El Topo

El Topo was the landmark cult film that began the Midnight Movie phenomenon of the counterculture-crazy 1970s. The film was the most talked-about, most shocked-about and most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made, transforming the way risk-taking audiences, seeking alternatives to mainstream Hollywood, watched edgy underground films and how the industry marketed them.

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.

El Topo, dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mexico 1970. 125 mins. 18, Spanish with English subtitles.