Scorpio Rising (film)

Scorpio Rising is structured in four parts. In "Boys & Bolts" men work on their motorcycles. They dress themselves in leather and pose. "Image Maker" introduces the biker Scorpio. He gets ready to go out, and the film begins intercutting images of Jesus. "Walpurgis Party" shows a biker Sabbath. Their behavior escalates as they moon each other, simulate sodomy, and strip one man's clothes off and cover his genitals in mustard. In the final part "Rebel Rouser", Scorpio holds a destructive ceremony, intercut with images of Jesus, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi iconography. A biker crashes, with the final shot showing the words "Blessed Blessed Oblivion" tattooed on his arm. ==Production==

Casting After living in Europe for several years, Anger returned to the United States, staying in Brooklyn, New York with Marie Menken and Willard Maas. He encountered a group of bikers who met at Coney Island every weekend. He got to know them by photographing their bikes. Anger's first choice for the lead actor was Jim Powers; however, Powers died in a car crash. Anger was in Times Square when he first met Richard MacAulay, who went by the name Bruce Byron as an homage to James Byron Dean. Byron also used his astrological sign Scorpio as a nickname, which became the name of the main character. He carried around an amulet with a scorpion for good luck. Byron was an ex-Marine. Byron's home was decorated with picture of his idols, James Dean and Marlon Brando. By chance, Brando's appearance in The Wild One was broadcast while they were filming, so Anger shot it off of the television. "His favorite reading material was the comics", and Anger used images from ''Li'l Abner''. Anger shot Byron snorting methamphetamine. Anger's design makes extensive use of non-diegetic lighting, rendering his subjects in non-natural hues for artistic effect. In Los Angeles, Anger met a model from Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild. He filmed the man in a leather jacket. "This image is a conscious homage to the physique pictorial art of my friend Bob Mizer that had a physique magazine called Physique Pictorial...sort of like, deliberate, self-conscious posing." Biographer Bill Landis suggests that Anger more likely purchased the film in a camera store. In contrast to many of his other films which use dissolves to create a dreamlike mood, Anger relies exclusively on direct cuts in Scorpio Rising. Anger described his discovery of Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" as "magick". He had music selected for rest of "Boys & Bolts" but needed a song for the scenes where the bikers dress themselves. He turned on the radio and "exercised his will", and "Blue Velvet" was playing. Anger decided to pay for the rights to the songs so that he could submit Scorpio Rising to film festivals. The clearance cost him $8,000, amounting to roughly half of the film's budget. ==Music==

Scorpio Rising is considered by some to be the first drama film to feature a rock and roll soundtrack. Anger's use of music was inspired by the experience of seeing people at Coney Island playing music out of their radios. • Ricky Nelson – "Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread)" • Little Peggy March – "Wind-Up Doll" • The Angels – "My Boyfriend's Back" • Bobby Vinton – "Blue Velvet" • Elvis Presley – "(You're the) Devil in Disguise" • Ray Charles – "Hit the Road Jack" • Martha and the Vandellas – "(Love Is Like a) Heat Wave" • The Crystals – "He's a Rebel" • Claudine Clark – "Party Lights" • Kris Jensen – "Torture" • Gene McDaniels – "Point of No Return" • Little Peggy March – "I Will Follow Him" • The Surfaris – "Wipe Out" ==Release==

screening of Scorpio Rising with Chafed Elbows by Robert Downey Sr., 1966 The film premiered on October 29, 1963, at the Gramercy Arts Theater in New York City. It was screened at the in 1963 and the International West German Short Film Festival in 1964. When Bleecker Street Cinema in Greenwich Village switched from being a repertory cinema to a first-run theater, its first program was a double bill of Scorpio Rising and The Brig by Jonas Mekas. It continually drew large crowds, with lines around the block. Byron showed up regularly on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle and greeted attendees. Within the rising underground film scene, Scorpio Rising became the most widely distributed movie. Its popularity was credited with igniting leather gear and motorcycles as a fad in New York. The police were ultimately called to the site and arrested the theater manager for public obscenity and canceled the film's run. This happened March 7, 1964 at the Cinema Theater. Michael Getz was arrested and charged for screening the film. Prosecutor Warren Wolfe argued that Scorpio Risings homosexual content was a "depiction of certain degenerate activity", and therefore obscene. He asserted that, for a few frames in the part scene, a man's penis was visible. The judge ruled that the film was obscene, and Getz was convicted. The case was appealed to the California Supreme Court, where the case was settled in Getz's favor. This happened on December 19, 1964. It cost the Cinema Theater $7,000 to defend itself in court. Anger explained in an interview: The Nazi Party sued Anger for defamation. The Lutheran Church sued him for copyright infringement, but his use was found to be fair use. ==Critical response==

Scorpio Rising was praised by West Coast critics upon its initial release. When screened in New York City in 1964, the film garnered additional positive reviews from The New Yorker, Variety and Newsweek. A 1966 review by Brendan Gill called it "a strong and, despite its unpleasant subject matter, beautiful movie". Nora Sayre of The New York Times reviewed the film in 1975 stating, "Oddly enough, the references to the nineteen-fifties, which seemed dated and rather ponderous in 1965, don't make the film appear old-fashioned now. Admittedly, one then saw it in an unfortunate context – draped in the mystique of the underground, when a number of inferior films employed some similar imagery, such as the juxtaposition of Christ and hipsters, or close-ups of all-purpose skulls. But after a decade's education in put-ons, one can savor the impudent freshness of Scorpio today." ==Legacy==

Scorpio Rising is now recognized as a predecessor to the development of the music video. Director Martin Scorsese, having seen the film at a screening by Mekas during the mid-1960s, has cited the film as a major influence on his work. He stated that "the way Anger used music in that film, in such perfectly magical harmony with the images, opened my thinking about the role music could play in movies." John Waters has similarly pointed to the use of music in Scorpio Rising as influential. Nicolas Winding Refn identified the film as an inspiration for Bronson and Drive. The title of his 2009 film Valhalla Rising is an homage to Anger's Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising. In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, the film received votes from five film critics and one director. Scorpio Rising is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection. In 2022, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The third album by British electronic band Death in Vegas takes its name from the film. The band asked Anger to make an accompanying film, to which he responded, "I haven't even listened to your squalid little dirge." In 2012, British indie pop band Peggy Sue released a cover album with 12 of 14 songs from the film's soundtrack. ==See also==