Scorpio Rising (1964) Queer Film (B)

DIRECTOR: Kenneth Anger

In 1964, underground, experimental and queer filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who was a friend and colleague of Curtis Harrington, released his magnum opus, a short film entitled Scorpio Rising.  Approximately 29 minutes long and virtually without dialogue, it follows a group of young bikers preparing themselves and their motorcycles for a night out. But Anger turns the ritual into an intensely homoerotic spectacle: leather, chains, boots, bare male bodies, motorcycles, fetishized dressing and grooming, and lingering close-ups of men become an erotic vocabulary.  There is no conventional gay romance or coming-out narrative, but the camera’s desire is unmistakably directed toward men. The biker becomes an erotic object.  Anger also mixes this with images of James Dean, Marlon Brando, Nazi imagery, Christianity and the occult, collapsing apparently contradictory systems of male worship into one another: movie-star worship, biker masculinity, fascistic masculinity, religious worship and sexual fetishism. The result is both celebration and parody.  The soundtrack is crucial.  Anger assembled contemporary pop records—including “Blue Velvet,” “Wind-Up Doll,” “My Boyfriend’s Back,” “He’s a Rebel,” and “I Will Follow Him”—and juxtaposed them with the images.  This was revolutionary.  Rather than conventional scoring, existing pop songs comment ironically and erotically on what we’re watching.  It anticipates the pop-song montage techniques of later filmmakers, including Scorsese, and the music video art form as it stands from the late 1970s until today.  Initially banned following a brief showing at a Los Angeles theatre, the ban was overruled by the California Supreme Court in December of ’64.  Although a short film, and therefore not listed with the 88 queer films in this book, Scorpio Rising has its place in queer cinema history.

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