El Topo

Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and comic mystic EL TOPO (played by writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky) must defeat his four sharp shooting rivals on an ever increasing bizarre path to allegorical self-enlightenment and surreal resurrection. Released in 1970, Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo was the landmark film that began the whole Midnight Movie phenomena of the counterculture crazy 1970's. The film was the most talked about, most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made, transforming the way risk-taking audiences, seeking mainstream Hollywood alternatives, watched edgy underground films. To say that El Topo became a cult classic is something of an understatement in light of its surprisingly broad acceptance fueled, in part, by ringing endorsements from John Lennon and Yoko Ono that made it a commercial success in its own time.