Unfortunately this description applies to a large percentage of Kenneth Anger's body of work and this movie from 10 years after World War II is no exception. It runs for almost 37 minutes and is one of the longest films from the director. The thing I enjoyed most about it was the music (1978 Eldorado version), but that could not really make up for the uninteresting story that was going on. It dragged a lot and I can only really recommend this to huge fans of the director or people with a great interest in theater and mythology. This is one of Anger's most known works (he also acts in here, but not one of the major characters) and he was not even 30 when he shot this. Today he is approaching 90 and still making films. I hope his more recent works are better than his very early films. About "Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome", not recommended.

The short films of Kenneth Anger are certainly NOT for the casual film goer! The best way to describe them is avant-garde--and often make little sense, as they are not meant to be shown to the masses. Some are incredibly artistic--like filmed work of art. Some are really cheaply made and definitely look it. Regardless, they are a challenge to watch and I very strongly recommend you see them with his commentary activated. So why would I see these shorts? Well, in a recent interview I noticed that John Waters credits Anger for much of his inspiration. And, since I have seen all the films of Waters that are available (a couple very early ones aren't), it seems natural I'd give Anger's films a try. This and four other reviews are best on the DVD "Films of Kenneth Anger: Volume 1".While I could say a lot about INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME, I think Norwegianheritic's review was spot-on and there isn't a lot to add. I, too, could see the strong influence from Jean Cocteau and Luis Buñuel. As for the film, it was like a bunch of straight, gay and bisexual artistes who love Alistair Crowley, Satanism and Cabala having a dress-up party and playing out various skits that they thought were clever and great fun. As for normal everyday folks, this is just plain weird, convoluted and, after a slight shock, actually rather boring.

Quite possibly,the most incomprehensible film every made, Kenneth Anger's INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME deserves a place in cultural, if not film history. Arcane satanic references merged with bizarre hallucinogenic Egyptian rituals, and all done with a straight face, are endlessly fascinating to any student of the subculture of Hollywood and San Francisco in the post-war years. This was a time when to be gay or of a mixed gender was considered not just socially unacceptable, it was considered a sign of sickness. I don't think that a film like this could have been made without the cultural stigma associated with being part of the sexual underworld.As an 'experimental film,' though, it's not really that original. Anger borrows heavily from Cocteau, Luis Bunuel, Maya Deren and others, whose work was far more original and far less self-conscious. It nevertheless, amazingly I should say, holds your interest (since it's only 35 minutes, partially) and I would reccomend it to anyone interested in the fringes of the art world.

I first encountered this work around 1967, in a period when I was seeing many underground films in New York and Los Angeles, some shown in progress by the makers themselves. It was a heady time, and my memory was of a richly textured, opulent work that was surely Anger's magnum opus up to that time.Last week, more than 3 decades later, I saw it again and was amazed at how inept and self-indulgent it was. The only thing holding it together is the appropriated sound track, Leos Janacek's masterful Glagolitic Mass, a creation that is far older than the film but has retained its genius. The visuals (like all of Anger's work, this is a silent movie with music) are little more than a pretentious thrift-shop costume show aspiring to pageantry, with little detectable underlying meaning or cinematic form.The notion of camp was not yet formulated in 1954, when IotPD was made, but the film inadvertently exemplifies the concept -- or was Anger really satirizing a self-conscious social circle along with a certain type of dilettantish cluelessness and muddled cinematic thinking when he made this? What a huge disappointment after mistakenly thinking so well of this movie for so many years!