So if you've seen Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, and Invocation of My Demon Brother, you'll know what to expect in Lucifer Rising, right? WRONG. Anger got his hands on some special effects, film printing, and new film stock footage, and made something unique in his own oeuvre, not to mention basically unparalleled anywhere else in the history of cinema. Starting with some bubbling cauldrons in the form of active volcanoes, he goes through a short tour of some of the world's most famous pagan areas of worship (Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, etc.) and, with some mightily skillful transitioning, turns the world into a vessel for the ... well... Rising of said Lucifer. This goes on for a while, gaining momentum and getting ever the more abstract as peoples from different nations and settings join in the festivities, until aliens appear. No, literally. It's all in the creation of a new symbol that represents Dr. Anger himself, a sort of sigil that you can see printed on some of his movies and recently on the Films of Kenneth Anger compilations.
What's spectacular here is the color. Anger turns some of the color hues and tones you associate with tarot cards and brightly painted Satanism (as opposed to the darker, more firey stuff) and makes an entire movie out of that sense of primaries and contrasts. In doing so, he successfully recreates an entire new world, one that you explore visually and viscerally with him. Kudos goes to the guy who did the soundtrack (I forget his name) for matching that sense of color and space in the music, their cooperation turning the entire movie into a psychedelic awakening into Anger's own spiritual beliefs. It's like getting sucked into a religious demonstration without intending to, and for those who find Anger's belief remiss, this movie can be horrifying. Otherwise, for those just interested in his own idiosyncratic view of the world, Lucifer Rising is a coming-into-his-own unmatched and unexpected by his previous work.
Also features Donald Cammell who, like Anger, made a darker-side-of-counterculture movie with Mick Jagger, called Performance. With Marianne Faithful and Jimmy Page, Anger certainly pulled together a unique collaboration here.
What's spectacular here is the color. Anger turns some of the color hues and tones you associate with tarot cards and brightly painted Satanism (as opposed to the darker, more firey stuff) and makes an entire movie out of that sense of primaries and contrasts. In doing so, he successfully recreates an entire new world, one that you explore visually and viscerally with him. Kudos goes to the guy who did the soundtrack (I forget his name) for matching that sense of color and space in the music, their cooperation turning the entire movie into a psychedelic awakening into Anger's own spiritual beliefs. It's like getting sucked into a religious demonstration without intending to, and for those who find Anger's belief remiss, this movie can be horrifying. Otherwise, for those just interested in his own idiosyncratic view of the world, Lucifer Rising is a coming-into-his-own unmatched and unexpected by his previous work.
Also features Donald Cammell who, like Anger, made a darker-side-of-counterculture movie with Mick Jagger, called Performance. With Marianne Faithful and Jimmy Page, Anger certainly pulled together a unique collaboration here.