Monday, October 31, 2016 at 7:30pm
Don Sharp's Psychomania aka The Death Wheelers + Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising
155 Freeman Street, Brooklyn
Psychomania aka The Death Wheelers, Don Sharp, 1973, 16mm, 85 mins
Scorpio Rising, Kenneth Anger, 1963, 16mm, 29 mins
This Halloween, come to Light Industry for a rock ‘n’ roll occult biker movie double bill: Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Don Sharp’s Psychomania.
Released as The Death Wheelers in the United States, Sharp’s unforgettable exploitation flick takes place in a groovy, gloomy Britain, bringing the bloody terrors of a Hammer film together with the mod nihilism of A Clockwork Orange. At the heart of this mayhem is juvenile delinquent Tom, the leader of a motorcycle club who seeks to learn the key to immortality from his devil-worshipping family. After unlocking the secret, he kills himself and is interred, seated on his bike, in the middle of an ancient megalith circle, only to rise from the grave, blasting out of the ground on his chopper as a newly indestructible undead teen. Soon the rest of his gang suicides and resurrects so they too can join in on the fun, terrorizing local normals, storming supermarkets, smashing through brick walls, and running other vehicles off the road—just for kicks! Beryl Reid (star of The Killing of Sister George) and George Sanders (Addison de Witt from All About Eve) play elder members of Tom’s necromantic clan who whip up a theurgic ritual for the picture’s trippy finale, and the whole full-throttled affair is set to an acid-rock score by John Cameron. Psychomania may have unleashed some real-world demons as well. Shortly after completing the movie, Sanders took his own life in a Barcelona hotel, signing off with this ghoulishly pithy note: “Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”
Psychomania will be shown with Kenneth Anger’s Luciferian masterwork Scorpio Rising, described by the filmmaker as “a death mirror held up to American culture,” as “Thanatos in chrome and black leather and bursting jeans.” A dense and thrilling Eisensteinian montage built around thirteen pop songs heard on the radio in the summer of 1963, Scorpio Rising alchemically combines Hollywood idols, fascist fantasy, spectacular wipeouts, and a homoerotic pseudo-orgy to invoke the morbid underpinnings of the modern world.
Tickets - $8, available at door.
Please note: seating is limited. First-come, first-served. Box office opens at 7pm.