Characterized by its bizarre characters and occurrences, use of maimed and dwarf performers, and heavy doses of Judeo-Christian symbolism and Eastern philosophy, the film is about El Topo—a violent, black-clad gunfighter played by Jodorowsky—and his quest for enlightenment.
After they come across a town whose people, horses and livestock have been slaughtered, El Topo hunts down and kills the perpetrators and their leader, a fat balding Colonel.
She tells El Topo she will not return his love unless he proves himself the best gun-fighter by defeating the desert's four great gun masters.
El Topo awakens many years later in a cave to find that the tribe of deformed outcasts have taken care of him and come to regard him as a god-like figure while he has been asleep and meditating on the gun masters' "four lessons".
He is able to reach the exit and, together with a dwarf girl who becomes his lover, performs for the depraved cultists of the neighboring town to raise money for dynamite to assist in digging a tunnel on one side of the mountain where the outcasts have effectively been kept imprisoned.
Hijo, now a young monk, arrives in the town to be the new priest, but is disgusted by the religion the cultists practice – notably symbolized by the frequent display of a basic line drawing of the Eye of Providence – and their violent preoccupation with guns, from their church "ritual" through to the film's bloody climax.
Despite El Topo's great change in appearance, Hijo recognizes him and intends to kill him on the spot, but agrees to wait until he has succeeded in freeing the outcasts.
Now wearing his father's black gunfighter clothes, Hijo grows impatient at the time the project is taking, and begins to work alongside El Topo to hasten the moment when he will kill him.
Ben Barenholtz, an owner of the Elgin Theater in New York City, saw a private screening of El Topo at the Museum of Modern Art.
On a failing attempt to purchase the American rights to El Topo, Barenholtz convinced the producer to have the film shown at midnight at the Elgin.
[1] El Topo was distributed across the United States through ABKCO Films, owned by Allen Klein, manager of the Beatles.
[2] For decades El Topo could only be seen at such midnight screenings in art houses and via partially censored Japanese laserdiscs and bootleg videos.
Surrealist publicity in order to enter the world of cinema from a position of obscurity [...] I acknowledge that this statement is problematic in that it presents fictional violence against a woman as a tool for exposure, and now, fifty years later, I regret that this is being read as truth.
The website's consensus reads: "By turns intoxicating and confounding, El Topo contains the creative multitudes that made writer-director Alejandro Jodorowsky such a singular talent.
[12] Noteworthy figures said to be fans of the film include directors David Lynch, Nicolas Winding Refn and Samuel Fuller; video game writer and director Suda51; actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper; comedians The Mighty Boosh and Patton Oswalt; and performers Bob Dylan, Roger Waters, Marilyn Manson, Frank Ocean, Jarvis Cocker,[13] Peter Gabriel, George Harrison, Lucia Lee, and John Lennon.
[2] Gabriel has claimed[14] that this movie was an inspiration for the classic Genesis concept album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, while collaborator Jared Eckman described the film as a failed experiment.
[18] A 2002 article in The Guardian stated that Marilyn Manson was attached to star in the film, but that Jodorowsky was having great difficulty raising money for the project.
[19] In an interview for The Guardian in November 2009, Jodorowsky stated that his next rumoured project, a "metaphysical western" entitled King Shot, is "not happening" and instead he is to begin work on Son of El Topo, in collaboration with "some Russian producers".