[4] Following Jodorowsky's underground hit El Topo (1970), acclaimed by both John Lennon and George Harrison, the film was produced by the Beatles manager Allen Klein of ABKCO Music and Records.

A man (later identified as the thief), representing The Fool tarot card, lies in the desert with flies covering his face.

He is befriended by a footless, handless dwarf representing the Five of Swords, and the pair travel into the city where they make money entertaining tourists.

They consist of Venus, a cosmetician who produces artificial faces; Mars, a weapons manufacturer; Jupiter, a millionaire art dealer specializing in erotic machines; Saturn, a toy maker who uses her products to indoctrinate children; Uranus, a political advisor tasked with reducing the population for financial purposes; Neptune, a police chief who castrates his officers; and Pluto, an architect of minimalist homes.

Once on Lotus Island they are sidetracked by the Pantheon Bar, a cemetery party where people have abandoned their quest for the holy mountain and instead engage in drugs, poetry, or acts of physical prowess.

Before the principal photography would commence, Jodorowsky and his wife spent a week without sleep under the direction of a Japanese Zen master.

[6] The central members of the cast spent three months doing various spiritual exercises guided by Oscar Ichazo of the Arica Institute.

The Arica training features Zen, Sufi and yoga exercises along with eclectic concepts drawn from the Kabbalah, the I Ching and the teachings of George Gurdjieff.

[6] The film had its premiere at Waverly Theatre, an art house movie theater in New York City on 29 November 1973, where it had restricted run at midnights on Friday and Saturday for sixteen months.

[citation needed] The DVD's extra segment includes a deleted scene in which we see two children; a young Brontis Jodorowsky and a naked girl, watching a cross made from television sets.

Its consensus reads, "A visual treat rich in symbolism, The Holy Mountain adds another defiantly idiosyncratic chapter to Jodorowsky's thoroughly unique filmography.

"[19] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.