Returning to the U.S. in the early 1950s, Anger began work on several new projects, including the films Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954), Scorpio Rising (1964), Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), and the gossip book Hollywood Babylon (1965).

[4] Getting to know several notable countercultural figures of the time, Anger involved them in his subsequent Thelema-themed works, Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Lucifer Rising (1972).

[8] Kinsey Today argued that Anger had "a profound impact on the work of many other filmmakers and artists, as well as on music video as an emergent art form using dream sequence, dance, fantasy, and narrative.

The short, Ferdinand the Bull, was shot on the remains of 16 mm film that had been left unused after the Anglemyers had made home movies with it on a family vacation to Yosemite National Park.

In this science fiction-inspired feature, in which he played the protagonist, Anger added elements taken from the Greek mythological myth of the Minotaur and constructed a small volcano in his back yard as a homemade special effect.

It was here that he met Marilyn Granas, who had once been the stand-in for Shirley Temple, and he asked her – alongside another classmate and an older woman – to appear in his next film project, which was ultimately titled Escape Episode.

At some point in the mid-1940s, he was arrested by police in a "homosexual entrapment", after which he decided to move out of his parents' home, gaining his own apartment largely financed by his grandmother,[25] and abandoning the name Anglemyer in favor of Anger.

[31][32] A homoerotic work lasting only 14 minutes, the film revolves around a young man (played by Anger) associating with various navy sailors, who eventually turn on him, stripping him naked, beating him to death, and ripping open his chest to find a compass inside.

It starred Yvonne Marquis as a glamorous woman going about her daily life; Anger later said: "Puce Women was my love affair with Hollywood ... with all the great goddesses of the silent screen.

[37] In 1950, Anger moved to Paris, France, where he initially stayed with friends of his who had been forced to leave Hollywood after being blacklisted for having formerly belonged to trade union organizations.

[38] He later said he traveled to Paris after receiving a letter from the French director Jean Cocteau in which he told Anger of his admiration for Fireworks (shown in 1949 at Festival du Film Maudit in Biarritz).

Upon Anger's arrival, the two became friends, with Cocteau giving him his permission to make a movie of his ballet The Young Man and Death, although at the time the project had no financial backers.

The party and its many costumes inspired Anger, who produced a painting of it, and asked several of those who attended to appear in a new film he was creating, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.

[51] In desperate need of money, Anger and ghostwriter Elliott Stein wrote a book, Hollywood Babylon, in which he compiled gossip about celebrities, some of which he claimed (with no corroboration or citing of sources) he had been told, including that Rudolph Valentino liked to play a sexually submissive role to dominant women; that Walt Disney was addicted to opiates (reflected in the character of Goofy, who's perpetually stoned on cannabis); and the nature of the deaths of Peg Entwistle and Lupe Vélez.

The film has a soundtrack of popular 1960s songs, including "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton, "Torture" by Kris Jensen, and "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March.

[56] Anger called the film "a death mirror held up to American culture ... Thanatos in chrome, black leather, and bursting jeans.

The homoerotic film involved various shots of a young man polishing a drag strip racing car, accompanied by a pink background and The Paris Sisters' song "Dream Lover".

Landis quotes Beausoleil as saying, "[W]hat had happened was that Kenneth had spent all the money that was invested in Lucifer Rising" and that he therefore invented the story to satisfy the film's creditors.

He persuaded the singer and actress Marianne Faithfull to appear in the film, and unsuccessfully tried to convince Jagger to play Lucifer; instead he offered his brother Chris the part.

It was directed by Kit Fitzgerald, who later recalled interviewing Anger in his Manhattan apartment on a very hot July evening, during which he revealed that he was so broke that he had been forced to sell his air conditioner.

In 1991, he moved to West Arenas Boulevard in Palm Springs, California, living in what was formerly the estate of his friend Ruby Keeler, where the British Film Institute sent Rebecca Wood to assist him in writing a never-produced autobiography.

In an interview given at the time to Black and White magazine,[96] he said he was staying in King's Cross and putting the finishing touches on the final treatment of a feature film about Australian artist and occultist Rosaleen Norton.

[97] In 2000, Anger began screening a new short film, the anti-smoking Don't Smoke That Cigarette, followed a year later by The Man We Want to Hang, which comprised images of Crowley's paintings that had been shown at a temporary exhibition in Bloomsbury, London.

In 2019, he became the subject of the documentary short Cinemagician - Conversations with Kenneth Anger, by Swedish author and filmmaker Carl Abrahamsson, which features some of his last recorded interviews.

One of the most notable is homoeroticism, first seen in Fireworks (1947), which was based on Anger's own homosexual awakening and featured various navy officers flexing their muscles and a white fluid (often thought to symbolize semen) pouring over the protagonist's body.

There is similar homoerotic imagery in Scorpio Rising (1963), which stars a muscled, topless, leather-clad biker, and Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965), where a young man sensually polishes a car, with close-up shots of his tight-fitting jeans and crotch.

Images of naked men also appear in Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), where they are eventually filmed wrestling, and Anger Sees Red (2004), in which a muscled, topless man performs press-ups.

This is visible in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, Invocation of My Demon Brother, and Lucifer Rising, all of which are based on the Thelemite concept of the Aeon of Horus and feature actors portraying pagan gods.

In Scorpio Rising he makes use of the 1950s/1960s pop songs "Torture" by Kris Jensen, "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March, and "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton.

Anger was known for his reclusive nature and had been called an "extremely private individual",[95] although he gave various interviews over the years, including one with Rocco Castoro of Vice.