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phi23

Gone But Not Forgotten
(ACCOUNT RETIRED)
Joined
Aug 19, 2002
Messages
511
Does anyone know where I can get any Kenneth Anger films on video?
 
I think all of Anger's movies were available on Video in the UK a
few years ago, though they worked out quite expensively.

The Virgin Store in Manchester used to keep the Anger collection
in Four Volumes, I think. You could buy them separately but they
were at a premium price with quite short running times.

I recall that at least Fireworks and Scorpio Rising were to be seen
on UK Channel Four tv in the Eighties, even if Scorpio Rising was
trimmed for its "blasphemous" scene involving a crucifix.

But to appreciate these underground films properly, you need to
see them in ropey old prints at a Student Film Society. The titles
and the mouth-wateringly pretentious critiques from the bfi
journal or Sight & Sound were an essential part of the experience.

Now you've given me a craving to see again such weird works as
The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Never mind the movie, just
dig the title!

And as for the night when I discovered the Hollywood Babylon books
and wolfed two of them down. Poisonous bon-bons indeed! :eek:
 
Thanks guys - I'm based in Manchester too - and even got to see several of his films at the Cornerhouse a few months ago which is why I'm interested in getting them on video - there's a very good book of commentaries on his films in the Cornerhouse bookshop I can highly recommend.
 

Hollywood Babylon​

Assuming there are other fortean fans who have read this seminal sleaze/gossip book written by cult filmmaker Kenneth Anger - how much is verifiable from his book, versus how much is scalacious gossip?

I just wonder if anybody has ever challeneged any of the stories from his book as made up - like the lady who jumped to her death from the Hollywood sign, or the aging actress who was eaten by her dog, or things like that.

Then again, maybe nobody thinks of it at all anymore - any opinions/observations?
 
The sequels were catchpenny affairs and not a patch on the original
poisonous pot-pourri. I remember wolfing it down, like a dog does an
ultra ripe cow-pat. I felt slightly sick but hell it was irresistible!

I am sure that some of the tales can't be proved but many were drawn
from contemporary reports, gossip columns and the yellow
press. Hollywood Confidential was a real paper and the subject of a
recent documentary.

Whatever his Satanic motivations, Anger's magnum opus mainly has the ring
of Truth about it, for me. :cross eye
 
Having an unhealthy interest in the sleazy side of life I loved the books but took most of the stories witha huge pinch of salt. Most of it I suspect is hearsay but its a work of gossip and urban legend and therefore still interesting in a fortean sense.
 
I read it and enjoyed it for its insight into the dark underbelly of life amongst the cellulloid Gods and Goddesses. I got the impression it was a mixture of suppressed police reports, accurate gossip and the sort of insider stuff that comes from being in the loop.

I reckon if the stuff had been too far from the truth, law suits would have followed?
 
Haven't read the book - it's on my 'books to be read sometime' list for the reasons mentioned above by Blueswidow and James.

Carole
 
truth in anger

The girl who jumped from the Hollywood sign was a failed actress named Peg Entwhistle. Most of the stories in the first book have some factual basis. Anger's own claims about the book are odd. He says there are acrostic type messages hidden in the text that were too shocking or actionable to print normally. A few years ago someone wrote a biography Of Anger, a curious person with a strange range of interests.
 
Links...

Wasn't he follower of Crowely?

His experimental film have a lot of Magicakal content.
 
Yup and yup. I've seen only three of his movies: Fireworks, Scorpio
Rising and The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. They used to be
standard Uni. Film Soc. fare. They can be found on video but I think
they need an after-hours quasi-illicit members-only screening feel to
be enjoyed at their best. Their gestures have been thoroughly pillaged
by film school graduates for the last thirty or forty years, so I don't know
how fresh or subversive they will seem to a modern audience. :confused:
 
Anger's films are really fun to watch. The second Lucifer Rising (the first was buried in the desert) had a soundtrack recorded in prision by one of the Manson Family, Bobby Brisolli (and it's pretty good pro/psych rock), and another short had music by Mick Jagger. In fact, he lived with the Rolling Stones for a while during their "Their Satanic Majesties Request" years...

I thought Hollywood Babylon was interesting, but it made me sick to my stomach a bit like when I read about true crime because of the luridness of it all.

Links:

Here is a multiple link listing
http://www.phinnweb.com/links/cinema/underground/anger/

an interview
http://www.nyuff.com/thirddegree/anger.src.html
 
Yeah Kenneth Anger is a Fascinating and disturbing character alright. You can still find his films on VHS (long due re-release on DVD though) If you can't find or afford the videos there's a brilliant book called "Moonchild: The Films of Kenneth Anger (Persistence of Vision Volume 1)" with plenty of excellent stills and commentry on the films, discussed here a while back.
 
Question

Ok, this thread's been dead for a while, but I need to ressurect it.

James Whitehead's tounge-in-cheek comments aside, are any of Mr Anger's films any good or, indeed, of much interest to a non-thelemite?

I ask in the purest innocence as one who has not seen any of his work, but the only real appraisals I can find are penned by either devotees or dismissives and are not terribly rounded.

I'll come clean now and admit that although I am a fan of so-called 'arty' films, I was only originally led to Anger via the whole Jimmy Page/Lucifer Rising connection.

Any recommendations?

About as far as I remember there's some early homo-erotic stuff, but as to whether any of it is watchable/intelligible I don't have the foggiest...
 
Hi Yithian,
Of the Anger films I've seen, "Inauguration of the pleasure dome" (1954-66), "Invocation of my demon brother" (1969) and "Lucifer rising" (1970-81) are the best. The film making is experimental in nature (some of the effects are quite amazing) and they are relatively short films with great soundtracks by the likes of Mick Jagger and Bobby Beausoleil. Martin Scorsese is a big fan and the films include such people as Anais Nin, Anton LaVey, Donald Cammell and Marian Faithfull. I'd really recommend you take a look at the book I linked to above, its full of very good commentry and fantastic stills from the films.
 
I've seen a few Anger films. They were interesting, but not really memorable or anything I'd recommend. Anger's movies suffer from what virtually all experimental movies do: they're too damned personalized and esoteric for the viewer to leave with anything much more than saying to themselves, "What the hell was that?"

I like Maya Deren's experimental shorts a tad more, but her work has the same problem.
 
Cheers

Cheers Pi & Agopogo.

I may have to have a peek at the films now, just out of curiosity, and if I ever get a window in my reading schedule, I'll check out the book you mention.
 
There is a great new book on Kenneth Anger out now, with liberal use of stills from his films:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/19...e&n=283155Kenneth Anger by Alice L. Hutchison
A book like this one is long, long overdue: a quality overview of one of the 20th century's most important and influential artists.

This book is thoroughly exceptional on all levels: the quality of both writing and image are very high, and there are plenty of both. Hutchison's writing is informed and clear. She does a great job at discussing the work and (most importantly) contextualizing it within broader cultural and counter-cultural happenings. In addition to her writing there are several contributions from Anger himself, as well as short essays by notable art critics like Carolee Schneemann. Also, there is a fair amount of archival materials, such as documents, letters from Anger to various friends and collaborators and so on. Although, as the writer notes in the preface, the book is not an exhaustive deconstruction of the artist's work, it is a highly satisfying and detailed overview of an amazing body of work.

The images in this book are absolutely beautiful. It is obvious that a lot of work went into their preparation and selection. Apparently, Anger himself approved the reproduction, englarment and restoration of the images. In addition to the film stills there are plenty of archival photos and promotional materials such as posters. There is a wealth of visual stimulation in this book! It's smartly designed also, containing a lot of visual information in an attractive lay out.

Another strong point of this publication is that, in addition to covering the artist's better-known works (The Magick Lantern films) there is a fair amount of information on lesser-known projects. In addition to the Lantern films, there are sections about little known documentaries (about Aleister Crowley, Elliot Smith and more), collaborations (with Stan Brakhage for example), and the artist's more recent work (1981 - 2004).

This book is worth your time and money. It will please Anger fans as well as serving to as a quality introduction to newcomers.

Now, hopefully, the films will finally see release on DVD this year!
 
"Mexican Spitfire" Mystery Solved After 7 Decades!

Beautiful actress Lupe Velez, the Sofia Vergara of her day, was famous for not only her passionate acting and love life (plenty of paramours and a marriage to "Tarzan" aka Johnny Weismuller) but also for a devastating tragedy and urban myth: that she died with her head in a toilet after committing suicide once she found out she was pregnant by a new lover who "didn't want to marry her."

It appears the tempestuous Lupe preferred death over unwed motherhood, and the actress carefully scripted the last moments of life. Her plan? Dress in a beautiful gown trimmed with flowers, lie down on her silk-covered movie star bed, overdose on Seconal sleeping pills and drift off to death.

But the scene didn't play out like the 36-year-old fiery bombshell intended, and gossip vultures descended. Word leaked out that the lifeless Lupe wasn't found sleeping peacefully on her bed, and rumors began to swirl, reaching an ugly crescendo in the underground best-selling book "Hollywood Babylon." Author Kenneth Anger claims Lupe was found drowned with her head in the toilet after throwing up the remains of a spicy last meal.


For years, fans and officials have searched unsuccessfully for death scene photos to prove once and for all what really happened the night of Dec. 14th, 1944 at Lupe Velez's Rodeo Drive home, but no pictures could be found and her file had mysteriously "disappeared" from the police department.

But now, thanks to a source close to the case, my co-author (of our book "Beverly Hills Confidential: A Century of Stars, Scandals and Murder) had found the only known official photo from the death scene. Here, published for the first time, a look at how Lupe Velez really died. Kenneth Anger got it wrong. Lupe was found on the floor, not in the bathroom "jammed down the toilet bowl" as he had written.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barbara-s ... 32978.html
 
'Hollywood Babylon' Author Kenneth Anger Isn't Surprised by Harvey Weinstein: Showbiz Is a "Synonym for Sin"
6:50 AM PST 11/9/2017 by Gary Baum

The industry's oldest living scandalmonger and pioneering queer filmmaker shrugs at the current state of industry infamy since Weinstein's fall.

It's Halloween. Two evenings have passed since Anthony Rapp went public with Kevin Spacey's alleged pedophilic advances. Tomorrow, Brett Ratner's and Dustin Hoffman's predacious behavior will make headlines. But for 90-year-old Hollywood enfant terrible Kenneth Anger — the pioneering gay underground filmmaker — the news since Harvey Weinstein's fall collectively elicits a shrug. After all, aside from his noted contributions to avant garde film (hailed by everyone from Scorsese to Sontag), Anger also is the industry's oldest living scandalmonger, the author of the 1970s best- seller Hollywood Babylon and its sequel — salacious and much disputed histories of Golden Age cinema.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...ey-weinstein-showbiz-is-a-synonym-sin-1055783
 
Nice to see he's still his old reprobate self, but I wish the interviewer had pressed him further, the stories emerging day by day are anything but pallid.
 
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