Renowned filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky's bizarre, ultra-violent and allegorical EL TOPO is an acid-trip Western set in two halves that have widely been compared to the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. In the first half, writer-director Jodorowsky performs something of a hat trick in his role as a violent, black-clad gunfighter - the eponymous El Topo ("the mole"). Accompanied by his naked son, El Topo off on a murderous mission to challenge four Zen masters of gunfighting before learning from each of them a "Great Lesson" before they die. In the second half, El Topo sets out to find personal redemption, secluding himself in a subterranean community to learn the ways of peace, but unfortunately death is never far away.

In 1969, John Lennon and Yoko Ono famously 'discovered' EL TOPO and were impressed with the surreal, visceral imagery which was presented in a ‘psychedelic-western’ theme of personal transformation. The film was so controversial that when The New York Times published a review dismissing it, outcries from the film’s supporters forced them to rethink their position. It was the first time in the venerable newspaper’s history where they bowed to public pressure and allowed a counter review. The legendary cult film was credited with starting the Midnight Movie phenomenon and firmly established Jodorowsky as a master of the outrageous and the profound. In the late 1960s, when Spaghetti Westerns were all the rage, Jodorowsky used the syntax and style of this genre as a vehicle to tell the surreal odyssey of mysticism and enlightenment.

After abandoning his young son, a brazen gunslinger attempts to defeat four masters and become preeminent, but he is betrayed and left for dead. Recused by an underground collection of socially shunned and forsaken dwarfs, paraplegic, and disfigured people, he finds redemption. When he attempts to return to the conventional world, he is confronted with a society of decadence and perversion. At the time, Mexico had strict rules about film-making, severely limiting production. Jodorowsky circumvented the restrictions by shooting the script as short films, which became ‘chapters’ in the final film. He also engaged in guerrilla production tactics, most notably using an abandoned Hollywood film set they stumbled upon in the Mexican desert and converting it for the final act.

"It's tempting to say they don't make films like this any more, but I'm not sure anyone has ever made them like Jodorowsky." (The Times UK)

"It's a bizarre head-trip festival of occult psychedelia, heatstroke visuals, Age-of-Aquarius nude dancing and violence through poster-paint fake blood splattered about the place." (Guardian)

"It remains an aesthetically intoxicating trip." (Time Out)

"The film is by turns comic and profound, hysterical and pompous, fully complex enough to deserve more than a simple yea or nay." (TIME Magazine)

Thursday, August 7
Doors 8:50 pm | Movie 9:20 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.

EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1970 / 125 mins / NR) An outlaw, `El Topo' defies the Four Masters of the Desert for the love of a woman. Having defeated them, his conscience rises until his wife betrays him, and his new life as a holy man begins.