01
The Holy Mountain
Why this pick
Jodorowsky pushes El Topo’s ritualistic desert imagery and spiritual provocation into an even more ornate, surreal pilgrimage.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1970 2h 0m MEX
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
El Topo
ActionAdventureDramaWestern
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved El Topo, try these.
01
02
The Color of Pomegranates
Why this pick
A near-wordless pageant of symbolic tableaux, sacred imagery, and tactile color that matches El Topo’s visionary visual language.
03
The Devil's Trap
Why this pick
Its severe black-and-white landscapes and religious paranoia turn a historical tale into an elemental, mystical confrontation.
04
The Shooting
Why this pick
A stripped-down desert western whose opaque motives, hostile emptiness, and fatalistic progress echo El Topo beneath the symbolism.
05
The Cremator
Why this pick
This feverishly stylized descent into spiritual delusion shares El Topo’s grotesque tonal shifts and unnerving, darkly comic intensity.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
El Topo is traveling through a desert on horseback with his naked young son, Hijo. They come across a town whose inhabitants have been slaughtered, and El Topo hunts down and kills the perpetrators and their leader, a fat balding Colonel. El Topo abandons his son to the monks of the settlement's mission and rides off with a woman whom the Colonel had kept as a slave. El Topo names the woman Mara, and she convinces him to defeat four great gun masters to become the greatest gunman in the land. Each gun master represents a particular religion or philosophy, and El Topo learns from each of them before instigating a duel. El Topo is victorious each time, not through superior skill but through trickery or luck.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Brontis Jodorowsky
Son of El Topo
José Luis Fernández
Bandit
David Silva
The Colonel
Robert John
Hijo del Topo
Alejandro Jodorowsky
El Topo