An influence on everyone from Scorsese to Lynch to Waters to most-music-video-directors-and-editors, 'Scorpio Rising' is one of the most important and revolutionarily inventive and subversive avant garde films of all time. Its content is edgy and over the top, and the film is filled to the brim w/obvious flaws and muddled messages, but all in all, it is one of my personal favorite films of all time. It was one of the first experimental films I ever saw, and the totally ironic usage of lighthearted pop songs juxtaposed w/the occasionally brutal and oft-deliberately-offensive-and-blashphemous-slash-sacrilegious content had a huge impact on me and the way I, myself, saw and made movies. So I owe a huge debt to Kenneth Anger and this film, even if, after quite a few rewatchings now, there are a few admittedly somewhat eye rollingly edgy moments, but, in the film's defense, it is important to acknowledge the time in which it was made and who exactly had made it. The "edginess" of the film isn't exactly the same brand of edginess an indie film that would contain some of the images in here would usually contain, as it was genuinely risky stuff to release back in the '60's. This film isn't afraid to intercut footage taken from some cheap and kinda cliche Sunday-school-style religious movie about Jesus w/some punkish occultist Neo-Nazis getting ready to wreak havoc and cause violent and sexual troubles (either respectively or not, depending on the individual wreaking the havoc, I guess), this film isn't afraid to be intentionally over-the-top homoerotic and practically worship the hunky male form, this film isn't afraid to show nudity or weird pervy sex acts or any of that. It is fearless and perhaps a bit ridiculous, but an important staple of experimental cinema and just plain old cinema in general.
Review of Scorpio Rising
