El Topo
Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky
Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky
1970/Mexico
IMDb page
Repeat viewing/Amazon Prime rental
The Colonel: Who are you to judge me?
El Topo: I am God!
What seemed psychedelic and mystical back in the day now seems gruesome and pointless.
A man in black (director Jodorowsky), known only as El Topo (The Mole) wanders the desert with his naked seven year old son in tow. They walk into a town that is in the midst of being massacred by bandits. We see this in bloody detail. El Topo avenges the dead. Mara, a young woman who has been kept as a slave by the head bad guy, convinces El Topo to go on a kind of pilgrimage to defeat Gun Masters and claim the title of Greatest Gun Master in the land. He agrees, leaving his son with some monks who miraculously survived the carnage. Mara and a woman in black who speaks with a man’s voice will be his companions.
Then things get even more weird. Each Gun Master has a more bizarre attribute. The common denominator is the extreme violence needed by El Topo to prevail.
This movie was much worse than I remember it being from my single viewing at the midnight show in the 70’s. The film has an average IMDb rating of 7.5/10. So what do I know? It was a cult movie for a reason.
