El Topo

El Topo

John Lennon championed him, Dennis Hopper used him and Marilyn Manson loves him. Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of cinema's most controversial and influential filmmakers. In 1968 his scandalous debut Fando Y Lis caused a riot in Mexico. His ultra-violent underground El Topo dragged the hippy generation into the '70s, single-handedly invented the American Midnight Movie phenomenon and transformed its creator into a counterculture icon. With The Holy Mountain, his pop-alchemical follow-up, Jodorowsky tore apart the very fabric of film. After 35 years in the wilderness, the maverick visionary is back to shock and bedazzle audiences all over again.

-Ben Cobb, Anarchy And Alchemy: The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky

El Topo

It was the landmark cult film that began the whole Midnight Movie phenomena of the counterculture crazy 1970s. El Topo was the most talked about, most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made, transforming the way risk-taking audiences, seeking mainstream Hollywood alternatives, watched edgy underground films. Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and cosmic mystic El Topo (played by writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky) must defeat his four sharp-shooting rivals on an ever-increasingly bizarre path to allegorical self-enlightenment and surreal resurrection.