TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

MisterWhiplash Lucifer Rising is a film that is jam-packed for all of its 28 minutes with images that are meant to do two different things depending on two different groups are watching: if you don't really know that much about all of the potent symbols and totems and markers and all of the things that link Satan and Lucifer and Hell to things like the Egyptians and the pyramids, then that's one thing. If you do know all about Mr. Crowley and his teachings and prophecies and so on and know what the images are meant to reference, then it'll likely be the blast of a lifetime. What I know is closer to the former, yet what I responded to most was Anger as a *filmmaker*, what he was trying to do and to make it both provocative and yet something that's, I suppose for him, easy to slip in to.Now, I don't know all of the details of how Anger came to be among Satanists and other cultists (though the note that the composer of the film, Bobby Beausoleil, was a part of the Manson family and wrote/performed the psychedelic early Pink Floyd-era style soundtrack is one of the most disquieting things ever), but I have to assume that he wasn't born into it or raised with Satanists (they really came to be a 'thing' actually in the 70's, with Anton Levay and so on), so there's an element of indoctrination that makes the film so fascinating.For about less than a minute of Lucifer Rising we see someone in a room reading a book (the camera pans back and forth and we see briefly what he's reading, only enough to gleam bits and pieces, and then an image of a devil or Satan fornicating), and I thought this worked well as a metaphor for the movie itself: Anger may be out to do something transcendent, but elementally it's all about consciousness expansion, and even if we don't come in knowing all of the representations of what this woman in Egyptian garb means or this guy in a cloak or that guy going naked into a tub, there's something about it all that feels like you're being taught some secrets, things that you certainly were NOT taught if you went to Sunday school (or if you're agnostic/atheist it's just alien information).The other thing that makes the movie so evocative and moving in its gonzo form is that it's also, most likely, about some kind of transformation. There's another character - of course no one has names here, unless one counts the fact that a guy at one point puts on a jacket that has "Lucifer" on the back (a possible in-joke, or just a running motif, following from Scorpio Rising) - a young woman who is climbing up a mountainside. What is she going for? Well, because she is being called? Or because there's something that simply compels and orders her to come. There's no great mission we're seeing, no little girl that'll be possessed in Washington DC and a horror movie will come out of it (though that was going on at the time as well in cinema). Things presented to us amount to... you're currently just a man, or a woman, but what if you could be something more, perhaps? This is experimental cinema, so many of the images will appear obtuse to those who come in to it cold. But the feeling of things constantly being ominous, of spells being cast and a cultish atmosphere, where people succumb and give in to someone else - giving up their power for someone else, essentially, and it all leading up to a giant, uh, space-ship that floats across the pyramids of Egypt (fx by Wally Weavers of 2001 by the way!) - and that I can understand. If a good deal of it flew over my head that may just be my problem. It certainly, at the least, makes me curious to know more about how many of these images connect and make into a whole 'Raising up Lucifer' story, to which a resurrection plot, however it's really relayed out here, is one that involves a mission and followers and invocations and incantations and other 'ations'.Or it may be a load of pretentious crank, but I don't think it's fair to discredit it too easily. This is someone who's seen some things and, in his own warped and yet not hard to look at way, and it's an extremely well shot presentation that, once you get into its somewhat languid rhythm, is crisply edited, you know you've seen the dark side. Whether you decide to fully go there... well, I leave that to you. But as a film in and of itself, for what it's trying to do, it's eerie and effective and totally unique - and does it get much more, frankly, 'evil' than to have a Manson family member do the score?

peefyn I think the most interesting about this short is the back story, which I highly recommend reading up on. For good or for worse, the back story alone makes this movie notable.When it comes to the movie itself, it's visually stunning and the music is brilliant. And that's about it. As an art flick, there's not meant to be an explicit storyline, so if you are not comfortable with that, this movie will probably not be very enjoyable as a "short" - but maybe as a music video of sorts. The previously mentioned music and visuals are good and match somewhat, so watching this is a good way to let your mind wander.If you are interested in the occult/spiritual world Anger taps into in his shorts, then you might get a kick out of this just for that. To me, that's less interesting. While I made an effort to connect the images with ideas and concepts that might lie behind them - I eventually lost interest and started following my own trains of thought.

MartinHafer If you are a friend of Kenneth Anger or are into ancient religions and the works of Aleister Crowley, then this film is for you. Or, if you've suffered a massive head injury or have done some LSD, then this film ALSO is for you. Otherwise, I just can't imagine anyone enjoying this very self-indulgent film.This film is inexplicable and according to Kenneth Anger's commentary track, it isn't up to the actors (and audience) to understand the meaning of the film--he understands it. The film consists of lots of ancient Egyptian gods walking about the desert, gods walking about ancient German ceremonial rocks, a lot of nudes and a final shot of a UFO flying over the ancient Egyptian ruins.As I watched this and listened to Anger's commentary, I was amazed that he was able to get a lot of people to get involved with this bizarre little art film/recruitment poster for the Aleister Crowley fan club. In fact, I watched all the films with the commentary track on and this is the only one in which I doubted the speaker's sanity. His talk about one person in the film being a living demon in human form (he was serious about this), the 911 conspiracy and his tales about UFOs was all rather disturbing...but also quite funny--making this very tedious and self-indulgent film a lot more enjoyable.

nnad Entertaining, slow moving, insightful, and sometimes shocking fourth installment to the Kenneth Anger short film collection; it possesses all these attributes, as well as being influential to experimental directors of today. A lot of what Anger was doing in "Invocation of My Demon Brother" (film layers, fast edits, bizarre soundtracks) can be seen in most of the music videos on MTV; a characteristic that has driven parents, as well as teenagers, crazy. The primary source of these ideas came from the Acid Trip footage, extensively explicated in Tom Wolfe's lysergic-fused biographical novel, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." Nevertheless, the idea caught on and Anger utilized the technique to the fullest in "Demon Brother," counterweighted by an equivocal tape-loop supplied by Mick Jagger. In the second film "Lucifer Rising," Anger had already developed his experimentation with edits and layers, this time presenting a more formalized run to the film. Marianne Faithful makes an appearance in the film, as well as an assortment of 60's notables, which includes Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil who also wrote the film's score. Altho not Anger's best volume, (Scorpio Rising is the better) it still has many elements -- as I explained -- that will turn some people on; ergo, a cult following.