If you're into Zen gunfighters, lesbian cowgirls, enslaved dwarfs and pistol-packing Jesus freaks, this is the movie for you. "El Topo" may well be the greatest movie ever made; it's certainly one of the strangest. It's no wonder it became a counterculture classic, or that John Lennon considered it his favorite movie. So much has been written about "El Topo," its symbolism, its meaning, its violence, that the movie itself has gotten lost in the confusion. To put it simply "El Topo" is a western, and a darn good one. Sure, it's not exactly John Ford, but anyone who can enjoy and appreciate the films of Sergio Leone, Sam Peckinpah, or Clint Eastwood should be able to enjoy it. For 75% of the movie we have a fairly traditional "spaghetti western" with an added serving of nudity and violence; renaissance man Alexandro Jodorowsky, who not only wrote, directed, and stars in this film but also designed the sets and costumes and composed the fabulous score, is obviously indebted to Sergio Leone's masterpieces, but he adds to the mix a surrealist sensibility quite at home with Mexican culture (remember Bunuel?) and an eclectic spirituality that embraces the Bible and Zen with equal enthusiasm. Only in the last thirty minutes does it become really disturbing, but even then the violence is tame by today's standards. Jodorowsky, who bears an eerie resemblance to Bruce Willis, was the "man in black," a gunfighter-avenger who bears more than a passing resemblance to Clint Eastwood's "Man With No Name"; the later part of the movie, when he becomes a Buddhist monk on a mission of vengeance, must have been the inspiration for the popular TV series "Kung Fu." The color photography was beautiful, the gunfights exciting, the characters unique. The DVD I watched was in English with Japanese subtitles, which added to the film's mystique.
