Official Synopsis:
John Lennon championed him, Dennis Hopper used him and Marilyn Manson loves him. Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of cinema's most controversial and influential filmmakers. In 1968 his scandalous debut Fando Y Lis caused a riot in Mexico. His ultra-violent underground El Topo dragged the hippy generation into the '70s, single-handedly invented the American Midnight Movie phenomenon and transformed its creator into a counterculture icon. With The Holy Mountain, his pop-alchemical follow-up, Jodorowsky tore apart the very fabric of film. After 35 years in the wilderness, the maverick visionary is back to shock and bedazzle audiences all over again.
-Ben Cobb, Anarchy And Alchemy: The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky
Includes:
Fando Y Lis
Banned in Mexico, a permanent cause celebre, surrealist "fabulador" Alejandro Jodorowsky unique career began with this bizarre tale of corrupted innocence, sadomasochistic love and unattainable paradise. Created from hazy memories of the controversial Fernando Arrabal play he staged in Paris, Jodorowsky's sublime freak-out follows impotent Fando (Sergio Kleiner) and his paraplegic sweetheart Lis (Diana Mariscal) searching for the enchanting city of Tar where spiritual ecstasy resides. The astonishing road trip takes them through urban rubble, scalding deserts, treacherous mountains, their own pasts and close encounters of the weirdest kind in Jodorowsky's seminal, signature work of startling provocation and incendiary art.
El Topo
It was the landmark cult film that began the whole Midnight Movie phenomena of the counterculture crazy 1970s. El Topo was the most talked about, most controversial quasi-Western head trip ever made, transforming the way risk-taking audiences, seeking mainstream Hollywood alternatives, watched edgy underground films. Classic Americana and avant-garde European cinema sensibilities meet Zen Buddhism and the Bible as master gunfighter and cosmic mystic El Topo (played by writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky) must defeat his four sharp-shooting rivals on an ever-increasingly bizarre path to allegorical self-enlightenment and surreal resurrection.
The Holy Mountain
The scandal of the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, writer/director Alejandro Jodorowsky's flood of sacrilegious imagery and existential symbolism is a spiritual quest for enlightenment pitting illusion against truth. The Alchemist (Jodorowsky) assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.
La Cravate (1957)
In 1957 Jodorowsky took his first steps in the world of the moving image by filming a silent version of Thomas Mann's The Transposed Heads - A Legend Of India in Paris. This 35-minute short film, La Cravate, was considered lost for fifty ears until its discovery in a German attic in 2006. "It's about a girl who sells heads. She changes the heads of a poetical guy and a boxer. She puts the spiritual head on the strong body and the idiot head on the spiritual body. And each head (then) changes its body. I (Jodorowsky) am saying "you are not a body who has a spirit, you are a spirit who has a body." -Ben Cobb, Anarchy And Alchemy: The Films Of Alejandro Jodorowsky
El Topo Soundtrack
The Holy Mountain Soundtrack
Our Take:
One of the greatest pleasures of reviewing DVD’s is that it allows me to discover great films as they become available on DVD. Granted the “discovery” is only a personal one as the films I am watching have been heralded as masterpieces for some time. This is the case with The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky box set, which features the director’s first-ever film as well as his three seminal works. These heavily surreal and allegorical films may not be for everyone, but they are all must-sees for any serious cinema fan.
My personal favorite in this set is El Topo, which is a very surreal take on the spaghetti western, ripe with artistically graphic violence (Robert Rodriguez must have been a fan) and eastern religious philosophy. One could easily dissect the film, as well as the other three movies, but it would remove the fun for other viewers to discover Jodorwsky as I have. It is also worth noting that the score for El Topo, which is included in this set on a separate CD, is utterly fabulous and has been playing in my home constantly as a result of hearing it in the film. It is easy to see how El Topo sparked the Midnight Movie craze of the 70’s, but this is not your average sex and violence film; this is an intelligent work of surrealist art that uses sexual and violent images as the colors that combine to create this masterpiece.
Anchor Bay did a really great job with this set. Aside from including the soundtracks for El Topo and The Holy Mountain as separate CD’s in the collection, the other special features packaged on the films’ discs are as follows:
Fando y Lis
* Commentary - By director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
* La Constellation (90 minutes) – Full length documentary about Jodorowsky, complete with its own chapters menu.
El Topo
* Commentary - By director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
* On Camera Interview with Alejandro Jodorowsky (7 minutes).
* Photo Gallery/Script.
The Holy Mountain
* Commentary - By director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
* Deleted Scenes with Commentary (6 minutes) – Eight scenes.
* The Tarot with Commentary (8 minutes) - Jodorowsky takes us on a brief journey into the world of Tarot.
* Original Trailer.
* Photos and Script.
The Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky is one of those great sets that contains the greatest works of a single director and, most importantly, has them in chronological order. It’s clear that Jodorowsky’s films have had a significant impact on many filmmakers who have come after him. In fact, Jodorowsky was to direct a film based on the novel Dune initially, but it fell through and David Lynch, another great director whose work has shades of Jodorowsky, wound up directing the film. The films as well as the two soundtracks in this box set have already made this one my personal favorite DVD collections, as I’m sure it will also be for you.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Overall Picture:
Movies (average): A
DVD set: A
- Matthew Orlando
Staff Writer
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