El Topo (1970, Mex.)

In director/star Alejandro Jodorowsky's self-conscious, surrealistic, often incoherent and incomprehensible, unique and avant-garde El Topo (translated "the Mole") - it was a gory (and spiritual) "spaghetti" western about a transformative journey. It told the visually-stunning story of the existential, mystical and spiritual quest (with Christian and Eastern philosophy symbolism) of a black-clad, violent gunfighting title character (the director himself) to defeat the 'Four Masters of the Gun,' to find himself, and to vanquish his demons.

The 125 minute-long dramatic 'acid-western' film has often been considered to be the first "official" 'midnight movie' cult film - it premiered at midnight in the rundown Elgin Theatre (on lower Eighth Avenue in NYC) and ran seven nights a week for many months. Perfectly timed for its counter-cultural era of free love and cannabis freak-outs, it was up to late-night, 'midnight movie' viewing audiences to interpret the spaced-out, pretentious, disconnected and often confounding movie. The concept of long-playing, taboo-breaking, eccentric midnight movies designed to appeal to urban film fans was thereby born, and was popularized and perpetuated by The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975).

• the film opened with El Topo riding in a Mexican desert with his naked son Hijo (Brontis Jodorowsky) on the saddle in front of him; he tied his horse to an odd, single hitching post in the sand, and also tied his black umbrella to the post; he then handed his 7-year old son a teddy bear (the boy's favorite childhood stuffed animal), a locket, and his mother's photograph; the boy was instructed to bury the artifacts in the sand in order to become a man and take his father's place; El Topo played a flute as the boy obeyed his instructions; then, El Topo rode off - with the film's most iconic image - he held a black umbrella over their heads

El Topo (Alejandro Jodorowsky) Having His Naked Son Bury His Past Before Riding Off on Horseback - Carrying a Black Umbrella

• upon entering a village, El Topo found the bloody and grisly remains of a town massacre where animals were gutted and people were decimated by bandits; the entire area was drenched in a river of blood; one of the film's decadent images was of one of the fringe-jacketed bandits lying on top of a rock sculpture of a naked woman that he had just drawn, and kissing the female
• when threatened by three crazed evil-doer bandits in an outlaw gang who were responsible for the blood-letting, El Topo quickly dispatched with them by executing them on horseback; then, El Topo sought further vengeance in the mission town's monastery by hunting down the fat, effete balding (with a toupee), pasty-faced but vicious and sadistic Colonel (David Silva) and shooting off his fake toupee

El Topo Hunting Down Colonel (David Silva)

• the Colonel was also bloodily castrated with one flick of a knife; the naked and disgraced Colonel then committed suicide by shooting himself in the mouth; El Topo rescued the Colonel's terrorized concubine-slave (Mara Lorenzio) and rode off with her into the desert, while leaving his naked son in the care of monks at the monastery
• at a body of water in an oasis, El Topo stirred the bitter water with a long tree branch, and uttered the words of Moses: "Moses found water in the desert. The people tried to drink it, but were unable to because it was bitter. They named the water Marah"; after turning the water sweet, El Topo named the female Marah (meaning "bitter water"): "I shall call you Marah, because you are bitter like water"; then, he spread her legs and dug into the sand between her feet to locate turtle eggs (a symbol of fertility); he offered a prayer before shooting at a rock, and brought forth water; Marah attempted to magically perform the same tricks but failed

El Topo's Rape of Marah in the Desert

• El Topo tore off Marah's clothes and forced himself upon her on the sand [Note: The self-important director later dubiously claimed - for publicity's sake - that the sex scenes were deliberately real.] after raping her, he appeared to have sexually imparted to her the ability to find eggs in the sand and to draw water; in a symbolic scene, she touched a phallic-shaped rock that ejaculated forth life-giving water - and then hugged it

After the Rape, Marah Brought Forth Water From a Phallic-Shaped Rock

• Marah convinced him that for her to best love him, he had to prove himself by journeying onward to defeat and kill the "four great gun masters" who lived in the desert; each of the masters that he encountered represented a different religion or spiritual philosophy
• the first master was a holy man who was found in a lotus position inside a rocky tower; the guru was assisted by a pair of deformed males who complemented each other; the master's body was perfectly constructed so that a bullet shot through him would never hit any organ or body part that would kill him; via cheating, El Top was able to shoot him in the head during a show-down duel
• afterwards at an oasis, Marah was joined by another 'Woman in Black' named Desconocida (Paula Romo), a whip-cracking bi-sexual gunslinger (speaking in a man's voice), possibly signifying El Topo's feminine side and alter-ego; the two women bathed naked together, and Marah was handed a mirror to narcissistically admire herself

Bathing in an Oasis: Marah Was Joined by a 'Woman in Black' Named Desconocida (Paula Romo) - A Bi-Sexual Gunslinger

• the sequence transitioned to El Topo making love to Marah while buried in the sand, but afterwards, he angrily shot the mirror that she was often viewing herself in
• Desconocida guided El Topo to the remaining three masters to fight further duels with them; El Topo defeated each of them with more mystical trickery - and luck; his killing of the third master was stunning; the 'rabbit man' was shot point-blank and fell backwards into a watering hole; the whole fenced area around him was littered with bloody, dead carcasses of rabbits; El Topo rubbed blood from the killing onto Marah's breasts to signify his victory
• the 'Woman in Black' Desconocida suggestively stroked and then licked a piece of sliced-open green cactus fruit before grabbing Marah for an unwanted lesbian kiss; she would soon be intruding and stealing Marah away from El Topo

"Woman in Black" Desconocida Suggestively Ate Opened Cactus Fruit

• the fourth master was a crazy man with a butterfly net, who outsmarted El Topo by suicidally executing himself
• with the demise of all four adversaries and after acquiring their wisdom, El Topo grew to doubt and hate himself and thought he was contaminated; guilt-ridden and experiencing a mental breakdown, El Topo revisited the places where he had killed each of the masters; he discovered a pile of rabbit corpses on fire, and the other two master's corpses were either covered with geometrically-shaped plastic sheeting, or swarming with bees; El Topo reacted to the sight of the bees by squishing the bees' honeycomb dripping with honey onto his face, biting into it, and screaming madly

El Topo Revisited The Places Where Each of the Masters Had Prevously Died

• he appeared to be going crazy; inside the circular walled rock tower (with a bloody crucified goat nailed to its exterior), he repeatedly crashed his body into the surrounding rocks and groveled in the sand, before knocking the structure down and releasing birds into the sky; El Topo crushed his gun with a rock: "I am laid low in the dust of death. My God, why hast thou forsaken me. Why are You so far from saving me, from heeding my groans?"
• El Topo was betrayed by both Marah and the 'Woman in Black'; the latter seriously wounded him on a wooden bridge by shooting him four times through both his hands and feet (a crucifixion-passion-stigmata symbol);

'The Woman in Black' Shot El Topo Four Times - With Crucifixion-Stigmata Wounds and Symbolism

• Marah also chose to shoot El Topo in the side to finish him off, and he was left for dead; after seriously wounding El Topo, the two traitorous women again kissed and made love, and then rode off together

El Topo Dragged Away by Deformed Cave Dwellers - Years Later, He Awakened and Was Regarded as a Godlike Savior

• in the second major part of the film, El Topo's comatose body was found by a group of small-statured deformed cripples, who dragged him off; he was taken into their subterranean cave-home inside a mountain; the inhabitants slept in stacked barrels and were led by an old woman
• after El Topo awoke from a long sleep (many years later), he realized that he was amongst a strange and "repulsive" outcast colony of mis-shapen underground people ("We are deformed, from the continuous incest"), who had chosen to worship him as a godlike and mystic savior; living in a system of caves that blocked their passage to the outer world due to their deformities, they believed he would truly free them from their imprisoned state; he was meditating about the four lessons that the masters had imparted to him
• he took one of the "small" (dwarf) women Mujercita (Jacqueline Luis) as his lover, and as an act of atonement, promised to free the exiled, deformed cave-dwellers by helping them dig an escape tunnel (with the help of dynamite) to get out of the cave to rejoin society (the dusty western town) - but would they find their new world outside any better?

Film's Most Bizarre and Decadent Scene

• in the film's most bizarre and decadent scene, El Topo and his dwarf lover were taken to the village's saloon where in a trap-doored underground sex cantina, they were forced to strip and re-enact their wedding night in front of a group of voyeuristic degenerates
• depraved, cruel and weird religious cultists from the neighboring western town were led by outlaws and by twisted, sex-starved and degenerate matriarchal women; the female leaders were hypocritical members of the Decent Women League who demanded sex from slaves and then had them executed for rape; they brutalized and enslaved white-clad townsfolk, and branded them like cattle with a symbol - an eye within a triangle, known as the "Eye of Providence"
• simultaneously El Topo appeared to have found enlightenment and holy "sainthood" and was born again - he shaved his head and dressed in brown peasant or Buddhist monk garb, and had drastically changed his image and quest - to become a pacifist servant-beggar; he provided street entertainment and performed menial tasks to earn money from the villagers (to raise money to fund the purchase of the dynamite)
• El Topo discovered that his now grown-up son Hijo (Robert John), a religious monk, had arrived in the village to provide priestly care, but was disgusted and disillusioned by the religion of the violent and depraved cultists, who were preoccupied with guns; for example, in the frontier town, ritualistic worshippers in a church played Russian roulette with a gun as a means to produce "miracles" until a young boy was killed

El Topo's Grown-Up Son Hijo (Robert John) Arrived to Be the Town's Priest

Hijo Threatening to Shoot and Kill El Topo

Hijo Dressed in His Father's Black Gunslinger Outfit

• Hijo recognized his father and made an attempt to kill him, but El Topo was defended by his dwarf wife; Hijo was persuaded to wait until the tunnel was completed and the outcasts could be freed; Hijo began to dress in his father's black-clad gunfighter outfit; impatient to have the project completed, Hijo also assisted them in the construction of the tunnel, and once the exit-way out of the cave was finished, Hijo could ultimately not bring himself to kill his father
• the underground people were freed from the cave and emerged into sunlight; they streamed into the town, where they were slaughtered by the cultists who were lined up in a row with shotguns firing at them - a major apocalyptic moment; El Topo helplessly witnessed the killings, and was stunned when he surveyed the carnage

The Massacre of the Freed Outcasts in the Village By the Cultists

El Topo Helplessly Surveying the Carnage

El Topo Invincible As He Approached the Murderers and Was Shot At

• invincible to their gunblasts, El Topo approached the murderers to retaliate, grabbed a rifle, and in a flurry of gunfire massacred all of the cultist clan members; then, he immolated himself in the dusty street after pouring flammable oil onto his head from a lamp; a child was born to his dwarf lover-girlfriend at the same time as El Topo's death

El Topo's Burial Gravesite - A Swarming Beehive

Film's Ending: Hijo, El Topo's Dwarf-Lover and Newborn Rode Off

• a rock burial gravesite was constructed for El Topo's remains; it soon became a swarming beehive, similar to one of the masters' graves
• survivors of the bloodbath included El Topo's grown son, and his dwarf-lover and newborn, forming a new family; the film ended as El Topo's son, the child, and the dwarf female rode off on the horse into the desert, mirroring the film's opening scene