EL TOPO: The Birth of the Midnight Movie | Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Cinema of Cruelty

In the annals of cult cinema, few films are as infamous — or as influential — as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1970 masterpiece EL TOPO.

A violent, hallucinatory blend of spaghetti westerns, Zen Buddhism, surrealist theater, and esoteric philosophy, EL TOPOfollows a black-clad gunslinger on a spiritual journey of transformation and destruction. It shocked audiences, confused critics, and helped define the midnight movie craze after its unorthodox release strategy — including an underground New York run championed by none other than John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

In this episode, we explore how EL TOPO came to be, the countercultural movement that embraced it, and the unlikely influence it had on everyone from Dennis Hopper to David Lynch. We’ll also dig into Jodorowsky’s uncompromising vision, the controversy surrounding its imagery, and its lasting legacy in the world of transgressive cinema.

Show Notes:  

📰Read: Is 'El Topo' A Con? by Vincent Candy (The New York Times, 1971): https://www.nytimes.com/1971/05/23/archives/is-el-topo-a-con-is-el-topo-a-con.html

📰Read: Should 'El Topo' Be Elevated to 'El Tops'? by Peter Schjeldahl (The New York Times, 1971): https://www.nytimes.com/1971/06/06/archives/should-el-topo-be-elevated-to-el-tops.html

Theme Song: "There's Still a Little Bit of Time, If We Hurry and I Mean Hurry" by Slasher Film Festival Strategy.

This episode was written, produced and edited by Gary Horne, Justin Bishop, and Todd A. Davis.

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