In Scorpio Rising (1964), Kenneth Anger does something very controversial: he juxtaposes footage of a gay biker orgy with scenes from a previously-made religious instruction film about the life of Jesus Christ. Anger claims that as he was editing Scorpio, a postman delivered the religious film to him by accident, and Anger decided, on the spur of the moment, to chop up the Christ film and fold scenes from it--ironically, of course--into Scorpio.
It's not the only earlier film cited in Scorpio, of course: consider all those shots of Marlon Brando from the biker movie The Wild One (Laslo Benedek, 1953) that appear on Scorpio's black-and-white TV.
This week, we'll be discussing two experimental filmmakers, Joseph Cornell and Bruce
Conner, who make movies entirely out of images shot by other people. To get us thinking about how films beget films, I want you to consider the following question: what's your favorite example of a movie, mainstream or otherwise, that incorporates footage from an earlier movie? Mine is Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978): Laurie (Jaime Lee Curtis) watches The Thing from Another World (Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks, 1951) while she babysits a neighborhood kid. It's almost as if The Thing is warning her about the Inhuman Thing--The Boogeyman, Michael Myers--that will soon attack her; it's also director Carpenter paying homage to one of his favorite B-movies.
What's your favorite example of footage from an older film appearing in a newer movie?
