Popular reviews

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 3

  In an alternate universe, the soundtrack to this is a turning point in Mick Jagger's career. He split with the Stones, dropped the blues-appropriation, killed his pop influences, and went down a drug-addled (because it's only a little different) road into the avant garde. In such a reality, he was probably banned from Italy. In this reality, this is just a blip on his radar, a hippie-fueled exploration of Kenneth Anger's homoerotic mysticism that complements Lucifer Rising as almost a behind-the-scenes thing, but not quite. It'd count as a horror film, but in fairness, I think it rude to call Anton LaVey's Satanism "horror."

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  Review by Josh Lewis ★★★★

  ZAP YOU’RE PREGNANT THAT’S WITCHCRAFT

  [16mm]

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  Review by SilentDawn ★★★★

  75/100

  Anger's messiest, dabbling in insanity before plunging in and leaving us behind. Then again, he probably doesn't give a flying fuck what we think, so let's just sit back and let these images sear themselves into our brain.

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  Review by nathaxnne [hiatus <3] ★★★★★ 2

  The Sign Of Saturn Under Subsumed In Blood And Fire
  A Black Cat Cross
  A Charred Mass
  An Eye Composed Of Faces Enwhorled Widdershins

  Let It Loose/So Mote It Be

  A Pouring Forth
  A Roaring Sound The Heavens Rent
  Fragmentary Heartshot
  Chillum Decapitate

  Hey Hey Now
  Hey Hey Hey Now

  A Breaking Apart
  An Opened Seal
  A Permanent Stain

  To Sleep And Forget
  To Seek Sleep And Never To Find It
  To Decay From Within Until
  Lead Melts At Room Temperature

  A Putrefaction/The Black Dragon
  The Sun Reversed/The Sun Reversed

  Unyielding, A Dusk Thrown Into Question; A Negative Harvest, A Falling Upwards, A Lunar Scalpel. The Eye Awoken Past Severing/Burning Inside An Interior Aflame With

  The Pull Of Days At An End. Set Courselessly Adrift Within The Endless Blaze Of Night.

  Put Your Fingers To The Side Of Your Head Cut Them Off With Your Other Hand And Leap Opposite The Flow Of Time

  No One Is Calling Your Name

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  Review by Liz ★★★★

  A garbled transmission from the summer of hate. A perfect evocation of the darkness simmering just below the surface of the hollow hippie sentiment of the time, captured in media res and through the sound of a broken moog. That's witchcraft!

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  Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★

  If I could describe
  this film in one word,
  it would be challenging.

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  Review by Jay 👽 ★★★★

  That was fucking awesome.

  It reminds me of one of those videos indie rockers made in the 90's, bands like Pavement, Blur and Ween, where they're just having fun, getting up to goofy shenanigans and playing with the tools they've got the budget for. Except, you know, made by the world's scariest villains. There's a lot of imagery I won't forget for a long while, like the dude with no mouth who descends into wavy lines, or the Kubrick-smiling fella behind the house plant.

  The score is probably my favourite thing Mick Jagger ever released. It goes from Penderecki cacophony, to absolutely banging proto-post-punk before landing on sweetly-sliding gentle almost-folk. The Rolling Stones were pretty good, but I've got a newfound respect for the man.

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  Review by TheCultureShocker ★★★★

  haha ok hail satan

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  Review by Bob McCully ★★★★½

  If Lucifer Rising was Kenneth Anger's cosmic dirge of Satanic alchemy, then Invocation of my Demon Brother is the chaotic nightmare that preceded it. The bad trip when you first feel the drug kick in before accepting your fate and allowing yourself to be swallowed up by the stars.
  Mick Jagger on a Moog channelling the ghost of a cursed washing machine is all the sound you hear; a hypnotic buzz of an ear worm occasionally assaulted by static gun shots.

  The imagery is where Anger can lay his disturbing eggs under your eyelids. A kaleidoscope tailor made from his impulses: aloof naked men, Hell's Angels in heat, blood rituals with swastika capes, parades of hippies, Anton Lavey's grand cameo,…

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  Review by Cormac 👑 ★★★ 3

  The allure of the darker side of Anger has always resided somewhere in our mutual understanding that his work is consumed by a sinister edge to its conception. A rabid hamster has broken in to the wheel of the mind's machine, the forbidden fruits behind modern cinemas gates handed an occult-shaped crowbar and the mask of all things glitter and gold let slip for something legitimately dangerous, absolutely poisonous to let hold and fester. Something that could truly harm us if we were to give it the credibility it so craves to thrive and survive.

  Then again, evil isn’t always a walk in the park. Just ask Lucifer as he glitches his way into his body of choice, tripping on…

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  Review by Edgar Cochran ✝️ ★★★★★ 4

  This is the stuff MTV is made of today. So we have sacrilege, paganism, witchcraft, nudity, satanism, Bobby Beausoleil, Anton LaVey, Jagger's impaling score, Kenneth Anger as "The Magick" and Rolling Stones performing on stage. There is NOTHING else you could ask for; your mind shall be raped brutally in the place it hurts the most.

  98/100

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  Review by Noah Thompson ★★★★ 2

  SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

  I really like the show Ghost Adventures. For various reasons, a more recent one is that a whole new potential audience has been exposed to the work of Kenneth Anger. (The comments on YouTube for this short consisted of almost nothing else other than "Who's here from Ghost Adventures?") Of the shorts of Anger's that are more focused on his fascination of the occult above homosexuality, this is maybe my favorite, even if it's more or less a dry run of what he would do with Lucifer Rising. I think I really liked Invocation of My Demon Brother for a variety of reasons. It's succinct, featuring to the point imagery that's meant to unsettle you and…