El Topo is Jodorowsky’s head-bending “Acid Western” that first drew attention to the director’s hallucinatory vision and ability as a filmmaker. With some of the most radical imagery committed to film, cult-cinema enthusiasts filled theaters on its release and a new culture of midnight screenings was born. The movie opens with the solitary black-clad figure El Topo (played by Jodorowsky himself) riding through a remote village to find its streets soaked in blood and residents massacred. The figure in black vows to avenge the slaughter and sets off to kill those responsible. In a freewheeling sequence of events the man meets and frees a captive woman, and then undertakes a series of contests with four gun masters, defeating each one. The second half of the film picks up some years later, El Topo now living among a community of cripples who have been sealed in a mountain by the townspeople who regard them as derelict and deformed. The gunfighter leads the effort to tunnel out, before meeting a dramatic end.
