 | Credited as being one of the first ever Midnight Movies, and one that regularly features on top lists of the greatest cult films of all time, El Topo is a 1970 American-Mexican western film written and directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Jodorowsky became an auteur of the weird and surreal with El Topo and it's follow-upThe Holy Mountain in 1973. The success of which lead him to attempt to bring the sci-fi epic Dune to the screen in 1975. In the movie El Topo (the mole) a gunfighter dressed all in black decides to confront warrior Masters, on a self-reflective journey on which he takes with his son (Jodorowsky's son in real life). The movie is a mystical and spiritual journey, in the style of a spaghetti western. Filled with surreal images, Eastern mysticism and Christian symbolism, as El Topo who is god-like character on a quest for enlightenment. Or some such thing. It's better not to try and work out what El Topo is actually about, and just let it wash over you. |
A visually stunning mind-bending ride into the surreal mind of Jodorowsky. And very much worthy of its status as one the key movies of cult film history.
Weird Retro Fact: Read the article about Jodorowsky's failed attempt to bring the sc-fi novel Dune to the big screen before David Lynch did. The Greatest Film Never Made: Jodorowsky's Dune.
Weird Retro Fact: Read the article about Jodorowsky's failed attempt to bring the sc-fi novel Dune to the big screen before David Lynch did. The Greatest Film Never Made: Jodorowsky's Dune.
