Chapter 4 “Underground Film: Leaping form the Grave” presents the stark contrast from Hollywood’s studio produced narrative features to the rise of underground film. Avant-Garde was embodied by two movements consisting of new filmic achievements of the movies themselves and the intertextual dialogue underground movies held with Hollywood. The unique ideology of underground cinema is derived from bohemian subcultures of New York and San Francisco. Hallucinogenic drugs and rock music became the focus of the counterculture for the new generation. The dialogue that arose between Hollywood and the underground was unintentional. Most experimental filmmakers had a desire to create an alternative to Hollywood rather than reform it. However, the intertextuality between independent and Hollywood film was inevitable because they faced similar material sphere production, distribution, and consumption. Therefore, contrasting Hollywood’s stylistic and cultural mode granted a form of identity to the underground.
    Kenneth Anger’s work largely falls into this category. The section of the chapter on Kenneth Anger takes a very interesting approach to his films in that they all make an attempt to capture Lucifer; however, Anger followed Aleister Crowley’s interpretation of the demon rather than the devil of Christianity. Anger’s Lucifer was indistinct and arbitrary compared to the distinctive evil of Satan ascribed by western culture. Thus, Anger’s films, most notably Scorpio Rising, reiterate the duality of Hollywood public and personal social lives Anger described in his book Hollywood Babylon. In doing so, Anger reiterates the importance of Hollywood, as Scorpio Rising uses footage of The Wild One and The Road to Jerusalem. The primary ambiguity of Scorpio Rising is sexual presenting both homosexual and female images. In this frame, cultural icons are challenged and subject to reinterpretation. The film even destabilizes images within itself. Scorpio’s character is elevated by comparison to Christ. However, Christ’s image is undermined by connecting it to Hitler. The ambiguity of Anger’s work provides a critique of the received values which dominate popular culture.
    Renewal for Hollywood industry could only come through independent film as Hollywood was strictly adhering to its traditional functions and resisting change, even as those function were being replaced by television and popular music. Experimental cinema of the 1960’s provided examples of ways Hollywood could connect with a shifting youth culture. Eventually, the Vietnam War ended the underground movement polarizing culture and creating atmosphere where frivolous detachment could not survive.

    Chapter 3 “The Underground” gives a chronological account of the rapid growth of American avant-grade approximately between 1959 and 1970. In the first half of the chapter, the broad range of “underground” films are united by the patronage of Jonas Mekas, film critic for Village Voice and editor of Film Culture. Gradually the new generation of subversive film began to stand on its own, and the chapter shifts from Mekas to the actual filmmakers
    One of the main focuses of the chapter is the determination of Mekas to exhibit increasingly scandalous experimental films despite harsh censorship, police raids, and court battles. One story depicts Mekas projecting Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures onto the face of the Belgian minister of justice until the power was cut off because the film was refused a screening. By late 1966, Mekas’s struggles resulted in the stabilization of the Avant-Garde and the underground genre was popularized by wider distribution from Mike Getz.
Aside from the essential exhibitors, the chapter also discusses some of the groundbreaking filmmakers including Jack Smith, Kenneth Anger, and primarily Andy Warhol. The descriptions weave together the simultaneous exploits of Flaming Creatures, Scorpio Rising, and Warhol’s early films very vividly to capture the chaotic environment of the movement. The portion of the chapter devoted to Scorpio Rising discusses how Anger was inspired to create documentary-style film on the lifestyles of American Bikers upon returning from Europe. It also praises his innovative use of contemporary rock ‘n’ roll hits to punctuate the film. Perhaps the most significant focus was the reaction to the film including the fact that Getz was taken to trial for screening Scorpio Rising, which contains a brief flash of male frontal nudity. The resistance with which underground films were met is the largest unifying factor of the movies presented in the chapter.
    Controversy and attempts at censorship are the most constant themes. Police raids of theaters to impound the prints are described repeatedly, and indicate how groundbreaking the underground movement was at the time. The persistence of exhibitors and the brilliance of the filmmakers are credited for the acceptance of the Avant-Garde. This acceptance resulted in a shift in American puritanical values, demonstrated by the rise of hardcore pornography.

    Chapter 4 “The Magus” offers a biography of Kenneth Anger from 1947 to 1967. The dates are chosen because they were the ones Anger picked for his false obituary in the Village Voice. They also coincide with a specific phase of Anger’s filmmaking from Fireworks to Kustom Kar Kommandos. The author portrays Anger as an unreliable source for gathering information on his own life because he is renowned for artifice and reinventing himself going as far to suggest that Anger’s book Hollywood-Babylon is a myth and a catalogue of slander.
    A better way to understand Anger is through his following of the esoteric beliefs of artist Aleister Crowley, a hedonistic mystic. Anger’s films between 1947-1967 are marked by his use of ironic interaction, but at the end of the period Anger underwent a “magickal” transformation which marked the death of his previous personality and a rebirth of a new persona. Thus his next film Invocation of My Demon Brother results in a significant departure from his earlier work.
Anger’s films during the twenty year period are discussed in terms of their relevance to mysticism and Crowley. The sense of irony in Fireworks reached its apex in Scorpio Rising. The thirteen songs of Scorpio Rising are described as having a magician’s effect on the consciousness. Each of the selections has a comic or dramatic surprise, but they function together to create the vertical effect of death and sacrifice inherent in motorcycle culture.
    In contrast to the carefully constructed messages of his work from 1747-1967 the impression left by Invocation of My Demon Brother is that Anger did not know what the film was until it was completed. Rather than attempting to impose visual narrative, the film was driven by an element of discovery.

 
    Kate Haug’s 1996 interview with Kenneth Anger attempts to clarify the ambiguity of the unpredictable experimentation associated with his work, and to understand his techniques for confusing accepted Hollywood styles. Anger portrays himself as a pragmatist who is relatively normal in comparison to a filmmaker like Jack Smith who Anger considered a nut case. In his responses, Anger removes his own agency in crafting some of the bizarre elements that appear in his films. For example, the images of James Dean and Nazi symbols reflected the interests of the actor Bruce Byron who played Scorpio. Anger did take credit for the emphasis on death and morbidity, as it was his take on the inherent danger of riding motorcycles and motorcycle culture.
    In the interview, Anger expressed his desire to represent real life subjects in his films, which led him to relay his skeptical opinions on documentaries. His concepts seemed to align with those of Direct Cinema of the 1960’s including a distrust of voiceover narration, and the awareness that the presence of the camera changes peoples’ actions. Much of Scorpio Rising is composed of candid shots of the bikers behaving as they would normally, although he admits to having encouraged their exhibitionism, Anger contends it is not a documentary because the film expresses his distinct, artistic perspective of the subject.
    Anger also logically describes his musical selection as a gentle form of irony citing the scene with Blue Velvet in Scorpio Rising in which a young biker dresses himself with as much narcissism as the female character in the song. However, Anger distinguishes this from mockery or belittling people claiming a good deal, clearly not all, of the homoeroticism in Scorpio Rising was a result of the bikers wanting their girlfriends out of the shots.
    Although Anger presents himself as highly rational, he expresses distaste for life being “bland like Disneyland,” and several of his anecdotal digressions reveal his obsession with immersing himself in strange social circles. In this manner, he maintains a coherent approach to his art while receiving inspiration from sources on the fringe of customary society.