Scorpio Rising received praise from film critics and was credited with igniting leather gear and motorcycles as a fad in New York.

The film is recognized as a predecessor to the development of the modern music video and has influenced directors such as Martin Scorsese, John Waters, and Nicolas Winding Refn.

In 2022, it was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

[5] Their behavior escalates as they moon each other, simulate sodomy, and strip one man's clothes off and cover his genitals in mustard.

[6] In the final part "Rebel Rouser", Scorpio holds a destructive ceremony, intercut with images of Jesus, Adolf Hitler, and Nazi iconography.

[7] After living in Europe for several years, Anger returned to the United States, staying in Brooklyn, New York with Marie Menken and Willard Maas.

The next day, the group went up to a dirt motorcycle track near Walden Pond for their last long-distance race before winter began.

[14] Anger's design makes extensive use of non-diegetic lighting, rendering his subjects in non-natural hues for artistic effect.

He assumed it was for him until he watched it and found that it was an episode of The Living Bible titled "Last Journey to Jerusalem", intended for a Sunday school class at a nearby Lutheran church.

[18] In contrast to many of his other films which use dissolves to create a dreamlike mood, Anger relies exclusively on direct cuts in Scorpio Rising.

He had music selected for rest of "Boys & Bolts" but needed a song for the scenes where the bikers dress themselves.

[20] Anger decided to pay for the rights to the songs so that he could submit Scorpio Rising to film festivals.

[2] When the film was screened at an art theater in Los Angeles, it was protested by the American Nazi Party on the basis that it insulted their flag.

[29] The police were ultimately called to the site and arrested the theater manager for public obscenity and canceled the film's run.

Prosecutor Warren Wolfe argued that Scorpio Rising's homosexual content was a "depiction of certain degenerate activity", and therefore obscene.

Somebody had to break the ice and have that kind of case at that time to establish the freedom, because, before then, the police could seize anything they wanted to.

When screened in New York City in 1964, the film garnered additional positive reviews from The New Yorker, Variety and Newsweek.

Admittedly, one then saw it in an unfortunate context – draped in the mystique of the underground, when a number of inferior films employed some similar imagery, such as the juxtaposition of Christ and hipsters, or close-ups of all-purpose skulls.

[45] Scorpio Rising is now part of Anthology Film Archives' Essential Cinema Repertory collection.

The band asked Anger to make an accompanying film, to which he responded, "I haven't even listened to your squalid little dirge.

"[48] In 2012, British indie pop band Peggy Sue released a cover album with 12 of 14 songs from the film's soundtrack.