And Now For Something Completely Different

Andrew Borntreger (A Marine) rewiews EL TOPO, a Mexican surrealist western movie favored by John Lennon and Yoko Ono (Two Useless Idiots).

Mr. Borntreger has a number of interesting things to say about EL TOPO, such as:

The story contains threads of Christianity, but it pulls heavily from Buddhism. If you started slapping me with a fish, saying, "This is Buddhism." I could not tell if you were serious or using it as an excuse to assault me.

I would, however, tell you to stop hitting me with the fish.

And:

If anyone buries me under a thick layer of lifeless rabbits, I will come back from the dead and be mighty riled.

And:

(again - do not pile dead bunnies on me after I die)

And:

The UN resolution barring Jerry Garcia and Phyllis Diller from having children was a good idea.

But that doesn't tell you what the film is really all about. But then it would be reasonable to believe that Alejandro Jodorowsky, the writer/director/star of EL TOPO, doesn't know what its about either.

Jodorowsky also wrote a Eurocomic series titled THE INCAL LIGHT which was published in HEAVY METAL magazine back in the 1980's. He used a lot of weirdness for the sake of weirdness titles and terms such as Technopope, Enconomat, and Purple Endoguard in it.

Jodorowsky also had an opportunity to direct an adaptation of DUNE before David Lynch did, and he blew it. It would certainly have been a more surreal film (he cast Salvidor Dali as the emperor) than the Lynch version. But we would never have received the concept of the "killing word."

(No. My name is not a killing word either.)

We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.
_