Michael_Elliott El Topo (1970) *** (out of 4) Often considered the king of the midnight movies, Alejandro Jodorowsky's EL TOPO is part Spaghetii Western and part avant garde madness. El Topo (Jodorowsky) is a mysterious gunfighter dressed in black who shows up out of nowhere and must go up against four other gunfighters.EL TOPO is a rather miraculous movie in the fact that it became a huge box office success across the world. I say it's a wonder this happened because there really aren't any other movies quite like this one and there's no question that Jodorowsky has a certain flair for cinema and there's also no doubt that his vision is something no one could try to recreate. Part Bunuel, part madness, EL TOPO is an ultra-violent film that manages to be about whatever is going on in the viewer's mind.I'm not going to sit here and call this film a masterpiece like so many have. Yes, I'm sure many potheads and acid trippers saw this in the theater back in the day and was blown away by it. You also have the likes of John Lennon and Roger Ebert who called this a masterpiece so there's no question that a wide range of people love this movie. While I didn't love it I can at least respect what the director was going for, which was pure madness.I think the best thing that can be said about the film is that it has a unique look that isn't like any other movie ever made. The film benefits from the non-stop violence that runs throughout the picture and each death is usually done with a ton of gore coming out of the bullet wounds. People call George Romero or Lucio Fulci the Godfather of Gore but it could be said that the realistic violence and over-the-top gore started right here.As for the story, there really isn't one. The viewer could draw countless conclusions as to what the film is about and not one explanation would be better or worse than another. Personally I thought the film ran on way too long and at times I found it to be quite boring. Still, the originality factor alone makes EL TOPO something everyone should see at least once.

matt_1910 very boring movie... not a message, not technique, nothing interesting to see. Just trying to appear a high class movie..... The film was selected as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 44th Academy Awards, but was not accepted as a nominee..... Its official DVD release was in 2007. It copies some stuff from David Lynch, Korosawa, and the whole others but nothing new. Well, a lot of films don't have any interesting message, and you watch, just to be entertained, This movie even doesn't have that. The reason I didn't like this movie is that it tries to appear like a high class movie, which is not. It looks like a c**t in a temple, just inappropriate.

Lee Eisenberg "El Topo" is one movie that will probably not leave people neutral. Alejandro Jodorowsky's underground masterpiece about a gunfighter on a quest for enlightenment almost seems like a joke given the over-the-top violence, but is one of the most impressive pieces of work. I figure that the movie very likely irritated the religious authorities due to one scene in particular. But the movie is truly something that you have to see to believe. It's sort of half-western, half-mysticism, with the main character's journey mirroring the efforts of a mole to find the light. It's easily the sort of movie that Quentin Tarantino could've directed. Overall, one might call "El Topo" the supreme rejection of the John Wayne type of westerns. If in fact Jodorowsky ever gets around to making a sequel, I'll be eager to see how he continues the story. Really good movie.

billcr12 El Topo looks like an early cut of a David Lynch project. The title character is also the director, Alejandro Jodorowsky, who at the beginning, looks like Zorro, dressed in black, riding a horse with his naked young son on board trekking through the desert of Mexico. They come across a group of dead bodies and the Latino Dirty Harry finds the perpetrators and kills them all, including their leader, the colonel, whose slave he rescues and names Mara. He leaves his kid at a mission and begins a quest to defeat four great gunmen. He conquers all of them, but feels guilty and throws away his weapons to seek a more peaceful life. Mara leaves him after he is shot down and then carried off by dwarfs and other odd people. El Topo wakes up in a cave with the strange assortment of freaks worshiping him as a deity. He meets a midget woman and they become lovers. She becomes pregnant and he puts together a plan to escape from the cave. By the time the movie ends, I was not impressed with the bad acting or horrendous script; avoid El Topo at all costs.