Kenneth Anger, the shocking and influential avant-garde artist who defied sexual and religious taboos in such short films as "Scorpio Rising" and "Fireworks" and dished the most lurid movie star gossip in his underground classic "Hollywood Babylon," has died. He was 96.

Anger died of natural causes on May 11 in Yucca Valley, California, his artist liaison, Spencer Glesby, told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Few so boldly and imaginatively mined the forbidden depths of culture and consciousness as Anger, whose admirers ranged from filmmakers Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to rock stars such as the Clash and the Rolling Stones.

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He was among the first openly gay filmmakers and a pioneer in using soundtracks as counterpoints to moving pictures. Well before the rise of punk and heavy metal, Anger was juxtaposing music with bikers, sadomasochism, occultism and Nazi imagery. When the Sex Pistols and the Clash appeared on the same bill at a 1976 concert, clips from Anger’s movies were screened behind them.

Anger had his greatest commercial success, and notoriety, as the author of "Hollywood Babylon." Scandal and Hollywood practically grew up together, and Anger assembled an extraordinary and often apocryphal family album, whether pictures from the fatal car crash of Jayne Mansfield or such widely disputed allegations as actor Clara Bow having sex with the University of Southern California football team.

Completed in the late 1950s and originally published in French, "Hollywood Babylon" was banned for years in the U.S. and was still adult fare upon formal release in 1975, when New York Times reviewer Peter Andrews labeled it a "306-page box of poisoned bon bons" written as if a "sex maniac had taken over the Reader’s Digest Condensed Book Club."