Review #780: 'The Holy Mountain' (1973)

A man dressed like Christ wakes up drenched in his own urine and with a face full of flies. He is awoken and nursed by a group of naked children and an amputee dwarf, the latter of whom accompanies the man into town where people are getting executed and raped while rich tourists take photographs and clap. The Spanish invasion of Mexico is played out with toads and lizards as a crowd watches. Fat men dressed like Romans sell religious paraphernalia, and, after noticing the man's resemblance to Jesus, get him drunk and use his body to make moulds of Jesus on the cross. The man awakens, surrounded by images of himself on the cross. He screams and begins to smash the figures with his bare hands. After this, things begin to get really weird.

Hot off the success of his Midnight Movie, the psychedelic, ultra-violent El Topo (1970), Alejandro Jodorowsky was given a decent budget for his follow-up. Experimenting with sleep deprivation, spiritualist meditation and, of course, LSD, the result would be one of the most visually arresting films ever made, and also one of the strangest. The target is religion, but more of man's interpretation of religion to suit his own needs. The Holy Mountain of the title is the key to immortality, but the collection of capitalists, exploiters and thugs who embark on the journey seek all the answers in order to escape the horrors of the world they're directly responsible for.

Jodorowsky has a real gift for the image. Whether it's the sublime, kitsch interiors of the Alchemist's (Jodorowsky himself) room, located at the top of a huge tower which the man dressed like Jesus, billed as the Thief (Horacio Salinas), has to ascend perched on a giant hook, or the truly grotesque sight of flayed goats paraded around a town on poles, he knows how to grab your attention. The film switches gleefully between horror, satire, farce and sometimes camp, like the machine that needs to be penetrated sexually with a huge electric phallus before it will open and allow you to operate it. This scene is part of a collection of vignettes that makes up the central section, as we meet the seven chosen to journey to The Holy Mountain.

Unseen for around 30 years, The Holy Mountain found itself in distribution purgatory, until it was recently re-released and given the sort of remastering it deserved. It is a kaleidoscope of acid-trip imagery, and Jodorowsky throws politics, sociology and history into the mix to make one enlightening experience. Embracing the free-form storytelling of Federico Fellini and, especially, Luis Bunuel, it may frustrate with it's lack of narrative structure, but artists like Jodorowsky shouldn't be shackled with such formalities. Scandalous, beautiful, horrifying and often baffling, The Holy Mountain is an experience that will no doubt remain with you for days, possibly longer, but whatever your view, it's like nothing you've seen before.


Directed by: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Starring: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Horacio Salinas, Zamira Saunders, Juan Ferrara
Country: Mexico/USA

Rating: *****

Tom Gillespie