Unless you are a serious cult film aficionado, or someone who frequented midnight movies back in the early (pre-“Rocky Horror”) 1970s, chances are you’ve never heard of Alexandro Jodorowsky, who is being honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival (see details about the festival on Page L).
I first heard about Jodorowsky in 1971, when my college roommate returned from New York with tales of a mesmerizing and extremely violent movie. It was called “El Topo,” and from his initial description, it sounded a lot like a spaghetti western. But this had more, my roommate insisted, as he went on to recount the highlights.
Alexandro Jodorowsky was born in Chile in 1930. He traveled extensively at an early age and even studied mime in France with the great Marcel Marceau. Eventually, he settled in Mexico, where he made a name for himself as a cartoonist and a theater director. But anyone who has seen his three films (all of which will be showing at the festival, with Jodorowsky in attendance), will quickly realize that he is a filmmaker through and through.
“El Topo” ((star)(star)(star)) remains the best known of Jodorowsky’s work, though it has drifted out of our cinema consciousness because it is nearly impossible to find a print. The story is an extended parable — as all Jodorowsky’s films tend to be — dealing with El Topo (translated as “The Mole”), a long-haired, leather-clad gunman who first rides onto the screen with his naked 7-year-old son sitting behind him. (Jodorowsky, who wrote and directed the film and composed the music, also plays the title character.) He runs across a town filled with bloody corpses and limbless bodies. He seeks justice, which means even more slaughter, torture and bloodletting, ending with the castration of the evil colonel who led the attack. (Jodorowsky was criticized for the excessive amount of violence in his movies, which includes the killing of animals.)
As with all of Jodorowsky’s films, they start out better than they end. Once El Topo has gotten his revenge (the humiliated colonel immediately commits suicide), he claims the colonel’s woman and rides off, leaving his bewildered son in the hands of a few monks. Soon he is off to do gory battle with four zen masters in the desert. (Why? Who knows? Who cares?)
“El Topo” is not for the squeamish. But it is mesmerizing in its own way, filled with images and ideas that still pack a punch.
Also screening at the festival are Jodorowsky’s two other films, 1973’s “Holy Mountain” ((star)(star)(star)), which starts out as a warped religious epic before segueing into a spiritual planetary excursion, and 1989’s “Santa Sangre” ((star)(star)(star)), about a highly dysfunctional circus family.
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(“El Topo” plays at 7:15 p.m. Saturday at the Fine Arts Theatre, 418 S. Michigan Ave., as part of the Chicago Underground Film Festival. “Holy Mountain” plays at 7:30 p.m. Sunday. “Santa Sangre” plays at 8 p.m. Monday. Director Alexandro Jodorowsky will be present for all three screenings. Tickets: $7. 773-866-8660.)
