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Kenneth Anger's masterpiece of blasphemy and ecstasy, one pop aria after another over twenty-eight minutes of outlaw sensation. The gelhead in his garage, as focused as a monk, the title appears studded in the back of a leather jacket, the director's name just above a snug pair of jeans. Glistening chrome and metallic blues, wind-up toys in looming close-up, the Grim Reaper itself watching from a corner ("My Boyfriend's Back"). Machismo and its opposite, belts and chains and rings for the ornate femininity of tough guys, "feeling the rapture grow." Genetian private reels given Powell-Pressburger color, sacramental paraphernalia and bubble-gum tunes in sustained montage. Scorpio is a towheaded James Dean fan in shades, reading the funnies in bed while Brando swaggers in a flickering TV screen. Cats, nooses, a pitch of cocaine ("You're the devil in disguise, oh yes you are"). "He's a Rebel" launches an alternate black-and-white dimension, where Hollywood Christ and disciples are phantoms of reverence gazing at a world with little use for them. (A subliminal phallus intrudes upon the healing of the blind.) The great pagan bash (Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome) turns up at the Brooklyn bikers' soiree, sodomites with demonic masks and wands in a merry travesty of religious illumination: "I see the light, I see the party lights..." Roaring machines and squealing animals, hazing rituals and Nazi vandals. Lugosi's Dracula, Mickey Rooney's Puck, swastikas, red flashes. "I'm at the point of no return, and for me there'll be no turning back." The satanic Anger alchemy, a continuum of idols and fetishes and death cults building up to the poster of the blonde-manned skull with a dangling cigarette tagged "youth," bridging the chanting end of "I Will Follow Him" and the cackling start of "Wipe Out." A Road Safety finish with corpse and sirens (cf. Dreyer's They Caught the Ferry). Roeg, Scorsese, Lynch, Tarantino et al. flow from here.
--- Fernando F. Croce |