El Topo (DVD)

El Topo is a psychedelic, surrealist, muti-leveled, psuedo western. It was filmed in the late sixties by Chilean maverick Alejendro Jodorowsky who is notorious for never getting films made.

If you are a fan of weird and wonderful cult cinema then hold your breath because this film is for you! Fistful of dollars this is not!

I first heard about El Topo in the eighties, John Lennon and Dennis Hopper claimed it was their ...
...film! After some initial weirdness El Topo is sent to kill four masters to prove his worth. One master is an armless man with a legless man on his back, another master is kind of like jesus and lives in a hut. There is plenty of bloody gunfight action inbetween theological discussions (the effects were done by the crew who did the shootout at the end of 'The Wildbunch'). Towards the end it starts to turn into a bizzare version of Tod Browning's Freaks. ... more

El Topo is a psychedelic, surrealist, muti-leveled, psuedo western. It was filmed in the late sixties by Chilean maverick Alejendro Jodorowsky who is notorious for never getting films made.

If you are a fan of weird and wonderful cult cinema then hold your breath because this film is for you! Fistful of dollars this is not!

I first heard about El Topo in the eighties, John Lennon and Dennis Hopper claimed it was their favorite film. It earned this reputation through a series of midnight screenings in America and fitted right in with LSD stylings of the time. It then disappeared for years. At one time it was claimed that more people had read the script (which is one of the strangest scripts you will ever read!) than had actually seen the film.

In the nineties it had a brief release on video in the UK with it's companion piece 'Holy Mountain'. It has never been officially released in the states until last year (as I understand it). It has been shown on UK tv once in the late nineties.

Anyway, the film itself starts with a leather clad gunslinger riding through the desert with his naked son (played by Jodorowsky and his son) . They walk into a town where the streets are filled with blood and the corpses of dead animals are strewn about. What follows is a barely comprehensible trawl through religious symbolism, surrealism, freaks and spaghetti westerns.

Believe me this is one strange film! After some initial weirdness El Topo is sent to kill four masters to prove his worth. One master is an armless man with a legless man on his back, another master is kind of like jesus and lives in a hut. There is plenty of bloody gunfight action inbetween theological discussions (the effects were done by the crew who did the shootout at the end of 'The Wildbunch'). Towards the end it starts to turn into a bizzare version of Tod Browning's Freaks.

Viewers of a sensitive disposition should avoid this like the plague as it not only features multiple blood splattered shoot-outs but something to offend almost everybody. Where do I start?
A really offensive rape scene, real animal corpses, rabbits being poisoned, soft porn lesbians, satire on almost every major religion, shoe sniffing, someone having sex with a chalk drawing, dwarf sex scenes, terribly cliche gay bandits etc etc.

To understand this film in any kind of way you need to know a bit about Jodorowsky. He is considered one of the world's foremost tarot readers and hypnotists. He makes his films using these techniques. He has only made six films since the mid 60's when his first film Fando and Lis caused a riot in the cinema.

Jodorowsky studied under Marcel Marceau (French Mime artist) and is credited with inventing many of the major mime sequnces in use today. He also works in surrealist theatre.

In the late seventies Jodorowsky was slated to work on 'Dune' with Orson Welles, Salvador Dali, David Carradine, Pink Floyd and H.R Giger! The project fell apart partly because of bad Tarot readings!

I absolutely love this film! It's amazing. No one ever makes films like this. It's determination to offend and confuse, I personally think is commendable, and in an age of identikit horror movies films like this should be championed as true originals.  

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