Invocation of My Demon Brother

A very worthwhile freak-deaky experience. In this film's short lifespan it takes you on a wild ride using techniques that have become common place in modern cinema. The music by Mick Jagger that is oh so memorable. The jump cuts, the shot-layering, the changing of frame rate is so definitively anger that you would be daft to confuse it with anyone's else work. The way that Anger tries to shove you head first into the occult is just breathtaking. You go into some kind of trance state with this film. To view Satan as he appears in this film is truly changing. Any film student interested in making an impact on film today has to see this picture. Anger made his first film at 15, he was young when he made this one too. This is a film that pushes the envelope. We don't need anymore formulaic boring action movies, we need people like this willing to push the limits of the medium and mess with your mind.

This is from the second DVD of a set called "The Films of Kenneth Anger"--a collection of avant garde films by this odd film maker. I found the first disk to be more satisfying--the second has a lot about Aleister Crowley and Satanism that I found a bit dreary.

This film is purely for someone who loves art films and has a very, very high tolerance for this sort of thing. While my tolerance is higher than the average viewer, I found this entire short filled with self-indulgence and silly imagery. I am sure that the folks who made this film loved it, as did their friends, but I seriously doubt that more than 1 or 2 in 100 who might otherwise see it actually enjoying the film. It's just NOT a film for the average viewer.

It consists of lots of bizarre imagery, an albino, references to Satanism and various ancient religions, rituals, pot use, dead cats, dead cat heads, a visit from Anton LaVey (founder of The First Church of Satan) in Satanic regalia (looking a lot like 'Hot Stuff' the cartoon character, actually) and lots of crotch shots of naked men. To each his own...

By the way, for a great practical joke, show this to your mother or some of your friends and insist with a straight face that it's the greatest film ever made. Then wait to see their reactions! Be sure to get it all on video or digital film.

I'm sorry. Some things don't stand the test of time. I lived through all this stuff when everyone was smoking or taking acid and thought these kinds of films were so cool. Now they seem laughable. Apparently, this helped to put the Rolling Stones' Satan stuff in some sort of visual realm. Instead, it looks like something a bunch of high school kids did in their art class. Throbbing and endless.

Ever since his rampantly homo-erotic debut 'Fireworks' (1947) whilst still a teenager, Kenneth Anger has carved out for himself a singular reputation as a movie-maker whose films willfully transgress society's limits in search of mystical self-awareness. To this end, 'Scorpio Rising' (1964) is a blasphemous homo-sexual biker fantasy writ large while his magnum opus 'Lucifer Rising' (1972) is a gorgeous esoteric rite dedicated to Lucifer himself as well as English occultist (once dubbed "the wickedest man in the world") Aleister Crowley. 'Invocation of my Demon Brother' (1969) sits between these two career defining films and, to be honest, I only find it interesting in that respect. More specifically, the film itself is a 10 minute montage of a Black Albino, some naked men, people jamming and smoking in proper 60s fashion, shots of Anger himself performing a ritual to invoke a new Aeon (replete with Swastika), and a whole host of striking effects done with lights and different lenses, all sound-tracked by a deliberately monotonous moog synthesizer soundtrack courtesy of Mick Jagger who also pops up in a couple of shots. However, two other cameos are of note: the first is long-time friend, and founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey while the other is his former protégée (and later Manson Family member) Bobby Beausoleil who is still in prison for murder. Indeed, the fragmentary nature of 'Invocation…' comes from the fact that the footage was originally part of the original version of 'Lucifer Rising' but an argument Anger had with Beausoleil over money led to Beausoleil running off with the print whereby he inadvertently met Charles Manson who buried the film in the desert. The result? 'Invocation…' was stitched together and released and as it stands lacks the sumptuous, haunting visuals of films like 'Eaux d'artifice' (1953) or 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome' (1954), the feverish homo-eroticism of 'Fireworks' or 'Scorpio Rising', or the esoteric narrative grandeur of 'Lucifer Rising'. And yet…it's a film I find myself returning to. Perhaps this is somehow due to the fact that, although always ambiguous about his relationship to Satanism – preferring instead to promote solar worship and Thelema (the religion founded by his occult idol Crowley) – Anger has declared 'Invocation…' to be his most "satanic" film. Maybe it's this, or maybe it's just that I am very forgiving of the film as I value it as a sub-cultural document inextricably entwined with the dark-side of the sixties as well as an interesting interim feature between two career peaks. In conclusion, I can only recommend it to people with a similar niche interest as a casual viewer will probably find nothing of interest here.

There is a difference between "trippy" and "psychedelic." "Trippy" is what people who mostly have never had psychedelic experiences ascribe to weirdness in art, and "psychedelic" is art - be it music or film or whatever - that simulates or outright induces a state of altered consciousness as a proxy or alternative to psychedelic drugs, dream states, meditation, etc.

People really like to pat themselves on the back a lot in their neurotic quest to dismiss all 60s or occult techniques, imagery, sounds, tropes, whatever. I can understand this to some degree. A lot of the 60s was just goofy. The case I'd make for this and Lucifer Rising is that this is about as good as this kind of thing can be done.

It is not for everyone.

Here Anger turns everything up to 11 in a relentless torrent of Thelemic, Satanic, and Nazi imagery, nudity, drug use, and blasphemy.

This is a psychedelic film or, I guess, if you're just too hip or grounded or intellectual or contemporary or whatever for Kenneth Anger, an attempt at one. The purpose here is to get on top of you, by which I mean, tap a nerve. This is a torrent of input - visual and aural - pumped mercilessly into the viewer's senses.

The disturbing soundtrack, varying film speeds, interlaced light effects and occult imagery (flashing unicursal hexagrams, etc.) are clearly meant to unsettle and induce a state of altered consciousness of some sort, but in my case it just kind of made me uncomfortable. In a good way. This is not to say a pleasant way. An effective way. (Is this film itself, a magickal working of sorts?)

I can't help it. I like this, even if I don't *enjoy* it exactly. This is not an exploitation film. This is the real deal: the Age of Horus spontaneously exploding through (and nearly obliterating) the Age of Aquarius.

Evil hippies, man.

I found this nightmarish, frantic, and disconcerting. I suppose if you can simply dismiss the whole of the 1960s and the whole of the occult of the time, you can dismiss this, too. I'm just not that cool I guess.

Worth a watch as art and as film-making with a different purpose than usual (while this is entertaining, I don't think this was conceived of as primarily "entertainment").

There's no plot here. If you need one, don't bother. Watch with an open mind.

Then go to Church after.