El Topo
Theatrical release poster.
Directed by	Alejandro Jodorowsky
Produced by	Juan López Moctezuma Moshe Rosemberg Roberto Viskin
Written by	Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring	Alejandro Jodorowsky Brontis Jodorowsky Mara Lorenzio David Silva Paula Romo
Music by	Alejandro Jodorowsky Nacho Méndez
Cinematography	Raphael Corkidi
Release date(s)	December 18, 1970 U.S. release
Running time	125 min
Language	Spanish
Budget	$400,000 (estimated)
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

El Topo (The Mole) is a 1970 Mexican allegorical, cult western movie and underground film, directed by and starring Alejandro Jodorowsky. Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about the eponymous character - a violent, black-clad gunfighter - and his quest for enlightenment. For many years the film could only be seen at midnight screenings, in arthouses and via video bootlegs until its official DVD release by Anchor Bay on May 1st, 2007. Antonio Caban Vale (aka El Topo) (born November 22, 1942 in Moca, Puerto Rico) - composer and singer. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Alejandro (or Alexandro) Jodorowsky Alejandro Jodorowsky or Alexandro Jodorowsky (IPA: ) (born February 7, 1929, in Tocopilla, Chile) is an actor, playwright, director, producer, composer, mime, comic book writer and psychotherapist born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents of Russian origin. ... David Josué Jiménez Silva, more commonly known as Silva (born January 8, 1986 in Arguineguín, Spain), is a footballer who plays as a midfielder for Valencia CF. He made his first league appearance at SD Eibar where he played 35 league games for the side whilst on loan... is the 352nd day of the year (353rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... // Events February 11 - The film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr premieres in New York City. ... // Events February 11 - The film The Magic Christian, starring Peter Sellers and Ringo Starr premieres in New York City. ... Allegory of Music by Filippino Lippi. ... A cult film is a movie that attracts a small but devoted group of obsessive fans or one that has remained popular over successive years amongst a small group of followers. ... Broncho Billy Anderson, from The Great Train Robbery The Western movie is one of the classic American film genres. ... The first use of the term underground film occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, Underground Films. ... Alejandro (or Alexandro) Jodorowsky Alejandro Jodorowsky or Alexandro Jodorowsky (IPA: ) (born February 7, 1929, in Tocopilla, Chile) is an actor, playwright, director, producer, composer, mime, comic book writer and psychotherapist born to Ashkenazi Jewish parents of Russian origin. ... This article is about the medical condition. ... For other uses, see Christian (disambiguation). ... Eastern philosophy refers very broadly to the various philosophies of Asia, including Indian philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Persian philosophy, Japanese philosophy, and Korean philosophy. ... An eponym is the name of a person, whether real or fictitious, who has (or is thought to have) given rise to the name of a particular place, tribe, discovery, or other item. ... Categories: Stock characters | Stub ... Enlightenment (or brightening) broadly means the acquisition of new wisdom or understanding enabling clarity of perception. ... The Cathach of St. ... DVD (also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc) is a popular optical disc storage media format. ... Anchor Bay Entertainment: the home video/television distribution company. ...

Plot

Part 1

The movie takes place in two parts. The first half, in an unnamed desert, begins with the titular El Topo, accompanied by his naked son. He tells him that he is now seven years old, and must bury his first toy and a picture of his mother in the sand. Meanwhile, El Topo plays his flute, thus the movie starts.

During their journey, they find a lifeless town with all the inhabitants killed and mutilated (including the farm animals). El Topo avenges the town by hunting down and killing the outlaws who butchered the townsfolk. They find out that the outlaws are under the command of a Colonel who has taken another small town with a monastery and its inhabitants as hostage. El Topo rescues the town from the Colonel and his outlaws, only to abandon his son with the monks. He rides off with a woman whom the Colonel and his outlaws had kept captive as a slave, and names her Mara after the bitter water they later drink from a pond. Mara convinces El Topo to defeat the four great gun masters to become the greatest gunman in the land. He duels each of them at Mara's prodding, and during each duel, El Topo either cheats or gets lucky. For other uses, see Colonel (disambiguation). ... Monastery of St. ... Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to return to the land of Moab, by William Blake Naomi (נָעֳמִי Pleasant;agreeable, Standard Hebrew Noʿomi, Tiberian Hebrew Noʿŏmî) is Ruths mother in law in the Old Testament Book of Ruth. ...

El Topo as a gunslinger

The first duel is with a blind man with the voice of a woman, dressed in only a thong and guarded by a man with no legs riding a man with no arms. The man claims to be impervious to bullets, stating that he "offers them no resistance," and even demonstrates this ability. El Topo slays the man by setting a man hole trap for the master so that he loses concentration, and Mara kills the remaining two half-men. An unnamed woman with a male voice finds the couple and offers to lead them to the next gunslinger. The mysterious female gives Mara a mirror, which she becomes enamored with. The gunslinger is frustrated by her vanity and shoots the mirror from her hands. After desperately trying to reform the mirror, she quits and gives him the shards, which he places in his pocket. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

The second gunslinger is some sort of a traveling gypsy, accompanied by his mother and a lion. After initially beating El Topo in a duel, the large man shows El Topo how he came to be so powerful. He tells El Topo that he strengthened his fingers by working with copper and later on by creating delicate objects like toothpick pyramids. He also tells El Topo that the reason he is alive and powerful is because he has his mother whom he loves and takes care of, while El Topo, unlike him, is all alone in this world, only living to destroy others. Afterwards the man decides to give the black gunslinger one more chance. While walking away, El Topo places Mara's mirror shards on the ground. The massive man's mother, whom the man is obsessed with, gives El Topo his revolver and then steps on the mirror shards. Concerned with his mother, the brute forgets about his duel with El Topo. The man in black then shoots the gypsy gunslinger in the back of his head.

El Topo and the Rabbit Master

The third gun master is found at a rabbit farm. The rabbit shepherd is rather unconcerned with the man in black and his mission, and tells him that as soon as he arrived at the rabbit farm, the rabbits began to die. They both shared a moment of peace together by playing music to each other, because music can tell a person character more than word the master says. They then compared to each other the way they shoot by shooting at crows. El Topo's bullet hit the crow's head while the master shot the heart of the bird. Afterward, they start the duel, and the master shoots El Topo in the chest knocking him down. However, El Topo stands up, laughing, unfazed from the bullet. He then shoots the defenseless rabbit farmer, since his gun can only fire one bullet at a time. El Topo then pulls a copper plate from his coat-- a gift from the previous gun master. Although El Topo won the duel by cheating, he starts to question his own morality. In an act of respect for the master, he makes a grave for him out of the dead rabbits. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

After more traveling through the desert, El Topo comes to the last, and most spartan, gun master. The man wears only a small loin cloth and his ghost gray hair comes down to his waist. Next to him is a butterfly net. El Topo wishes to duel him, but the man says that he has no pistol, having traded it away years ago for the net. The two then get in a fistfight where El Topo is unable to connect a single blow. Frustrated, El Topo attempts to shoot the man, who catches the bullets in his butterfly net and throws them back at the man in black. Realising that he finally was beaten as he couldn't kill the last master, El Topo gives up in frustration. In tears, the master then asks El Topo if his life is really worth taking. The master then takes the pistol away from El Topo and kills himself in a demonstration of the unimportance of life, declaring, "You have lost!"

El Topo, ridden with the guilt of cheating, destroys his own gun and revisits the places where he killed those masters. The rabbit master's grave is turned into flames, the gypsy master and his mother are entombed with a large toothpick pyramid around them, and the blind master's grave is covered with honey combs, while his two servants' grave has become a shrub.

The unnamed woman then confronts El Topo and shoots him multiple times, giving him a series of gunshot wounds on his hands and feet, much like the wounds of Christ. Frustrated with his failure, and perhaps in love with the woman stranger, Mara then betrays and shoots him. They both ride off together, leaving El Topo to his own fate, similar to when El Topo abandoned his son. It is implied that these two women will destroy each other one day [1]. The first half ends with the gunslinger being taken away by a band of strange, deformed people.

Part 2

El Topo transformation speaking out to the underground people

The second half of the movie takes place years later, after El Topo is rescued by a band of deformed outcasts, saving him from death. The outcasts take El Topo to their underground community, where he, comatose, meditates on the four lessons for many years. When he awakes, he is 'born again,' and shaves off all his beard and hair and wears light, simple clothing (similar to Buddhist clothing). He decides to help the outcasts, and, together with a dwarven girl who looked after him while he was comatose, goes on a quest to free them from their subterranean prison. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... In medicine, a coma (from the Greek koma, meaning deep sleep) is a profound state of unconsciousness, which may result from a variety of conditions including intoxication (drug, alcohol or toxins), metabolic abnormalities (hypoglycemia, hyperglycemia, ketoacidosis, etc. ... For other senses of this word, see Meditation (disambiguation). ... A replica of an ancient statue found among the ruins of a temple at Sarnath Buddhism is a philosophy based on the teachings of the Buddha, Siddhārtha Gautama, a prince of the Shakyas, whose lifetime is traditionally given as 566 to 486 BCE. It had subsequently been accepted by...

However, it turns out that the citizens of the neighbouring town are corrupted cultists who enjoy killing for bloodsport, treating slaves as animals and indulging in sexual pleasures. El Topo is by now starting to doubt whether it was a good idea to escape the mountain; however, since he promised the underground people to help them, he decides to do various odd jobs in town -- from pantomiming to cleaning storefronts -- to buy dynamite.

At the same time, a mysterious monk arrives in town, who, in short order, becomes the new priest for the failing local Christian church (which had been replaced by the town's own pagan religion). However this new priest carries a gun and even uses live ammunition during the towns scam Russian roulette sermon (in which the local "priest" told the mysterious monk that the bullet is a blank). Ammunition, often referred to as ammo, is a generic term meaning (the assembly of) a projectile and its propellant. ... Russian roulette is a lethal form of gambling in which participants place a single round in a chamber of a revolver and, spinning the cylinder such that the location of the round is unknown, take turns putting the weapon to their temples (heads) and pulling the trigger until the weapon...

The mysterious monk playing Russian Roulette with live ammunition

While earning money for various low-level jobs, El Topo and the dwarven girl are forced at gun point to have sexual intercourse in front of a crowd of drunken cultists. This is when the dwarven girl reveals that she is in love with El Topo. The dwarven girl is ashamed of herself, however, and El Topo convinces her that she is beautiful. To show that he really appreciates her, he decides to marry her, heading to the town church. It is revealed that the new priest of the church is actually none other than El Topo's own son. In a fit of rage, his son threatens to kill El Topo; however, he was stopped by the dwarven girl because she needed El Topo to save her people. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ...

The son of El Topo, dressed in black similar to his father in the past, decides to spare El Topo's life until he finishes digging the exit for the underground people. However, he will follow El Topo's every step. For a while, the life of these three is working hard and living together happily as a family for once. Some time passes, and the dwarven girl is shown to be pregnant.

El Topo enjoys a peaceful family life for once

Son of El Topo and the dwarven girl look at El Topo's remains

With the help of his dwarf girlfriend and his son, El Topo digs an exit out of the cave. Just as the exit appears, the underground people start to run out of the mountain. The son of El Topo also could not kill his father/master, and decides to let it go. Sadly, just as the underground people near the town, the cultists are waiting for them with guns. El Topo helplessly witnesses his community being murdered by the cultists. In a fit rage, as if El Topo was possessed by God, he ignores the pain from several fatal bullet wounds and proceeds to take a rifle and start to kill all of the cultists in the town, men and women, old and young. Some are forced to abandon the town en masse (probably the slaves). After everybody in town is killed, El Topo takes an oil lamp and then pours oil on himself and sets himself on fire, an act reflecting the self-immolation of Buddhist monks and others that were protesting the Vietnam War, which was still going on at the time of the filming. Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... This article is about the medical condition. ... Synthetic motor oil An oil is any substance that is in a viscous liquid state (oily) at ambient temperatures or slightly warmer, and is both hydrophobic (immiscible with water, literally water fearing) and lipophilic (miscible with other oils, literally fat loving). This general definition includes compound classes with otherwise unrelated... Thích Quảng Đức pictured during his self-immolation. ... Combatants Republic of Vietnam United States Republic of Korea Thailand Australia New Zealand The Philippines National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam Democratic Republic of Vietnam People’s Republic of China Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea Strength US 1,000,000 South Korea 300,000 Australia 48,000...

El Topo's son and girlfriend survive the ordeal and made a grave for his remains, which becomes a beehive full of honey, as the first gun master's grave became. Since his dwarf girlfriend gives birth to their child at the same time as his death, the ending leads the viewer to believe that the child is the reincarnation of the gunslinger-turned-monk (borrowing the idea of Tibetan Buddism of reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama). The Son of El Topo, now dressed in his father's garments, the dwarf and the child ride off on a horse in the same fashion that the Son of El Topo and El Topo did in the beginning of the film. Domesticated Western honey bees are kept in beehives. ... For other uses, see Honey (disambiguation). ... Tibetan Buddhism, (formerly also called Lamaism after their religious gurus known as lamas), is the body of religious Buddhist doctrine and institutions characteristic of Tibet and the Himalayan region. ... This article is about the Dalai Lama lineage. ...

Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• John Lennon had named El Topo his favorite movie^[1]. John Barham recreated the score for release on Apple Records at the request of John Lennon.
• Other notable fans include David Lynch^[2].
• The film was shot on sets left over from the production of another Western, The Day of the Evil Gun.^{[citation needed]}
• Goichi Suda cited El Topo as a key inspiration for his game No More Heroes. Similarities include having a woman asking the protagonist to defeat the gunmasters/assassins in order to be the best.^[3]
• It has been claimed that this movie was the beginning of Peter Gabriel's inspiration for the classic Genesis concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Image File history File links Broom_icon. ... John Winston Ono Lennon, MBE (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980), (born John Winston Lennon, known as John Ono Lennon) was an iconic English 20th century rock and roll songwriter and singer, best known as the founding member of The Beatles. ... John Barham is an English pianist, composer, arranger, producer and educator. ... For other persons named David Lynch, see David Lynch (disambiguation). ... Goichi Suda , born January 2, 1968), is the CEO of Grasshopper Manufacture. ... -1... Peter Brian Gabriel (born 13 February 1950, in Chobham,[1] Surrey, England) is an English musician. ... For other uses, see Genesis (disambiguation). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

Sequel

Since at least the early 1990s, Jodorowsky has been attempting to make a sequel to El Topo. In 1996, a teaser poster was released^[4], but apparently, no shooting was actually done. The original working title, The Sons Of El Topo (Los Hijos Del Topo), was changed (sometime between 1996 and 2002) to Abelcain, due to disputes over ownership with Allen Klein. Additionally, the name of the character El Topo (The Mole) was changed to 'El Toro' (The Bull). Jodorowsky said of this, "I am now working on a Franco-Canadian production called Abelcain, which is a new version of the same project. The character El Topo has become El Toro. A single slash added on letter P changed a subterranean rat into a charging bull. For a true artist, difficulties become opportunities. And clouds become solid present."^{[citation needed]} This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

A 2002 article in The Guardian stated that Marilyn Manson was attached to star in the film, but that Jodorowsky was having great difficulty raising money for the project^[5]. No information has been publicly released about the project since then, and as of 2007, it appears to have been put on hold indefinitely for lack of funds. The Guardian is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. ... Marilyn Manson (born Brian Hugh Warner ) is the lead singer of the band Marilyn Manson. ... 2007 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

See also

• Cult film
• Midnight movies

A cult film is a film that has acquired a highly devoted but relatively small group of fans. ... Midnight movies are a once popular phenomenon that started in the early 1970s and largely faded with advent of the VCR in the 1980s. ...

External links

• El Topo at the Internet Movie Database
• Abkco Films Official site
• http://www.el-topo.co.uk EL TOPO UK re-release information
• A Book of the Film web adaption of the screenplay + rare vintage interviews with Jodorowsky
• The Sounds of El Topo free mp3 downloads of the ultrarare Apple and "Shades of Joy" soundtrack releases + sound clips from the film
• [1] more information on John Barham, who recreated the score for the Apple Records soundtrack release
• The Symbol Grows comprehensive information site

The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) is an online database of information about movies, actors, television shows, production crew personnel, and video games. ...

References

• [1]CONVERSATIONS WITH JODOROWSKY "I didn't want to say that in the film, but the audiences can think it. Right? They can imagine that the two women will ultimately destroy each other, if they wish."