TIME’s 1971 review of Chilean-Russian director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo (The Mole) described the allegorical cult western film as “a vivid if ultimately passionless passion play.” The film’s 1970 trailer proclaimed, “It is a mystic film. It is tender. It is sexual.” It is also a bit strange. A mysterious cowboy kills a group of outlaws before abandoning his naked son to ride off with a woman. El Topo (played by Jodorowsky) then embarks on a series of bizarre adventures. He challenges and defeats the four great gun masters of the land and then is betrayed by a woman with a man’s voice who shoots him, leaving stigmata wounds. After El Topo heals and finds religious enlightenment, he begins an affair with a dwarf woman and helps a group of outcasts escape from a subterranean prison, only to see them massacred by cultists. That’s when things really get weird. El Topowas a cult favorite at midnight showings in New York City before finally being released on DVD in 2007.
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