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?

"Lucifer Rising" is without a doubt one of the trademark films of director Kenneth Anger, even if it not even half an hour long. There's no doubt that the today 86-year old-filmmaker really shows a very unique approach in almost all his works. However, I have to say that "Lucifer Rising" could not wow me the way I hoped it would. While it's occasionally breathtakingly beautiful and visually impressive from start to finish, most of the other aspects were rather disappointing. And that includes especially the soundtrack. i'm not sure why Anger decided to let convicted murderer Bobby Beausoleil do the job. Maybe it was his background history and he hoped to add a bit of controversy this way to the movie. However, he really shouldn't have gone for a guy which has never scored a film before and with whom cooperation will be difficult due to him being in jail and how he can't just come over to work on the matter together. They say the best soundtrack is the one you don't even perceive while watching a film. I clearly perceived this one and mostly not in a good way.My favorite part of the film was, without a doubt the first sequence. It includes the stunning Myriam Gibril, who sadly almost did no further movie work at all afterward contrary to her co-star Marianne Faithful, as Isis, a perfect casting decision and her longtime partner Donald Cammell as Osiris. Both are perfectly cast for their respective characters. While the cinematography in this short film is magnificent, as mentioned earlier, also most of the costumes, mainly including Isis' and Osiris dresses, and set decorations couldn't have been much better. I'd recommend to watch the first sequence, which I'd definitely recommend, and, then decide for yourself if it's worth going on.

Among the 1960's counterculture philosophy of moral liberation, free-love, and flower-power utopianism were dark stirrings which came to a malignant fruition with the Rolling Stones' disastrous Altamont festival and the Tate/LaBianca slayings courtesy of Charles Manson's "family", thus bringing the fledgling Aquarian age to an abrupt end. And what, you may ask, has any of this to do with 'Lucifer Rising'? And well, the answer, is everything(!) as the 1960s were essentially an unconscious mass evocation of English Occultist Aleister Crowley's oft misunderstood maxim "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law"...and no other figure has done more to promote the name and work of Crowley in the arena of popular culture than Kenneth Anger.Fascinated by fame (especially its darker aspects) from an early age, Anger had long been a fringe figure in Hollywood making and independently distributing obscure, homo-erotic, and occult inspired works that eventually attracted Their Satanic Majesties themselves the Rolling Stones. Anger was attracted to the power and pop-culture shamanic potency wielded by rock stars, and none more so than Mick Jagger who, hard as it is to believe these days, was back then viewed by parents and moral guardians as an androgynous, drug-addled threat to society. Perfect casting then, Anger reasoned, to play the part of Lucifer in his Magnum Opus 'Lucifer Rising'.In the end Jagger chickened out, eventually leaving the role to be played by unknown Leslie Huggins. However, despite the lead role being played by an unknown, the film still boasts Donald Cammell (writer/director of 'Performance') as Osiris and Marianne Faithful as Lilith who play out a bizarre archetypal psychodrama against stunning backdrops of giant statues in Egypt, including, most evocatively, the Sphinx. Originally, the soundtrack was to be composed by Led Zeppelin guitarist, and fellow Crowley devotee, Jimmy Page (who puts in a blink-and-you'll-miss-him cameo) but owing to contractual obligations with Led Zeppelin he was only able to complete 22 minutes worth of material and was subsequently fired from the project following a bitter fallout with Anger. Eventually the soundtrack was composed by Manson "family" member Bobby Beausoleil (Anger's original choice for the role of Lucifer but who had a disagreement with Anger and buried the original print of the movie in the Death Valley desert forcing Anger to reshoot the film) whilst serving a prison sentence for his part in the murders performed under the orders of the counterculture anti-messiah Charles Manson. The soundtrack itself is part chilling, haunting soundscape and part dynamic quasi-classical rock opus which has a magnetic and spellbinding quality which complements the film in a way impossible to imagine from any other composition.So, all told, 'Lucifer Rising' is more than a short film, and more than a work of art…even though the film is an exemplary example of both. However, more than these, it is the tortured result of a labour of love more than a decade long (filming began in 1966 yet was only finally released in 1980) which serves as a curious post-script to an era of fervent creativity in music, film, and art as well as being a curious admonition to those that seek unadulterated spiritual and moral exploration in the name of "Do what thou wilt" that with such potent virtues come all-encompassing costs.

So if you've seen Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Scorpio Rising, and Invocation of My Demon Brother, you'll know what to expect in Lucifer Rising, right? WRONG. Anger got his hands on some special effects, film printing, and new film stock footage, and made something unique in his own oeuvre, not to mention basically unparalleled anywhere else in the history of cinema. Starting with some bubbling cauldrons in the form of active volcanoes, he goes through a short tour of some of the world's most famous pagan areas of worship (Egyptian pyramids, Stonehenge, etc.) and, with some mightily skillful transitioning, turns the world into a vessel for the ... well... Rising of said Lucifer. This goes on for a while, gaining momentum and getting ever the more abstract as peoples from different nations and settings join in the festivities, until aliens appear. No, literally. It's all in the creation of a new symbol that represents Dr. Anger himself, a sort of sigil that you can see printed on some of his movies and recently on the Films of Kenneth Anger compilations.What's spectacular here is the color. Anger turns some of the color hues and tones you associate with tarot cards and brightly painted Satanism (as opposed to the darker, more firey stuff) and makes an entire movie out of that sense of primaries and contrasts. In doing so, he successfully recreates an entire new world, one that you explore visually and viscerally with him. Kudos goes to the guy who did the soundtrack (I forget his name) for matching that sense of color and space in the music, their cooperation turning the entire movie into a psychedelic awakening into Anger's own spiritual beliefs. It's like getting sucked into a religious demonstration without intending to, and for those who find Anger's belief remiss, this movie can be horrifying. Otherwise, for those just interested in his own idiosyncratic view of the world, Lucifer Rising is a coming-into-his-own unmatched and unexpected by his previous work.Also features Donald Cammell who, like Anger, made a darker-side-of-counterculture movie with Mick Jagger, called Performance. With Marianne Faithful and Jimmy Page, Anger certainly pulled together a unique collaboration here.