May 10, 2021

Scorpio Rising

Saw Scorpio Rising, a famously non-pornographic film which is nonetheless impressionistic and  scattered, telling its story through song lyrics and barely glimpsed flashes of homoerotic imagery.  There's not much story but we sort of follow this biker guy who suits up in his leather finery, goes to a party, and then crashes on the way home.  Apparently this was a serendipitous film which the stars aligned for.  The main actor apparently just actually lives like that and The Wild One just happened to be on TV at the time.

The film is quite sinister.  It's hard to tell how much is for effect and for fun, and how much is in earnest.  There's a lot of sexy/threatening leather outfits which are obviously more about excitement than intimidation, but there's also a fair amount of Nazi paraphernalia which might be more of the same, but has certainly not aged well if it is.  Contrasting with this, there's also a fair amount of footage from an old film about the life of Jesus.  The main character mounting a motorcycle is intercut with Jesus mounting a donkey.  The main character lives with disregard for danger, or perhaps self-destructively pursuing it.  His bedroom is decorated with images of James Dean and clippings of motorcycle deaths.  He is too beautiful for this world, or perhaps to wicked for it.

Another thing about this film: it makes liberal use of shmaltzy 60s pop.  It has a very David Lynch-ish feel, showing homoerotic, sadistic hazing rituals with Torture by Kris Jensen playing on the soundtrack.  The songs seem to innocently/sinisterly fawn over the main character, calling him a devil or an angel, a rebel.  It's very slick, very sinister.

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