Scorpio Rising

Kenneth Anger built Scorpio Rising around early-1960s pop songs, including tracks by Ricky Nelson, Elvis Presley, The Crystals, and The Angels. The 1963 short helped make pop compilation soundtracks feel like an active storytelling device.

The film loosely follows bikers preparing themselves and their motorcycles for a night out, centered on Bruce Byron as Scorpio. Anger treats the leather, chrome, boots, engines, and ritual dressing as fetish objects rather than a conventional plot.

Scorpio Rising mixes biker imagery with Christianity, Nazism, occult symbolism, and queer desire. That combination made the 28-minute film a major work of U.S. underground cinema and a censorship flashpoint in the 1960s.

It uses real biker culture as material, but it is not a straightforward documentary. Anger shot and edited the film himself, shaping the footage into a stylized montage of ritual, pop music, and iconography.