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Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

You don't have to be a scholar of the avant-garde/experimental scene to realize that Kenneth Anger IS trying to invoke something with his short film. A hypnotic nightmare, a devilish delirium, a dervish dance, a chaotic panorama of sights and sounds plucked straight from the late sixties hippie melting pot, pulsating with frenzied energy, convulsing and threatening to spiral out of control at every turn. The imagery Anger employs is an eclectic mix of Hell's Angels denim, occult liturgy, caleidscopic nightmares, religious iconography, hell, he even throws a Nazi flag in for good measure, and everything coalesces in a helter skelter of diabolic psychedelia. Yet what must have been a completely alien experience back in 1969 seems familiar territory by now - mostly because a lot of what Anger was doing back then, both in terms of imagery and execution, has been appropriated by the music video industry the past twenty years. Speaking of music, Mick Jagger's hypnotic score was as ahead of its time as the film itself. A must-see for the adventurous viewer.

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.

I'm not really sure why I've repeatedly given Kenneth Anger's films a chance, considering how I've loathed the experience of viewing every single one of them, but seeing INVOCATION OF MY DEMON BROTHER tonight was officially my last attempt.Basically, with this film Anger shot a bunch of disjointed scenes that he could loosely tie together with some high-school-level occult imagery, and tacked on a long, droning soundtrack which I assume was meant to mesmerize us into a submission of the "possessed". Not even a good try. Wigged-out hippies smoking pot from a ceramic skull, some twitchy-eyed albino kid, a couple nude guys on a couch, tacky use of a kaleidoscopic filter, bad superimposed tattoos, a couple shots of The Rolling Stones in concert, and some loser performing dollar-store occult rituals all flip back and forth on the screen without much use of engaging pacing or interplay. Even Satanic butt-kisser Anton Le Vey turns up dressed like a reject from an lost episode of Batman, circa 1966.So typical, non-engaging, amateurish and lacking real passion or discipline it's maddening. Then again, maybe I needed to be right stoned out of my mind to get the "deep and hidden meanings, man". Yeah, right.How Anger ever posited himself amongst the leading American avant-garde filmmakers of his generation, and still retains a level of reverence when he created "esoteric" palp like INVOCATION is truly frustrating and stupefying to say the least. It is rare that I can say I genuinely hated a film, or the experience of having viewed it, but in this case I really feel I need to warn others to avoid this film at all costs.1/10. A shameful and putrid waste of time and celluloid.