IMDb > Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) > Reviews & Ratings - IMDb
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27 out of 31 people found the following review useful:
amateurish -no visionary- yes, 18 June 2004
Author: mikael-funke

I disagree with the comment that angers film is amateurish and boring. what you have to keep in mind is that is was made in 1969 on a shoestring budget. also that the whole MTV aesthetic was not even thought of then, and it would take 30 years until the way Anger does film would be incorporated into the mainstream music videos of acts like Nine inch nails,Marilyn Manson, etc.

The use of juxtaposing sound and film, editing them in a way that creates maximum contrast and dynamic is something every video director - directly or indirectly - has gotten from Anger. he was the first to fuse rock music and experimental films, thereby by accident creating the seed of the rock video.

Angers short films -and especially this one - has probably been more important in shaping pop and art culture than any other single short film. for that he deserves credit and recognition.

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4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
"trippy" but valid, 30 April 2006
10/10
Author: evelsteve from oregon

Don't listen to the guy above, since he thinks all art films are supposed to hold your hand, and tell you what to think and believe. This film is obviously an artifact of subjective, artistic expression (like all real art usually is). But I happen to think it's genius. Just because I don't like the images (which I in fact do) doesn't dis-validate it as art. Art is not for entertainment, as it is the allowance of the artist to express themselves in a certain language/form/deliverance.

This film can be interpreted as a view on the artist's fascination with the occult, life, or just certain images in general. Some parts remind me of how sensitive we are to certain images, and so on. Every film isn't like Hollywood, tied up with a neat little bow, were can all hold hands and skip down the yellow brick road. Sometimes, it portrays what goes on the psyche of certain people. Look at Jordorwosky, for instance.

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7 out of 10 people found the following review useful:
DAMN this film is creepy., 15 May 2003
Author: Susan Emplit (Silkenray) from Reading, Pennsylvania

A very strange film. The sound track - done on a Moog synthesizer - is repetitious and droning, which adds to the atmosphere, though can be annoying if you're not "into it". It's creepy. There really isn't a lot to say - only watch this film if you understand what you're getting into. By far more creepy and off-putting than most modern Hollywood horror films, in part because the film style gives it a more immediate presence. The cinematography isn't polished, the sound and setting aren't polished, but that's half of what makes it work so well.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
This is the sort of Anger short that loses me..., 5 December 2009
3/10
Author: planktonrules from Bradenton, Florida

This is from the second DVD of a set called "The Films of Kenneth Anger"--a collection of avant garde films by this odd film maker. I found the first disk to be more satisfying--the second has a lot about Aleister Crowley and Satanism that I found a bit dreary.

This film is purely for someone who loves art films and has a very, very high tolerance for this sort of thing. While my tolerance is higher than the average viewer, I found this entire short filled with self-indulgence and silly imagery. I am sure that the folks who made this film loved it, as did their friends, but I seriously doubt that more than 1 or 2 in 100 who might otherwise see it actually enjoying the film. It's just NOT a film for the average viewer.

It consists of lots of bizarre imagery, an albino, references to Satanism and various ancient religions, rituals, pot use, dead cats, dead cat heads, a visit from Anton LaVey (founder of The First Church of Satan) in Satanic regalia (looking a lot like 'Hot Stuff' the cartoon character, actually) and lots of crotch shots of naked men. To each his own...

By the way, for a great practical joke, show this to your mother or some of your friends and insist with a straight face that it's the greatest film ever made. Then wait to see their reactions! Be sure to get it all on video or digital film.

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2 out of 3 people found the following review useful:
Disquieting, 20 September 2008
8/10
Author: Quag7 from Tucson, AZ

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.

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3 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
"Zap. You're pregnant. That's magick", 22 December 2008
8/10
Author: chaos-rampant from Greece

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.

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Who is that man? Who is that child?, 27 July 2011
Author: A B from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

There is a child 3:52. Does anyone know who that is? Also there's a man seen at 9:51, 9:54. He's in a kaleidoscopic scene between 9:58-10:16. A B&W flashing shot between 10:21-10:30 & seen at the end between 10:39-10:45. Who is that man? This is what I really wanna know. Thanks people!

now the review...............................................................

iTHINK it was GREEEEEEEEEEAT!My sister thought it was so weird & her daughter almost got flash male privates! LOL. That made her mad so I watched the rest at home. My BF showed me it. He's is the one who has got me interested in who the boy & man in the short was. All the symbols & stuff are enthralling. I think it's a trance video. The actually Jagger music could put me to sleep. When u listen with Ur eye & hear with Ur ear..Zap! Ur pregnancy! O.O LOL JK! No, but the imagery says a lot...That reminds me of school days. A girl asked what I was drawing, asked if I was a wiccan. I have no prob with wiccans but this girl thought she exposing me in some way. I told her by the end of tomorrow her mother would die & the dumb girl believed me! I should have wrote a note that said: Zap! Ur pregnant. That's witchcraft!

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Satanism and the Rolling Stones, 9 November 2009
9/10
Author: Polaris_DiB from United States

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

I have to say that in this particular Anger short, I was much more interested in the early synthesizer score by Mick Jagger than I was for Anger's straight-up Satanic imagery. That said, the Satanism and occult nature of this short is important because it's basically a testimonial to various ways in which this imagery has continued to subsist in the imagination of our culture. Images of Satanism and witchcraft, occult and ritual pepper film history from Haxan to the present day, especially in experimental and alternative film-making. There are many experimental short films that could be understood basically as a direct response, reproduction, or return to Kenneth Anger's particular vision. The theatrics of Satanism is compelling because of way it's practiced or imagined to be practiced, in the same way that the Carnivalesque references that need in humanity to mock and subvert through caricature and clowning. Mick Jagger's cooperation in this, and the Rolling Stones concert imagery (I'm assuming "My Demon Brother" refers to Jagger, but I could be wrong) is a winking allegory to the reputation Jagger started to have in the fears and anxieties of 1960s parents and the continual shadow of Altamont over their career (a Hell's Angels jacket appears, plus references to a dead cat that could easily be a stand-in for the murdered audience member as well as fill in the form of animal sacrifice popularly believed is involved in Satanic ritual).

Meanwhile, it's not as if the short itself is completely serious. At one point a doll rolls down a staircase with a sign attached to it that says "Oops you're pregnant! That's witchcraft!" The earlier part of the movie is a simple reaction shot structure where a strange blond (almost albino) man looks around and sees naked men lounging around, almost in reference to the effeminate Jagger--a reference that comes back with the swaying hips of one man in something like quadruple-exposure, etc. The whole thing is almost too playful, with demons literally dressed in red-faced costumes and plastic horns on their heads, and random dogs laying around watching what's going on with detached animal interest.

However, it is engaged cinema, and Anger is still pointing to some of his fascinations with the darker undertones of all humanity and their shifting perspectives and contexts. Nazi imagery shows up, this time closer referencing the original form of the swastika that the Nazis reappropriated for their own use. A hooded congregation leader looks like the high priest of a KKK group, followed by people who are obviously not KKK members. Birth and death are purposefully confused. Bubbling, boiling imagery is mixed with multiple-exposure imagery (Anger is always fond of pointing out that film is a chemical process, like alchemy) and kaliedoscopic imagery to reference bodies and forms as malleable things. Fire destroys it all in the end anyway.

--PolarisDiB

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2 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
Deeply creepy, esp. knowing about Bobby Beausoleil, 10 May 2008
8/10
Author: sjohntucson from Tucson, AZ

I watched this last night for the first time, on the "Films of Kenneth Anger Vol. 2" DVD, and to me this was probably the most intense of the set. Between the droning, obnoxious score (by Mick Jagger, of all things), and the changing film speeds, this film really did invoke feelings of, if not really a nightmare, then definitely an altered state, and not a real fun one at that.

But the capper for me was the use of Bobby Beausoleil (sp?), who was one of Manson's killers. This footage was apparently shot only a couple of years before Bobby (sorry, not trying to imply too much familiarity, but I'm really sick of typing his last name, it hurts my brain) murdered Gary Hinman. The footage of Bobby, combined with the knowledge of what he's gonna do in a couple of years, just creeped the f**k right out of me.

So, I did like this, and I'd recommend it to folks interested in Anger, or in weird sixties head trips & the dark side of psychedelia, but I'm really glad I didn't watch it under the influence. It probably would have wound up occupying a "special" place in my brain, and I don't mean a good happy place.

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2 out of 6 people found the following review useful:
Its foolish not to take this at its face value, 6 September 2008
5/10
Author: dcw-12 from United States

This isn't a film in any conventional sense. For some reason many people because of their lack of sincerity doubt the sincerity of others.

This is pure occultism of the sincerest form. Anger is a known devotee of Aleister Crowley who discussed among other things sacrifice, human and otherwise, demonology, etc.

The film is of a grossly unsettling nature it hints at great horrors while revealing very little. The mind of course can conjure greater horrors than can be shown in film. Certain frames of this stick in your mind like a splinter wondering. The methodic chanting babbling barely audible names is also unsettling and disorienting.

I am not afraid to say this short disturbed me I would prefer I never saw it.

Note: I am not rating this piece a 5, I am offering no rating for it.

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