Too many films are dubbed cult or underground classics nowadays. Chances are you've never heard of El Topo, but this is one film deserving of the headline.
Full of imaginative imagery and a spellbinding storyline, this is one western adventure that shuns the typical Hollywood dynamic. This film confirmed the arrival of a brilliant new talent in Alejandro Jodorowsky. For years it existed by word of mouth and the midnight circuit, gaining new life on video and now DVD.
This is a film worthy of your time.
a violent and low attempt to collect together a series of visual shocks that the counter culture of 70s america found 'monumental'.
hippies freaking out at their own liberation zzzz sex and violence down the mines..
On the truly positive side, the Mexican settings are wonderful. Maybe Jodorowsky should have made landscape documentaries.
There are also many moments of inspired, stoned humour and surreal imagery.
On the cheesy but amusing side there's lots of very fake gore and absurd jump cutting. Also a tinny and bombastic soundtrack that ramps up the melodrama.
On the negative side, there is an overwhelming sense of an egomaniac at work, a man with a Jesus complex spilling his half-baked ideas in a self-indulgent rampage. And the sexual politics are embarrassingly dated.