Kenneth Anger

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Kenneth Anger
Anger in 2019
Born
Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer

(1927-02-03)February 3, 1927
Santa Monica, California, U.S.
DiedMay 11, 2023(2023-05-11) (aged 96)
Yucca Valley, California, U.S.
Occupations
  • Filmmaker
  • actor
  • writer
Years active1937–2010s
AwardsMaya Deren Award (1996)
Part of a series on
Thelema
Crowley's unicursal hexagram
Unicursal hexagram
Holy Books and Stele
Key figures
Core concepts
Methods
Thelemic texts
Organizations
Deities
Related topics

Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927 – May 11, 2023) was an American underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and writer. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning in 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle".[1] Anger's films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle".[2] He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers",[3] with several films released before homosexuality was legalized in the U.S. Anger also explored occult themes in many of his films; he was fascinated by the English occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.

Born in a middle-class

sexologist Alfred Kinsey. Moving to Europe, Anger produced a number of shorts inspired by the avant-garde scene there, such as Eaux d'Artifice (1953) and Rabbit's Moon
(1971).

Returning to the U.S. in the early 1950s, Anger began work on several new projects, including the films

countercultural figures of the time, Anger involved them in his subsequent Thelema-themed works, Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising
(1972). After failing to produce a sequel to Lucifer Rising, which he attempted through the mid-1980s, Anger retired from filmmaking, instead focusing on Hollywood Babylon II (1984). In the 2000s he returned to filmmaking, producing shorts for various film festivals and events.

Anger described filmmakers such as Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Maya Deren as influences,[5] and has been cited as an important influence on directors like Martin Scorsese,[6] David Lynch,[7] and John Waters.[8] Kinsey Today argued that Anger had "a profound impact on the work of many other filmmakers and artists, as well as on music video as an emergent art form using dream sequence, dance, fantasy, and narrative."[2]

Biography

1927–1936: Early life

Kenneth Anger was born as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer on February 3, 1927, in

Douglas Aircraft, earning enough money that they could live comfortably as a middle-class family.[10]

Kenneth Anger, their third and final child, was born in 1927. Growing up, he did not get along with his parents or siblings. His brother Bob later claimed that as the youngest child, Kenneth had been spoiled by his mother and grandmother and became somewhat "bratty". His grandmother Bertha was a strong influence on the young Kenneth and supported the family financially during the

Thunder Over Mexico. Bertha encouraged his artistic interests and later moved into a house in Hollywood with another woman, Miss Diggy, who also encouraged Kenneth.[11] He developed an early interest in film and enjoyed reading the movie tie-in Big Little books. Kenneth later said, "I was a child prodigy who never got smarter."[12] He remembered attending the Santa Monica Cotillion, where he met Shirley Temple, with whom he once danced.[13]

Anger claimed in Hollywood Babylon II that he played the Changeling Prince in the 1935

Warner Brothers film A Midsummer Night's Dream, but the character was played by a girl named Sheila Brown.[14] Anger's unofficial biographer, Bill Landis, remarked in 1995 that the Changeling Prince was definitely "Anger as a child; visually, he's immediately recognizable".[15]

1937–1946: First films

Anger's first film was created in 1937, when he was ten years old. The short, Ferdinand the Bull, was shot on the remains of

Greek mythological myth of the Minotaur and constructed a small volcano in his back yard as a homemade special effect.[17] Many of these early films are considered lost, with Anger burning much of his previous work in 1967.[18]

I've always considered movies evil; the day that cinema was invented was a black day for mankind.

—Kenneth Anger[19]

In 1944, the Anglemyers moved to Hollywood to move in with family, and Kenneth began attending

underground" films, such as those of Maya Deren and John and James Whitney, as well as Anger's and Harrington's.[22]

Anger's interest in the occult deepened in high school. He first indirectly encountered the subject through reading

Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough,[23] although his favorite writings were Crowley's; he eventually converted to Thelema, the religion Crowley founded.[24]

1947–1949: Fireworks and early career

Anger discovered his homosexuality at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in the United States, and he began associating with the underground gay scene. At some point in the mid-1940s, he was arrested by police in a "homosexual entrapment", after which he decided to move out of his parents' home, gaining his own apartment largely financed by his grandmother,[25] and abandoning the name Anglemyer in favor of Anger.[26] He started attending the University of Southern California (USC), where he studied cinema, and also began experimenting with the use of mind-altering drugs like cannabis and peyote.[27] It was then that he decided to produce a film that would deal with his sexuality, just as other gay avant-garde filmmakers like Willard Maas were doing in that decade. The result was the short film Fireworks, which was created in 1947 and exhibited publicly in 1948.[28]

Upon Fireworks's release, Anger was arrested on

fourth of July."[33] He continuously altered and adapted the film until 1980. It was distributed on VHS in 1986.[34]

One of the first people to buy a copy of Fireworks was the

Aztec human sacrifice; because of the nudity it contained, it was destroyed by technicians at the film lab who deemed it obscene.[37]

1950–1953: France, Rabbit's Moon and Eaux d'Artifice

In 1950, Anger moved to Paris, France, where he initially stayed with friends of his who had been forced to leave Hollywood after being blacklisted for having formerly belonged to trade union organizations.[38] He later said he traveled to Paris after receiving a letter from the French director Jean Cocteau in which he told Anger of his admiration for Fireworks (shown in 1949 at Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz). Upon Anger's arrival, the two became friends, with Cocteau giving him his permission to make a movie of his ballet The Young Man and Death, although at the time the project had no financial backers.[39] In Paris, Anger continued producing short films; in 1950 he started filming Rabbit's Moon (also known as La lune des lapins), about a clown who stares up at the Moon, where a rabbit lives, as in Japanese mythology. Anger produced 20 minutes of footage at the Films du Pantheon Studio before he was rushed out of the building, leaving the film uncompleted. He stored the footage in the disorganized archives of the Cinémathèque Française and retrieved it in 1970, when he finally finished and released the film.[40][41] Cinémathèque Française head Henri Langlois gave Anger prints of Sergei Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico!, which he attempted to put into Eisenstein's original order.[42]

[D'Este was] a sexual

pervert
. There are very few things I call sexual perversion, but he liked to fuck goats, and that is technically a perversion.

—Kenneth Anger[43]

In 1953, Anger traveled to

Eaux d'artifice. Landis remarked, "It's one of Anger's most tranquil works; his editing makes it soft, lush, and inviting. Eaux d'Artifice remains a secretive romp through a private garden, all for the masked figure's and the viewer-voyeur's pleasure."[45]

1953–1960: Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Hollywood Babylon

In 1953, soon after the production of Eaux d'Artifice, Anger's mother died, and he temporarily returned to the U.S. to assist with the distribution of her estate. During this return, he began to once more immerse himself in California's artistic scene, befriending the filmmaker

World Fair held in Brussels in 1958.[49]

In 1955, Anger and Kinsey traveled to the derelict

Omnibus, but was later lost.[24][50] The next year, after Kinsey's death, Anger decided to return to Paris; he was described at the time as being "extremely remote and lonely".[51]

In desperate need of money, Anger and

sadomasochistic sexual activities, although it refrained from showing any explicit sexual images.[54]

1961–1965: Scorpio Rising and Kustom Kar Kommandos

Anger with a motorcycle on the set of Scorpio Rising

In 1961, Anger once more returned to the U.S., where he lived for a time with Marjorie Cameron.

California Supreme Court.[58]

Now living in San Francisco, Anger approached the Ford Foundation, which had just started a program of grants to filmmakers. He showed the foundation his ideas for a new artistic short, Kustom Kar Kommandos, which they approved of, giving him a grant of $10,000.[59] Anger spent much of the money on living expenses and alterations to some of his films, so that by the time he actually created Kustom Kar Kommandos, it was only one scene long. The homoerotic film involved various shots of a young man polishing a drag strip racing car, accompanied by a pink background and The Paris Sisters' song "Dream Lover". Soon after, Anger struck a deal that allowed Hollywood Babylon to be officially published for the first time in the U.S., where it proved a success, selling two million copies during the 1960s. Around the same time Anger also translated Lo Duca's History of Eroticism into English for American publication.[60]

1966–1969: The hippie movement and Invocation of My Demon Brother

The mid-1960s saw the emergence of the hippie scene and increasing use of the mind-altering drugs Anger had been using for many years. In particular, the hallucinogen LSD, at the time still legal in the U.S., was very popular, and in 1966 Anger released a version of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome he called the "Sacred Mushroom Edition", which was screened to people while taking LSD, thereby heightening their sensory experience.[61] By this time, Anger had become well known in the American underground scene, and several cinemas screened his better-known films all in one event.[62] With his growing fame, Anger began to react to publicity much as his idol Crowley had done, for instance calling himself "the most monstrous moviemaker in the underground", a pun on the fact that British tabloids had labeled Crowley "the wickedest man in the world" in the 1920s.[63]

Anger's underground fame allowed him to increasingly associate with other celebrities, including Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan, who named Anger godfather to his daughter Zeena Schreck.[64] Despite their differing philosophies, Anger and LaVey became good friends and remained so for many years. But Anger also resented some celebrities, such as Andy Warhol, who at the time was achieving success not only in the art world but also in the underground film scene.[65] In 1980, Anger threw paint on the front door of a house Warhol had recently moved out of.[66]

The ornate "Russian Embassy" house in San Francisco, where Anger lived in 1966 and 1967.

In 1966, Anger moved into the ground floor of the

Gary Hinman in a drug robbery gone wrong, for which he is serving a life sentence as of 2023.[71]

In the October 26, 1967, issue of

John Paul Getty, Jr., who became Anger's patron, and also met and befriended Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, members of The Rolling Stones,[73] as well as actress/model Anita Pallenberg.[74] Anger decided to use much of the footage created for Lucifer Rising in a new film, Invocation of My Demon Brother, which starred Beausoleil, LaVey, Jagger, Richards, and Anger, the music for which was composed by Jagger. It was released in 1969 and explored many of the Thelemic themes Anger had originally intended for Lucifer Rising.[75] Author Gary Lachman believes the film "inaugurat[ed] the midnight movie cult at the Elgin Theatre."[76] The story of the film, its making, and the people involved inspired Zachary Lazar's novel Sway.[77][78]

1970–1981: Lucifer Rising

Having used up much of the footage originally intended for Lucifer Rising in Invocation of My Demon Brother, Anger made a second attempt to complete Lucifer Rising. He persuaded the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull to appear in the film, and unsuccessfully tried to convince Jagger to play Lucifer; instead he offered his brother Chris the part.[79] Anger subsequently filmed eight minutes of film and showed it to the British National Film Finance Corporation, which agreed to provide £15,000 for Anger to complete it – something that caused a level of outrage in the British press. With this money he could afford to fly the cast and crew to both West Germany and Egypt for filming.[80]

Anger befriended Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page around this time, the two sharing a great interest in Crowley. At Page's invitation, he traveled to Page's new home in Scotland, Crowley's former residence Boleskine House, to help Page exorcise the building of what Page believed to be a headless man's ghost.[81] Page agreed to produce the soundtrack for Lucifer Rising,[82] and used the editing suite in his London home to shape the music.[83] Anger later fell out with Page's partner, Charlotte, who kicked him out of the house. In retaliation he called a press conference in which he ridiculed Page and threatened to "throw a Kenneth Anger curse" on him.[84] Page's music was dumped from the film and replaced in 1979 by music written and recorded by the imprisoned Beausoleil, with whom Anger had reconciled.[85]

[Lucifer is] a teenage rebel. Lucifer must be played by a teenage boy. It's type-casting. I'm a pagan and the film is a real invocation of Lucifer. I'm much realer than

von Stroheim
. The film contained real black magicians, a real ceremony, real altars, real human blood, and a real magic circle consecrated with blood and cum.

—Kenneth Anger[86]

Meanwhile, Anger, who had moved to a small apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side, took the footage he had filmed for Rabbit's Moon in the 1950s, finally released the film in 1972, and again in a shorter version in 1979. Around the same time he also added a new soundtrack to Puce Moment and rereleased it.[87] Also around this time, the publisher Marvin Miller produced a low-budget documentary film based on Hollywood Babylon without Anger's permission, which upset Anger and led to a lawsuit.[88] Anger also created a short film, Senators in Bondage, available only to private collectors and never made publicly available. He had plans to make a film about Aleister Crowley titled The Wickedest Man in the World, but this project never got off the ground.[89]

In 1981, a decade after starting the project, Anger finally finished and released the 30-minute Lucifer Rising. Based upon the Thelemite concept that mankind had entered a new period known as the Aeon of Horus, Lucifer Rising was full of occult symbolism, starring Miriam Gibril as the ancient Egyptian goddess Isis, Donald Cammell as her consort Osiris, Faithfull as Jewish mythological figure Lilith, and Leslie Huggins as Lucifer. Anger once again appeared in the film, as the Magus, the same role he played in Invocation of My Demon Brother.[90]

1982–1999: Retirement

Soon after the release of Lucifer Rising, a PBS documentary about Anger and his films, Kenneth Anger's Magick, was made. It was directed by Kit Fitzgerald, who later recalled interviewing Anger in his Manhattan apartment on a very hot July evening, during which he revealed that he was so broke that he had been forced to sell his air conditioner.[91] Anger himself considered producing other films that would continue on from Lucifer Rising in a series, and he began calling his finished film Part I: Sign Language, to be followed by two further parts.[86] But those projects were never finished, and Anger did not produce any further films for nearly two decades. In need of money, he released Hollywood Babylon II in 1984, as well as continuing to screen his films at various festivals and universities and continuing to attempt to produce Lucifer Rising II; around this time he began wearing an eyepatch to these public events, likely due to having been beaten up and getting a bruised eye, a story he told in various interviews, although partly changing the assailant in various versions.[92]

A notorious incident occurred when Anger was invited to appear on Coca Crystal's television show in 1984. Upon arriving at the studio he demanded that somebody pay for his taxi ride there, and when they refused, he attacked talent coordinator Maureen Ivice and tried to drag her into his taxi before she was rescued by other members of staff. Anger reportedly escaped the scene by flinging a $100 bill at the cab driver and screaming, "Get me out of here!"[93]

In 1986, Anger sold the video rights to his films, which finally appeared on VHS, allowing them to have greater publicity. The next year, he attended the Avignon Film Festival in France, where his work was being celebrated in commemoration of the 40th anniversary of Fireworks. Soon thereafter, he appeared in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon, a BBC documentary directed by Nigel Finch for the Arena series. In 1991, he moved to West Arenas Boulevard in Palm Springs, California, living in what was formerly the estate of his friend Ruby Keeler, where the British Film Institute sent Rebecca Wood to assist him in writing a never-produced autobiography.[94] Instead, in 1995, Bill Landis, who had been an associate of Anger's in the early 1980s, wrote an unofficial biography of him. Anger condemned Landis's book, calling Landis "an avowed enemy".[95]

In 1993, Anger visited Sydney and lectured at a season of his films at the Australian Film Institute Cinema. In an interview given at the time to Black and White magazine,[96] he said he was staying in King's Cross and putting the finishing touches on the final treatment of a feature film about Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton. This project was unrealized.[97]

2000–2023: Return to filmmaking and final years

Vista Theatre
, Los Angeles

In 2000, Anger began screening a new short film, the anti-smoking Don't Smoke That Cigarette, followed a year later by The Man We Want to Hang, which comprised images of Crowley's paintings that had been shown at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London. In 2004, he began showing Anger Sees Red, a short surrealistic film starring himself, and the same year also began showing another work, Patriotic Penis.[98] Anger soon followed this with a flurry of other shorts, including Mouse Heaven, which consisted of images of Mickey Mouse memorabilia; Ich Will!; and Uniform Attraction, all of which he showed at various public appearances.[99] Anger's final project was Technicolor Skull, with musician Brian Butler, described as a "magick ritual of light and sound in the context of a live performance", in which Anger plays the theremin and Butler plays the guitar and other electronic instruments amid a psychedelic backdrop of colors and skulls.[100]

Anger made an appearance in Nik Sheehan's 2008 feature documentary about Brion Gysin and the Dreamachine, FLicKeR.[101] He also appeared alongside Vincent Gallo in the 2009 short film Night of Pan, written and directed by Brian Butler.[102] In 2009 his work was featured in a retrospective exhibition at the MoMA PS1 in New York City,[103] and the next year a similar exhibition took place in London.[29]

Anger finished writing Hollywood Babylon III but did not publish it, fearing severe legal repercussions if he did. Of this, he said: "The main reason I didn't bring it out was that I had a whole section on

Scientologists. I'm not a friend of the Scientologists."[29] Despite withholding legal action against the highly critical 2015 film Going Clear, the Church of Scientology
is known to sue those making accusations against it.

Anger died at a care facility in Yucca Valley, California, on May 11, 2023, at the age of 96. The announcement of his death was delayed until May 24 while his estate was being settled.[104][105]

Themes

The logo for an exhibition of Anger's work held in London, 2010.

Several recurring themes can be seen in Anger's cinematic work. One of the most notable is homoeroticism, first seen in Fireworks (1947), which was based on Anger's own homosexual awakening and featured various navy officers flexing their muscles and a white fluid (often thought to symbolize semen) pouring over the protagonist's body. There is similar homoerotic imagery in Scorpio Rising (1963), which stars a muscled, topless, leather-clad biker, and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), where a young man sensually polishes a car, with close-up shots of his tight-fitting jeans and crotch. Images of naked men also appear in Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), where they are eventually filmed wrestling, and Anger Sees Red (2004), in which a muscled, topless man performs press-ups.

Another recurring theme in Anger's films is the occult, particularly the symbolism of his own esoteric religion, Thelema. This is visible in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising, all of which are based on the Thelemite concept of the Aeon of Horus and feature actors portraying pagan gods. Anger linked the creation of film to the occult, particularly the practice of ceremonial magic, something of which Crowley had been a noted practitioner. Anger once said, "making a movie is casting a spell."[106]

One of the central recurring images in Anger's work is flames and light; Fireworks has various examples, including a burning Christmas tree. This relates to Lucifer, a deity to whom Anger devoted one of his films, whose name is Latin for "light bearer".[107]

In many of his films, heavy use is made of music, both classical and pop, to accompany the visual imagery. In Scorpio Rising he makes use of the 1950s/1960s pop songs "Torture" by Kris Jensen, "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March, and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton. He first used music to accompany visuals in the 1941 work Who Has Been Rocking My Dreamboat?, which uses tracks by the

Mills Brothers.[38] His use of popular music to accompany his films has been cited as a key influence on the development of music videos and MTV, although he stated his dislike for the music video industry. On one occasion the band Combustible Edison asked Anger to direct a video to accompany its song "Bluebeard"; he declined, believing that while music could be used to accompany film, it was pointless to do it the other way around.[38]

Awards

Personality and beliefs

If you are a member of the media, you belong to the public. You've made that Faustian bargain with your public. Take me – all of me – I'm yours.

—Kenneth Anger[113]

Anger was known for his reclusive nature and had been called an "extremely private individual",[95] although he gave various interviews over the years, including one with Rocco Castoro of Vice.[114][115][note 1] In such interviews, he refused to discuss his name change from Anglemyer to Anger, telling one interviewer: "You're being impertinent. It says 'Anger' on my passport. That's all you need to know. I would stay away from that subject if I were you."[31] But in a 2010 interview, he said: "I just condensed my name. I knew it would be like a label, a logo. It's easy to remember."[29]

Anger once joked that he was "somewhat to the right of the

KKK" in his views about black people,[116] opening him up to criticism for racism, though this was likely a "Crowley-esque joke".[116] He supported the Tibetan independence movement.[117]

Anger was a Thelemite and belonged to the main Thelemic organization,

Satanist.[29] He has called Wicca a "lunar", feminine religion in contrast to Thelema's "solar" masculinity.[117]

Filmography

Date Title Length Notes
1937 Ferdinand the Bull Lost film
1941–42 Tinsel Tree 3 mins. A silent black-and-white film that Anger personally hand tinted with gold-scarlet over the flames. It featured a Christmas tree being dressed in decorations, before being shown stripped and bare and set on fire.[121]
1942 Prisoner of Mars 11 mins. A silent black-and-white film that mixes futuristic science fiction with the ancient Greek myth of the Minotaur. The plot revolves around a character, The Boy Elect from Earth, played by Anger himself, who is sent in a rocket to Mars where he finds himself in a labyrinth filled with the bones of other adolescents sent there in the past.[122]
1943 The Nest 20 mins. A silent black-and-white film in which a brother (played by Bob Jones) and sister (Jo Whittaker) are examining mirrors when a third figure (Dare Harris), causes them to act violently against one another, before a magical rite takes place in which the sister's binding spell is destroyed by the brother.[123]
1944 Demigods (Escape Episode) 35 mins. A silent black-and-white film based upon the ancient Greek myth of
Neo-Gothic church guarded by a religious fanatic (Nora Watson), till she is saved by a boy representing Perseus (Bob Jones).[124]
1945 Drastic Demise 5 mins. A silent black-and-white work filmed by Anger in Hollywood on
V-J Day. Consisting of footage of a celebratory crowd, it ends with an image of a nuclear mushroom cloud.[124]
1946 Escape Episode 27 mins. A shortened version of Demigods (Escape Episode), it features
Scriabin's The Poem of Ecstasy alongside the sounds of birds, wind and surf.[124]
1947 Fireworks 15 mins. Filmed in black and white, it is a
homoerotic
work seen through the eyes of the protagonist, played by Anger himself.
1949 Puce Moment 6 mins. Filmed in color, starring Yvonne Marquis as a celebrity in her home, and featuring music by Jonathan Halper, Puce Moment lasted only one scene and portrays her examining her dresses and perfume.[125]
1949 The Love That Whirls unknown Influenced by
Aztec civilisation, and featured a youth who was chosen to be king for a year before being ritually sacrificed. The film was subsequently destroyed at the Eastman-Kodak developing plant, who objected to its theme and nudity.[125]
1950 Rabbit's Moon 16 mins (1971)
7 mins (1979)		 Filmed in 35 mm, it is set in a small wooded glade where a clown stares up at the moon, in which a rabbit lives.
1951–52 Les Chants de Maldoror unknown Based upon the 1868 novel by
Isidore Ducasse, Les Chants de Maldoror, only test shots were produced, in which he employed members of the Marquis de Cuevas ballet.[126]
1953 Eaux d'Artifice 12 mins. A short, monochromatic film appearing in dark blue, with only one moment of color – a woman opens a fan that glows in bright green. The woman appears in a gown stretching from neck to toe, wearing dark glasses and a feathered headdress. Water flows throughout, from fountains, and suggestively through the mouths and over the faces of statuary. Fluids sensually pulse and flow, reminiscent of sexual climax. In the end the woman steps from a door seemingly from the side of a fountain, and is herself transformed into water. The film is set to the music of
Vivaldi's Winter Movement from the Four Seasons
.
1953 Le Jeune Homme et la Mort unknown Based upon the ballet by Jean Cocteau, this silent black-and-white film starred Jean Babilee as a young man and Nathalie Philipart as Death. It was a 16 mm pilot designed to be used to raise funds to produce a 35 mm Technicolor version, but the funding for this never materialized.[127]
1954 Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome 38 mins.
1955 Thelema Abbey 10 mins. A short, black-and-white documentary on Aleister Crowley's Abbey of Thelema in Sicily, which examined many of the exotic frescoes, a study in which Anger was assisted by sexologist Alfred Kinsey.[126]
1961 L'Histoire d'O 20 mins. Based upon
sado-masochistic sexual activities of a heterosexual couple. Anger would later relate that the money provided for the film had been a part of the ransom paid to the kidnappers of Eric Peugeot, heir to the Peugeot car company fortune.[128]
1963 Scorpio Rising 29 mins.
1965 Kustom Kar Kommandos 3 mins. In color, set to the tones of "Dream Lover" by The Paris Sisters, several handsome young men stand admiringly over the chassis of a souped-up hot rod. A young man slowly works the chamois over the chrome and paint of the machine. The young man now smartly dressed in matching pastel blue gets behind the wheel and begins to work the controls. Finally the engine revs and the car rolls away.[citation needed]
1969 Invocation of My Demon Brother 12 mins. In color, with an
Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger. The film features an array of occult symbols and activities, including a Satanic funeral for a cat. Demon Brother also includes Anton LaVey as a priest, newsreel footage of the Vietnam War, and clips of The Rolling Stones' July 1969 free concert in London's Hyde Park, their first public appearance after the death of Brian Jones and their first performance with Mick Taylor. Also shown in the concert footage are Jagger's then-girlfriend and pop singer Marianne Faithfull and Keith Richards' wife, actress Anita Pallenberg. Demon Brother is mostly assembled from footage for Anger's original version of Lucifer Rising, including scenes of future Manson Family associate Bobby Beausoleil
in the titular role.
1970–1980 Lucifer Rising 29 mins.
1976 Senators in Bondage Announced, but never produced[129]
1977 Matelots en Menottes Announced, but never produced[129]
1979 Denunciation of Stan Brakhage 7 mins. Announced, but never produced[129]
2000 Don't Smoke That Cigarette! 45 mins.
2000 Hollywood Babylon 4 mins. Co-directed with Nico B.
2002 The Man We Want to Hang 12 mins. Images of artworks by or related to Aleister Crowley with music by
Anatol Liadov
2004 Anger Sees Red 4 mins. Comprises footage of a muscled man, who identifies himself only as "Red", walking through a park and sunbathing, at which he is seen by Anger himself, who is also in the park, before subsequently returning home.[citation needed]
2004 Patriotic Penis
2005 Mouse Heaven 11 mins. A montage of Mickey Mouse memorabilia from the 1920s and 1930s, accompanied by contemporary jazz music[citation needed]
2007 Elliott's Suicide 15 mins.
2007 I'll Be Watching You 5 mins.
2007 Green Hell 4 mins.
2007 My Surfing Lucifer 4 mins. Color with no sound; "A Tribute to my Surfing Pal Adolph Bunker Spreckels III" "BUNKY". A young man with a white Mercedes, the rolling waves breaking on the beach, the surfers riding them in. The film ends with a closeup of the skinned elbow of the surfer, presumably abraded during a wipeout.[citation needed]
2008 Foreplay 7 mins.
2008 Ich Will! 35 mins.
2008 Uniform Attraction 21 mins.
2010 Missoni 2 mins. 32 secs.

Books

Year Title Other
1959 Hollywood Babylon Anger's most famous work. This book is about the sordid rumors he heard about Hollywood celebrities while living in Los Angeles.
1961 A History of Eroticism An introduction to Lo Duca's book.
1970 Atlantis: The Lost Continent An introduction to Aleister Crowley's book.
1984 Hollywood Babylon II The sequel of Hollywood Babylon. Featuring scandals from after the first book was published.
2001 Suicide in the Entertainment Industry With David K. Frasier.
20?? Hollywood Babylon III Written and completed but never published.[29] According to Anger, the book was finished by 2010 but its release was cancelled owing to accusations against actor Tom Cruise and other practitioners of Scientology[29] and that because he criticized Scientology in that chapter, he faced a certain lengthy and costly lawsuit from its official organization, the Church of Scientology, which are notoriously litigious, if it was ever published. Another book, Hollywood Babylon: It's Back! written by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince was published in 2008 and purported to be part III of the Hollywood Babylon series. However, Anger had no involvement with it whatsoever. Indeed, Anger was so upset with this unauthorized work that he used his Thelema magick to curse Porter and Prince.[130]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Anger actually turned 81 in 2008 but claimed to be younger, as he had repeatedly done throughout his life.

Citations

  1. ^ Hunter 2002, p. 108
  2. ^
    The Kinsey Institute, Spotlight on the Collections: Filmmaker Kenneth Anger Archived March 10, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
    2004. Retrieved June 1, 2010.
  3. ^ Svede, Mark Allen (2002). "Anger, Kenneth". glbtq. Archived from the original on May 26, 2006.
  4. ^ Robey, Tim. "Was 'It girl' Clara Bow the real-life epitome of Babylon – or one of predatory Hollywood's earliest victims?". The Telegraph. Retrieved January 4, 2023.
  5. ^ Landis 1995, p. 24
  6. ISBN 0-313-30199-9
    .
  7. ^ Lachman, p. 19
  8. ^ Landis 1995, p. 195
  9. ^ "Kenneth Anger: Where the Bodies Are Buried". January 3, 2014.
  10. ^ Landis 1995, p. 5
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Works cited

  • Hunter, Jack, ed. (2002). Moonchild. The Films of Kenneth Anger: Persistence of Vision Volume 1. London: Creation Books.
    ISBN 978-1-84068-029-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link
    )
  • Lachman, Gary. "Kenneth Anger: The Crowned and Conquered Child". Anger: Magick Lantern Cycle (DVD booklet). British Film Institute.
  • Landis, Bill (1995). Anger: The Unauthorized Biography of Kenneth Anger. HarperCollins Publishers.
    ISBN 978-0-06-016700-4
    .

Further reading

External links

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