The Surreal Deal

Alejandro Jodorowskyis both a man without a country and a genre unto himself.

by Shaun Brady

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The era of the cult film may be over. More often talked about than seen, Alejandro Jodorowsky's double shot of psychedelic mysticism — El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973) — is now an Amazon click away, as part of Anchor Bay's new Films of Alejandro Jodorowsky box set.

Er, scratch Amazon and make that Diabolik DVD, whose Joseph A. Gervasi is gracing I-House with brand-new prints of both. Between the two films, Greg Weeks of Espers will present a musical interlude complete with kaleidoscopic colors and naked musicians (which explains why many collaborators have dropped out).

Jodorowsky is both a man without a country (born in Chile to Russian Jews, later earning both Mexican and French citizenship) and a genre unto himself. His adopted homelands echo those of Luis Bunuel, and in some ways his work tries to mend the schism between Spain's surrealists. He shares Bunuel's caustic humor and anti-clericalism, but eschews his formal asceticism for Dali's visual audacity. His films veer between visionary and self-indulgent, but the latter is often a minefield toward the former.

Of the two films on which Jodorowsky's reputation is staked, El Topo is slightly more traditional, an existential western where shifting sands reconfigure themselves into a Garcia Marquez mental landscape populated by Tod Browning's freaks. The director plays a nomadic man who takes on four master gunslingers/spiritualists before being reborn as the clown-messiah of a tribe of dwarves and cripples.

Holy Mountain is both more poetic and more dated, loaded down with heavy-handed '70s counter-cultural "satire," but full of images unlike anything else — each time the pop philosophizing threatens to become overbearing, the eyeballs are singed by another unforgettable sight, from the rainbow-colored alchemist's hideaway in an impossibly high tower to the armor-clad frogs and lizards re-creating the conquest of Mexico.

Gervasi credits both films with creating "a really sumptuous and often disturbing visual feast on the screen. Even if it stimulates ill feelings or unease in the viewer, I appreciate the fact that I'm seeing these visions that are very unique, very bizarre."

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

Alejandro Jodorowsky double feature, Sat., May 26, 7:30 p.m., $12, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, www.ihousephilly.org.