Alejandro Jodorowsky

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – La danza de la realidad AKA The Dance of Reality (2013)

    2011-2020Alejandro JodorowskyChileDramaFantasy

    In a Chilean little town, the son of an uprooted couple, formed by a rigorous communist father and a loving but weak mother, tries to pave his own path in a society that does not understand their Jewish-Ukrainian origins.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – Tusk (1980)

    Drama1971-1980Alejandro JodorowskyArthouseFrance

    An English girl and an Indian elephant, born on the same day, share a common destiny.

    Tusk review contributed by Steve Puchalski at Shock Cinema

    Even though my print of this ultra-obscure Jodorowsky pic was in French with NO subtitles, you really don’t need a translation in order to get the gist of this self-termed “fable panique.” Set in turn of the century India, Jodorowsky drops most of his crazed mystical/religious/hallucinogenic stylings in order to tell a relatively straightforward story of a little girl, Elise, and a little elephant, Tusk, both of whom are born at the same time, and how their lives interconnect over the years (yawn). It begins on a good note, with Jodorowsky intercutting an elephant and a woman, each giving birth.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – El Topo (1970)

    1961-1970Alejandro JodorowskyArthouseMexicoWestern

    The gunfighter El Topo (“The Mole”) and his young son ride through a desert to a village, whose inhabitants have been massacred. Bandits are nearby, torturing and killing the survivors. El Topo rescues a woman (Mara), who leads him on a mission to find and defeat the four master gunmen of the desert. Leaving his son with a group of monks, El Topo and Mara complete the mission, accompanied by a mysterious woman in black. The women leave El Topo wounded in the desert, where he is found by a clan of deformed people who take him to the remote cavern where they live. Awakening years later, he goes with a dwarf woman to a nearby town, promising to dig a tunnel through which the cave-dwellers can escape. They find the town run by a vicious sheriff and home to a bizarre religious cult. El Topo’s son, now a man, is a monk in the town. The completion of the tunnel leads El Topo, the townspeople, and the cave-dwellers to a bloody and tragic end.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – El Topo (1970)

    1961-1970Alejandro JodorowskyCultMexico

    The gunfighter El Topo (“The Mole”) and his young son ride through a desert to a village, whose inhabitants have been massacred. Bandits are nearby, torturing and killing the survivors. El Topo rescues a woman (Mara), who leads him on a mission to find and defeat the four master gunmen of the desert. Leaving his son with a group of monks, El Topo and Mara complete the mission, accompanied by a mysterious woman in black. The women leave El Topo wounded in the desert, where he is found by a clan of deformed people who take him to the remote cavern where they live. Awakening years later, he goes with a dwarf woman to a nearby town, promising to dig a tunnel through which the cave-dwellers can escape. They find the town run by a vicious sheriff and home to a bizarre religious cult. El Topo’s son, now a man, is a monk in the town. The completion of the tunnel leads El Topo, the townspeople, and the cave-dwellers to a bloody and tragic end.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – The Holy Mountain (1973)

    1971-1980Alejandro JodorowskyArthouseCultMexico

    Quote:
    A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide’s assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – The Holy Mountain (1973) (HD)

    1971-1980Alejandro JodorowskyArthouseMexico

    Plot Summary
    A Christlike figure wanders through bizarre, grotesque scenarios filled with religious and sacrilegious imagery. He meets a mystical guide who introduces him to seven wealthy and powerful individuals, each representing a planet in the solar system. These seven, along with the protagonist, the guide and the guide’s assistant, divest themselves of their worldly goods and form a group of nine who will seek out the Holy Mountain, in order to displace the gods who live there and become immortal.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – El Topo (1970) (HD)

    1961-1970Alejandro JodorowskyArthouseMexicoWestern

    Plot Summary
    The gunfighter El Topo (“The Mole”) and his young son ride through a desert to a village, whose inhabitants have been massacred. Bandits are nearby, torturing and killing the survivors. El Topo rescues a woman (Mara), who leads him on a mission to find and defeat the four master gunmen of the desert. Leaving his son with a group of monks, El Topo and Mara complete the mission, accompanied by a mysterious woman in black. The women leave El Topo wounded in the desert, where he is found by a clan of deformed people who take him to the remote cavern where they live.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – Santa Sangre [+ director’s commentary] (1989)

    1981-1990Alejandro JodorowskyArchitectureArthouseCultMexico

    Quote:
    Santa Sangre is the surreal horror story about a young man, Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky) who has grown up in a circus with his mother Concha (Blanca Guerra) and his philandering father. Fenix witnesses a brutal fight between his mother and father, at the end of which his mother loses both of her arms and his father commits suicide. Fenix spends years in an insane asylum, before his mother persuades him to act as her hands in her bizarre nightclub act. Soon, Concha is having Fenix perform a variety of murders, where he is killing every female in sight. Though the film has some of the hallucinatory qualities of Jodorowsky’s earlier films, Santa Sangre doesn’t quite have the same punch, particularly in terms of cerebral and emotional impact, despite its fine visuals. Santa Sangre is available in both R-rated and NC-17 edits.Read More »

  • Alejandro Jodorowsky – Santa sangre [+Commentary] (1989)

    1981-1990Alejandro JodorowskyArchitectureArthouseCultMexico

    Quote:
    Does the prolonged gestation period account for the bulging-valise feel of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s seething, gore-drenched carnivale? Not really — all of his pictures seem deliberately shaped to let the fantasies spill over once poured in, and this lushly scabrous murkfest, made after nearly a decade of inactivity, is true to the molten-lava of Jodorowsky’s imagination. As in his ’70s freakouts, the movie follows the trajectory of the subconscious, namely Fenix’s (as in “rising from the ashes,” and played at different ages by the filmmaker’s sons, Axel and Adan), first spotted perched nekkid atop a tree in the asylum. Cue flashback, and the parade of candy-colored melodrama surging out of the “Circo del Gringo,” traumas piling up on little Fenix’s innocence via his bloated, randy cowboy dad (Guy Stockwell) and his fervid-eyed mom (Blanca Guerra), who, when not dangling from a trapeze by her hair, presides over an order of fanatics worshipping an armless martyr. Read More »

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