El Topo
Okay, so I’m now more than certain that I’ve found the
ultimate film for totally alienating people, El Topo. That’s right kids, if you ever want to get
people thinking you’re a pervert or weirdo or Communist or whatever then show
them this film. If there’s somebody in
your office you don’t like and want them to back the fuck off, lend them this
movie and say it’s one of your favourites.
This movie is like knowing what the matrix is in that
movie called The Matrix,
you have to seek it out in order to be remotely prepared for it. If somebody else just busted it on you it
would be overwhelming and possibly lethal.
But for those of us who have sought it out and found it, it feels like
destiny, only kinda perverted.
Through my research into the art of cinema I read
about this film a couple of times. It
has largely been considered the Holy Grail of cult of movies because it was
difficult to track down. By the time the
VHS format of home video came about this film had been locked away as a result
of a feud between the director and the distributor. The films of Alejandro Jorodowsky
have never been available for retail sale on home video or seen any official
reprise theatrical screenings but have remained in circulation due to piracy
and have remained in the public’s conscience due to word of mouth.
Recently Jorodowsky and his
producer actually made nice and now the films, including El Topo, are available on DVD format in a nice box
set. I had read much about these films
and so I bought this affordable box set having never seen them.
I’m pretty sure that if some sort of authoritarian
dictatorship ever takes over that mere possession of these films will be
construed as some form of dissent or at least perversion punishable by years in
a gulag. Until then, you’re all welcome
to drop by and watch the weirdest fucking movie you’ll ever see. But you might want to stretch first. Not your legs, but that can’t hurt either. I mean stretch your mind. Warm up with a little 2001: A Space
Odyssey, then some
I’ll tell you a lot about the plot since you’re
probably never going to see this and you really need to understand how weird
this thing is. It might sound like I’m
giving away a lot of this movie, but there is so much more that I’m just giving
you the tip of ice burg. This film is
sort of tied together by the cowboy genre.
We meet the hero, El Topo, riding through the
desert in a slick black outfit.
El Topo has an intense
stare, like all cowboy heroes, but we find out that he is way more
powerful. It turns out that his presence
alone can kill rabbits. At one point El Topo goes to meet a man who maintains a small rabbit
farm. The farmer says he knew El Topo was coming because the rabbits started dying several
hours ago. Once El Topo
enters the rabbit pen, the rabbits start croaking left right and centre at a
rapid rate. I found this odd, but kinda understood it.
I mean, if Clint Eastwood’s stare can intimidate men shouldn’t it be
able to kill something as jumpy as a rabbit?
I would’ve liked to have seen this in more of Clint’s movies. Maybe have him light cigars by staring at
them. Maybe turn a lake into a geyser
with his presence. There’s an untapped
potential here.
El Topo has a young protégé
(many viewers feel this is also his son though it is never explicitly stated)
who only wears a hat. I realize that if
most guys had a choice of only one article of clothing they’d probably go with
something to contain/protect their penises, but I think a hat makes more
sense. You don’t get blinded if sun
shines in you penis, and if you’re one of those vain types, you’re better off
protecting your face from sun damage seeing as your dick and ball sack are
already wrinkly anyway.
El Topo tells his protégé to
bury a portrait of his mother and his first childhood toy because he’s a man
now. El Topo
plays a flute while the protégé does so and they ride off to find a small town
entirely slaughtered. The only man left
crawling alive won’t tell them anything and just begs to be mercykilled. El Topo passes the
pistol to his protégé who obliges the man’s wish.
So this movie doesn’t sound too fucked up so far,
right? Just wait! El Topo notices
some bandits in the distance and starts to ride towards them. One of the bandits is romantically kissing
ladies shoes before arranging them on some rocks and shooting them. Another makes an outline of a lady using
pebbles on the ground and tries to snuggle with it. And the more normal one of the three is doing
samurai tricks to prepare banana splits for himself. A cute party trick that I think we’d all like
to be capable of.
El Topo confronts the
bandits. One takes out a balloon and
inflates it and puts it on the ground and they all wait until it’s deflated then quickdraw. The weird thing is that only two of them want
to quickdraw and somehow El Topo
knows which two without any words spoken between them. The banana samurai is left and he jumps off
his horse and throws a shotgun at El Topo and somehow
he knows that what the banana samurai wants to do it
fence with the shotguns instead of shooting each other with them. He gets the banana samurai to tell him that
the carnage back at the village was caused by The Colonel and he tells El Topo where to find him.
El Topo and his protégé show
up at the monastery where The Colonel and his band of bandits live. The bandits have weird ways of amusing
themselves such as playing horsie on the backs of
imprisoned monks and using ping pong paddles as whips to make them trot
faster. I’ve been to monasteries and
have never felt like doing this. El Topo kills The Colonel and all his bandits and frees his
slave. The slave is a pretty lady and so
El Topo tells his protégé to depend on no one and
that he is ditching him for the lady.
The lady tells El Topo that
she only wants to love the best and that he must kill the other great
gunfighters of the desert in order to win her love. Pretty fucking demanding for the recently emancipated
if you ask me. The gunfighters are a
crazy bunch of characters. One is blind
and has figured out a way to relax his flesh so the bullets pass smoothly
through him and cause little damage. One
is obsessed with delicacy and builds really delicate twig sculptures but has a
pet lion on a leash. I guess somebody
already owned the china shop containing a bull.
El Topo kills his way to
final gunfighter who has a magic reflective butterfly net which he uses to send
any bullets fired at him back in the opposite direction. The final gunfighter decides to be a huge
prick and kills himself, thus robbing El Topo of his
victory. El Topo
goes mad and breaks up with his lady (who has now physically split into two
women anyway).
El Topo spirals into madness
and awakens in a cave with a bunch of deformed people. The deformed people tell him that they have
all been thrown into this pit because the people in the village consider them
freaks and that their deformities keep them from climbing out.
El Topo vows to escape the
pit and dig them a tunnel to the village so that they can integrate and live
normally. El Topo
takes a midget woman and they climb out.
El Topo quickly goes into town and starts
raising funds for digging tools. He and
the midget lady do a cute little Charley Chaplin routine busking in the street
and people seem to like it. I actually
found it pretty cute myself, and I fucking hate buskers.
But there’s a problem with the church in this
village. The church is based on the game
Russian Roulette.
Every week at mass the priest puts a bullet into a pistol and spins the
chamber and gives it to people gathered for enlightenment. Somebody in the crowd puts the gun to their
temple and pulls the trigger and when they don’t blow their head off everybody
screams “It’s a miracle!” That’s more
luck than a miracle in my book. The
whole thing goes south when a little boy ends up blowing his own head off. Happy first communion in
the
There are many further developments remaining in the
plot. I’d say I’m leaving them as surprises
for you, but I think the biggest surprise to you may be that this film actually
exists and therefore any further plot points in it pale in comparison. If you actually watch this film you’ll
realize that all the stuff I’ve told you about so far isn’t really a surprise
that I’ve given away. Every wacky detail
in each scene is a surprise in this crazy movie so it’s not like I’ve even
covered a quarter of the insanity of El Topo.
I have this friend who whenever he has get-togethers
at his place he puts on some music and then puts on a video on his television
and presses mute. He says it’s
“background”. Kinda
like how my mum puts out little candy dishes for her guests to nibble on. Putting on “background” video is like a
little something for your eyes to nibble on.
I think putting on El Topo as
background would be like putting out a candy dish full of sour patch kids. They look like regular candy, but they’re not
a sweet little distraction, they’re an overwhelming taste experience.
When I throw my housewarming party I’ll put on El Topo as my “background” and see how many repeat guests
I get for my next party. Probably just a bunch of freaks and perverts. But that’s okay. Maybe I’ll even dress up as El Topo for Halloween next year and that way anybody who
guesses what my costume is I’ll know is a maniac.
It’s said that this film got big in the early 1970s
because audiences wanted an alternative to mainstream cinema. No fucking shit. If El Topo
is an alternative to mainstream cinema then jumping in a tornado must be a
logical alternative to relaxing in a hammock.
Most films have tag lines like:
“Revenge was all he had.”
or
“Love was their escape.”
Or
“Nobody can outrun their past.”
El Topo’s official tag line was
“See the naked young Franciscans whipped with
cactus. See the bandit leader disemboweled. See the priest ride into the sunset
with a midget and her newborn baby. What it all means isn't exactly clear, but
you won't forget it.”
A-fuckin’-men.