El Topo

The distribution story of this film is as strange as the film. Cinema operator Ben Barenholtz saw it at private screenings at MoMA, put it on at midnight in his own theatre, and the midnight movie was born there. One night John Lennon was in the audience. Lennon and Yoko Ono persuaded the Beatles' manager Allen Klein to buy the rights, and Lennon also gave Jodorowsky a million dollars for his next film, The Holy Mountain. The same man then caused the film to disappear. Klein and Jodorowsky fell out over an erotic film Klein wanted to make, and the dispute ran for close to four decades. Throughout that time El Topo could legally be shown almost nowhere. A DVD release in 2007 brought it back. A gunman dressed in black rides into the desert to find and kill four masters, then moves into an entirely different life. Jodorowsky directs and stars; the child in the film is his own son, Brontis. Who it is for: viewers who like experimental cinema that breaks genre and works through symbol and violence at once. Who it is not for: anyone disturbed by real animal cruelty or religious provocation. The film observes no limits, and some scenes are indefensible now.