Highly Overrated But Still Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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.KUSTOM KAR KOMMANDOS is about the closest you'll come to making love to a hot rod! Kenneth Anger met a guy with a beautiful custom-detailed hot rod and got him to agree to having the car and himself filmed. There is no dialog, just a slowly moving camera with deliberately intense colors. It's like a love song or poem all about the beauty and lines of the car and is the sort of film that hot rod enthusiasts might love. Otherwise, most will see it as a reasonably short and pleasant stroll down memory lane--but not a must-see film.

Pretty much a stylistic and thematic sequel to Scorpio Rising, only not quite as long and engaged and definitely not as dark. The action, for three minutes, is a man polishing his car. However, the imagery is of some serious lovemaking, and we're not talking about tongue-in-cheek "hur hur hur he's boning his car dudes", we're talking straight-up fetishizing of a vehicle obviously feminized, with seating in the shape of vaginae and an engine that looks like it has breasts. The car itself is, ironically enough considering its femininity, a perfect body, with bright shining clean skin and sleek design, less than 2% body fat and real muscle.In terms of the title, Kenneth Anger is not ignorant of what KKK means. Like in Scorpio Rising, he replaces cultural idiosyncrasy with a queer eye for alternative meanings. With his love of alchemy, different "chemical" elements (such as the artifice of the car, the blue tight-fit clothing of the man, the fuzzy boa he polishes the car with, and the pink background) turn one thing (the simple act of polishing and starting a car) into another (sex and death, Eros of the imagery and Thanatos of the title).--PolarisDiB

First of all, this is a movie Kenneth Anger never finished. Its only 1/8 of what he planned, so its probably difficult to give it a fair judgment as a whole. First time I saw it, I didn't get it at all. Its a three minute short movie about a very 'gay' looking man caressing his expensive car. Very visual, and nice colors.. but thats it! He uses a powder puff to brush the shiny car. What Anger wanted to do with this movie was to make us think about the growing bubblegum-mentality in youngsters of America. The teenage of California in a world of hot-rod and customized cars. How crazy it is. How our standards as humans in some circumstances are far above anything normal. I thought it was an interesting project and I'm sad he never found people to support it financially to complete it.

Whole film is about 3 minutes long. We see a buff guy shining up his beautiful 50s style car while a great 50s song plays on the soundtrack. That's about it, but it's quick, has beautiful color and is just a fun little short! Worth seeing.