el topo

Although it wears all the accoutrements of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western, El Topo is cut from another cloth entirely. Writer / director / star Alejandro Jodorowsky’s mind-bending, gender-bending, genre-bending experimental art film was the first certified midnight movie phenomenon, blazing a trail for the work of other outré auteur to come. Even 40 years later, its images are striking, its metaphors are mysterious and its ultimate purpose a bit bewildering. At the time of release, El Topo’s violence, sexual perversions and sacrilegious leanings were enough to guarantee controversy. While their impact has lessened over the years, Jodorowsky’s film remains a bizarre free-for-all of politically incorrect imagery and impenetrable (but often amusing) iconography. A cowboy with a foot fetish caresses his collection of high heels. A female gunslinger amorously peels a luscious fruit. A cave full of physically deformed incest victims descends upon the spiritually deformed citizens of a nearby town. Part of the fun of El Topo is deciphering the acid-inspired story structure, which seems intent on aping Sergio Leone’s stylistic achievements and destroying them at the same time. It’s easy to describe the central plot (an egotistical gunslinger wanders the desert searching for another to match his skills), but when the film splits itself in two, turning our vicious anti-hero into a born-again monk even the most bizarre description no longer applies. Anchor Bay’s blu-ray sheds new light on the film thanks to a director’s commentary and blesses us with a transfer that is nothing short of miraculous.

“He’s a stranger in a foreign land. And the law don’t give a damn ‘bout the Detroit man.” So go the lyrics to the song that opens up Moving Violations, about a laid-off UAW worker who runs afoul of a local sheriff and winds up on the run. Even in 1976 Detroit couldn’t catch a break! The description might imply another Roger Corman produced car chase flick, and that’s mostly what this is. But underneath the getaway music and Smokey and the Bandit style cops there’s a dark movie fighting to get the surface, starting with star Stephen McHattie, a recognizable bit player whose more often cast as a bad guy. Not to mention the fact that the beginning and end of the film bear and uncanny resemblance to First Blood (is it too late for Roger to sue?). The second half of the double-feature disc is Fighting Mad, with Peter Fonda as a vengeful farmer going head to head against a mining corporation intent on co-opting his land. The third feature from Academy Award winning director Jonathan Demme, the movie is a clumsy mess with little to recommend it until Fonda grabs his bow and arrow in the final 10 minutes. Slow paced and short on action (although a chase sequence involving Fonda and a 6-year-old kid riding shotgun on his dirt bike looked realistically dangerous), this one falls well below even Corman’s usual standards. Although he sticks around to deliver a commentary for both films.