can begin to fathom the reason for Anger’s reputation, beginning with his alleged influence on the likes of David Lynch on down through his visionary techniques of film making that has made him an underground cult favorite since-well, since the publicity connecting him with the Manson family.

I present here Part One of a two part You Tube upload, courtesy of Adrian Seelbruder.



Once you’ve seen part one you’ve pretty much got the gist of it, but if you have a hunger for more-



It helps to understand one thing about Kenneth Anger. He’s more than just your garden variety pretentious elitist underground avant garde poser. He’s very possibly an outright liar. For example, he claims he played the part of The Changeling Prince in the film A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Yet, not so fast-it turns out the part was actually played by a little girl named Sheila Brown. This is not only verified through the extant credits to the film, but is affirmed by Mickey Rooney himself, who played the part of Puck in the movie.

Anger explains this discrepancy by explaining that his mother, who allegedly worked as a seamstress on the set, got him the part by dressing him up like a little girl with a little girl’s pseudonym.

Okay, there are a couple of things wrong with this explanation.

1. Why would it be necessary for a little girl to play the role of a little boy to begin with, especially to the extent that a little boy would have to lie about his gender in order to secure the role-of a little boy, mind you?

2. If this was the case, why didn’t Anger just say this from the beginning, as opposed to waiting until someone questioned his dubious claim?

The only legitimate conclusion to arrive at is that Kenneth Anger-real name Kenneth Anglemyer (and even this is by no means proven, it seems) is a frustrated would-be child star who never quite made it through the front doors of the Hollywood mansion. Perhaps his bitterness at this is reflected in his nom de plume, simplistic as that sounds. Yet, what is known of him serves only to add to the speculation as to his true intent. He claims to have been in dance class with Shirley Temple, and seems to have a solid Hollywood connection, yet his first claim to real fame was Hollywood Babylon, first published in France in the late fifties, yet never released in the states until the mid-nineteen seventies. A sequel followed. I have never read the book, but wonder now whether the information contained therein is trustworthy except for that already known.

Yet, he includes pictures of crime and accident scenes previously never released to the public. One example of this is the accident site and the wreck that claimed the life of Jayne Mansfield, as well as the cadavers of other dead stars. He obviously has connections, but with who and how? I suspect that his cordial relationship with the late Church of Satan founder and High Priest Anton Szandor LaVey might provide a partial answer. LaVey had previously been a crime scene photographer and may have maintained some contacts within that community.

Invocation Of My Demon Brother might well be Anger’s tour de force and his major contribution to film, which might otherwise be as minimal as the length of his average project. Still, at least in this one work, if in no others I have so far seen, he created what might well be a legitimate masterpiece that lends great credibility to the claims regarding his reputation and his influence.

Some interesting facts about this film-

Bobby Beausolleil is in this one, in footage taken from the original now lost Lucifer’s Rising, in which Beausolleil played the title role. Anger grafted the footage of Beausolleil onto this one, which interestingly enough he made in 1969-the year of the Tate-LaBianca murder. Beausolleil had a dispute with Anger shortly after filming the original Lucifer Rising and took off with the film in a huff. Supposedly, Anger and Beausolleil had been roommates-another unproven Anger allegation.

This is all the more bizarre when you consider some of the scenes of the film, some of which hints of some violence as viewed from the distance, from outside of an upstairs window. In another scene, there is a girl smoking what seems to be a bong with some other participants, one of whom is, I think, Beausolleil. The girl looks disturbingly like Patricia Krenwinkle, one of the most vicious of the Manson Family members, though the name given for the actress was Lenore Kandel.

Also in the film is Anger himself, playing a ritual leader, and Anton LaVey, playing the horned ritual leader. There is also old footage of the Rolling Stones, and also what appears to be old newsreel footage of military personnel disembarking from a helicopter, maybe from old Vietnam news archives.

The most eerie of all the scenes however, involve an albino whose name, I am told, is Speed Hacker, and who was a 1960’s era hippy from Haight-Ashbury.

By all means, watch the film and enjoy it, but be warned ahead of time. In regards to Anger’s films, judging by what I have seen thus far, it really does not get any better than this.

As for Anger, he has recently revealed that he is dying of prostate cancer, and, being the Thelemite occultist that he claims to be, has announced that his impending death will transpire this coming Halloween.

I don’t know about anybody else, but do you know what I think? I think he might be lying.

6 comments:

Rufus said...

Okay, I've read Hollywood Babylon and seen his movies, and he always struck me as a bit of a weirdo. But, I'm not sure where Kenneth Anger is "elitist". Has he done interviews in which he comes off as elitist? Just who does he look down on? All I get from the movies is that he's into the occult, gay, and probably took lots of drugs.

I always just saw him as an oddball who was making these weird films way before anyone else was and came up with some good ideas in the course of them. For instance, Scorpio Rising was made back in 1964, so when Scorcese says that this is the film that taught him how to use rock music in fim, I see what he means. Rabbit Moon was made, I think, in 1950, so I don't know who he could have been imitating. If anything, much better filmakers came along and imitated him. That's life.

So, I agree that his stuff is weird and doesn't really work most of the time. But, credit where it's due- when you're making weird shit like this in the 1940s, 1950s and early 60s you're probably not just doing it because you're a "poser". And, as for "pretentious", what pretense is he assuming? The pretense of a gay, drug-using, weirdo? I'm pretty sure that's who he is!

SecondComingOfBast said...

By "poser" I was referring to the credible evidence that he very likely lied about certain things in his biography, the most obvious example being his questionable claim to having played the role of The Changeling Prince in The Midsummer Night's Dream.

By elitist, I was referring to his evident dislike of modern film methods, particularly special effects.

Which, he has a right to his opinion, and for that matter he is not altogether wrong to an extent when it comes to commercial film standards, but it does put him in somewhat the elitist category, and might make him seem somewhat snobbish to some.

Rabbit Moon was not an original concept, it was his take on an old Italian art form, commedia del arte, which utilized archetype images. What ruined it was the shitty music. He did another version, I think the earlier one you might have been referring to, with a different soundtrack, mostly doo-wap.

The one I was referring to was the latest version, with the soundtrack by "A Raincoat" performing the song "Things That Go Bump In the Night". It's godawful.

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that most people would probably appreciate his films more if they viewed them with the sound off. He has this habit of choosing soundtracks that are at best distracting and even irritating. He bragged about it even about Jagger's soundtrack in this film I posted. He himself referred to it as nerve-wracking, or something to that effect.

Rufus said...

Okay, I see what you mean by poser. But, I'm still thinking he's more of a weirdo than an elitist. It sounds funny, but it's an important distinction. For example, I've always wanted to shoot a 70s-style horror movie in super-8, with music by Frank Zappa, because I think you could make it look cool. I like to think of stuff like that as maybe a little weird, and yeah maybe a little pointless, but not 'elitist'. Because, otherwise, you end up with everyone doing the same thing so as not to alienate anyone, and that gets boring.

Definitely, Kenneth Anger's movies are not for everyone, but I prefer to think that this is because he's marching to the beat of his own drummer more than contemptuous of other people. I don't know if that makes sense. I still agree with you that a lot of it doesn't work.

SecondComingOfBast said...

Elitist might not have been the best choice of words. It's just that when I hear somebody start off about Hollywood special effects, I think, okay, here we go again. I guess its an automatic reflex, even though at the same time, there are very good grounds to criticize Hollywood's tendency to use special effects to the detriment of overall film quality.

At the same time, that's almost like beating a dead horse, and when a filmmaker starts talking about it it almost seems cliche.

Actually, I do like Invocation Of My Demon Brother quite a bit, despite Jagger's soundtrack. I think I like it better every time I see it. It was the fourth of his films I saw. The others might look better on a full screen. Scorpio Rising in particular seems to suffer from patches of nothing but darkness. Maybe that's just the result of a bad YouTube upload.

Your idea is a good one. I assume you're talking about early Frank Zappa, and not the later jazz recordings-though they are actually very good, judging by what little I've heard. I wouldn't say it would be pointless. Avante garde film is by its nature experimental, and that's never pointless if you have a vision. It could be the Frank Zappa soundtrack you have in mind might be pointing you in a certain direction. Who knows what you might come up with?

sonia said...

My favorite Anger's film is Scorpio Rising. It's a masterpiece. Others are interesting or OK, but Scorpio is among the greatest short films ever made...

SecondComingOfBast said...

Sonia, glad you came back around, been a while. Scorpio didn't do much for me, but I should probably look for another version. I think the YouTube upload I watched was flawed in some way, with too many extended periods of darkness.

Anger's films probably work much better on a large screen, but if I can find a better version of Scorpio than the one I saw, I might post it here one of these days.