Artist Formerly Known as Plant

Plant has announced, due to politically correct social upheaval , financial constraint and artistic merit, He has legally changed his name to "Helen." Apparently I had kept him in the "Hydroponic Closet" a little to long. Therefore all future reviews, blog posts, documents and the like, will either contain the opinions of myself (J.B.) or "Helen." However we will not be changing the blog header for this site in order to eliminate any possible confusion by our loyal fan(s).

Thank you,
Javier Balzonya
Site Administrator

El Topo ... Once Again 2008's Worst Movie Ever to Show your Paranoid Drug Addict Friends.

Watching El Topo is definitely one of those events in life that you have to try just once before you die. It would be nearly impossible and quite unfair to try and pigeon hole Jodorowsky's Disasterpiece as a mere craptacular collage of disjointed shock points wrapped in a loose vale of a Psychedelic Western Quasi Spiritual Transcendence of Childhood Intimacy Issues in a Biblical subtext of Man and his false Gods. (although some have tried) El Topo is all of that and none of the above. It is as if Jodorowsky had six weeks to live and wanted to put every issue he ever faced on Earth in to a two hour film with poor editing, lousy sound, no discernible plot and no budget. However his eclectic eccentricity is certainly unique and does not fail to hold the viewer's interest the whole film through. All though the film has reached legendary cult status and is remarkable in it's own right, it is still a second rate juxtaposition of unabashed nonsensical refuse, that admittedly was somewhat awesome to watch.

El Topo delivers in a big way from the onset with intense scenes of violence, murder, incest, rape, nudity, torture, sex, theological experimentation, perversity and enough slaughtered farm animals to feed a starving African Nation. The viewer is instantly compelled by the disturbing yet thought provoking imagery as one attempts to unravel any coherent meaning from the "ham fisted" juvenile symbolism "barfed" across the screen. Who is "El Topo", gun fighter, deity, prophet, rapist, future cast member of Kung Fu? Who knows? Each disjointed scene takes us closer to the edge of epiphany, disillusion, boredom and fascination. This quirky film, the first of "the midnight movies," is so odd and bold that it defies accurate description.


Here is a detailed plot summary provided by Wikipedia:

Part 1

The movie takes place in two parts. The first half, in an unnamed spaghetti-western inspired desert, opens with El Topo and his son who is naked (but sheltered by an umbrella) riding a horse. He tells his son that he is now seven years old, and must bury his first toy and a picture of his mother in the sand. Meanwhile, El Topo plays his flute, thus the movie starts.

During their journey, they find a lifeless town with all the inhabitants killed and mutilated (including the farm animals). El Topo avenges the town by hunting down and killing the outlaws who butchered the townsfolk. They find out that the outlaws are under the command of a Colonel who has taken another small town with a monastery and its inhabitants as hostage. El Topo rescues the town from the Colonel and his outlaws, only to abandon his son with the monks. He rides off with a woman whom the Colonel and his outlaws had kept captive as a slave, and names her Mara after the bitter water they later drink from a pond. Mara convinces El Topo to defeat the four great gun masters to become the greatest gunman in the land. He duels each of them at Mara's prodding, and during each duel, El Topo either cheats or gets lucky.

The first duel is with a blind man with the voice of a woman, dressed in only a thong and guarded by a man with no legs riding a man with no arms. The man claims to be impervious to bullets, stating that he "offers them no resistance," and even demonstrates this ability. El Topo slays the man by setting a man hole trap for the master so that he loses concentration, and Mara kills the remaining two half-men. An unnamed woman with a male voice finds the couple and offers to lead them to the next gunslinger. The mysterious female gives Mara a mirror, which she becomes enamored with. The gunslinger is frustrated by her vanity and shoots the mirror from her hands. After desperately trying to reform the mirror, she quits and gives him the shards, which he places in his pocket.

The second gunslinger is some sort of a traveling gypsy, accompanied by his mother and a lion. After initially beating El Topo in a duel, the large man shows El Topo how he came to be so powerful. He tells El Topo that he strengthened his fingers by working with copper and later on by creating delicate objects like toothpick pyramids. He also tells El Topo that the reason he is alive and powerful is because he has his mother whom he loves and takes care of, while El Topo, unlike him, is all alone in this world, only living to destroy others. Afterwards the man decides to give the black gunslinger one more chance. While walking away, El Topo places Mara's mirror shards on the ground. The massive man's mother, whom the man is obsessed with, gives El Topo his revolver and then steps on the mirror shards. Concerned with his mother, the brute forgets about his duel with El Topo. The man in black then shoots the gypsy gunslinger in the back of his head.

The third gun master is found at a rabbit farm. The rabbit shepherd is rather unconcerned with the man in black and his mission, and tells him that as soon as he arrived at the rabbit farm, the rabbits began to die. They both shared a moment of peace together by playing music to each other, because music can tell a person's character more than word the master says. They then compared to each other the way they shoot by shooting at crows. El Topo's bullet hit the crow's head while the master shot the heart of the bird. Afterward, they start the duel, and the master shoots El Topo in the chest knocking him down. However, El Topo stands up, laughing, unfazed from the bullet. He then shoots the defenseless rabbit farmer, since his gun can only fire one bullet at a time. El Topo then pulls a copper plate from his coat-- a gift from the previous gun master. Although El Topo won the duel by cheating, he starts to question his own morality. In an act of respect for the master, he makes a grave for him out of the dead rabbits.

After more traveling through the desert, El Topo comes to the last, and most spartan, gun master. The man wears only a small loin cloth and his ghost gray hair comes down to his waist. Next to him is a butterfly net. El Topo wishes to duel him, but the man says that he has no pistol, having traded it away years ago for the net. The two then get in a fistfight where El Topo is unable to connect a single blow. Frustrated, El Topo attempts to shoot the man, who catches the bullets in his butterfly net and throws them back at the man in black. Realizing that he finally was beaten as he couldn't kill the last master, El Topo gives up in frustration. In tears, the master then asks El Topo if his life is really worth taking. The master then takes the pistol away from El Topo and kills himself in a demonstration of the unimportance of life, declaring, "You have lost!"

El Topo, ridden with the guilt of cheating, destroys his own gun and revisits the places where he killed those masters. The rabbit master's grave is turned into flames, the gypsy master and his mother are entombed with a large toothpick pyramid around them, and the blind master's grave is covered with honey combs, while his two servants' grave has become a shrub.

The unnamed woman then confronts El Topo and shoots him multiple times, giving him a series of gunshot wounds on his hands and feet, much like the wounds of Christ. Frustrated with his failure, and perhaps in love with the woman stranger, Mara then betrays and shoots him. They both ride off together, leaving El Topo to his own fate, similar to when El Topo abandoned his son. It is implied that these two women will destroy each other one day [1]. The first half ends with the gunslinger being taken away by a band of strange, deformed people.

Part 2

The second half of the movie takes place years later, after El Topo is rescued by a band of deformed outcasts, saving him from death. The outcasts take El Topo to their underground community, where he, comatose, meditates on the four lessons for many years. When he awakes, he is 'born again,' and shaves off all his beard and hair and wears light, simple clothing (similar to Buddhist clothing). He decides to help the outcasts, and, together with a dwarven girl who looked after him while he was comatose, goes on a quest to free them from their subterranean prison.

However, it turns out that the citizens of the neighbouring town are corrupted cultists who enjoy killing for bloodsport, treating slaves as animals and indulging in sexual pleasures. El Topo is by now starting to doubt whether it was a good idea to escape the mountain; however, since he promised the underground people to help them, he decides to do various odd jobs in town -- from pantomiming to cleaning storefronts -- to buy dynamite.

At the same time, a mysterious monk arrives in town, who, in short order, becomes the new priest for the failing local Christian church (which had been replaced by the town's own pagan religion). However this new priest carries a gun and even uses live ammunition during the towns scam Russian roulette sermon (in which the local "priest" told the mysterious monk that the bullet is a blank).

While earning money for various low-level jobs, El Topo and the dwarven girl are forced at gun point to have sexual intercourse in front of a crowd of drunken cultists. This is when the dwarven girl reveals that she is in love with El Topo. The dwarven girl is ashamed of herself, however, and El Topo convinces her that she is beautiful. To show that he really appreciates her, he decides to marry her, heading to the town church. It is revealed that the new priest of the church is actually none other than El Topo's own son. In a fit of rage, his son threatens to kill El Topo; however, he was stopped by the dwarven girl because she needed El Topo to save her people.

The son of El Topo, dressed in black similar to his father in the past, decides to spare El Topo's life until he finishes digging the exit for the underground people. However, he will follow El Topo's every step. For a while, the life of these three is working hard and living together happily as a family for once. Some time passes, and the dwarven girl is shown to be pregnant.

With the help of his dwarf girlfriend and his son, El Topo digs an exit out of the cave. Just as the exit appears, the underground people start to run out of the mountain. The son of El Topo also could not kill his father/master, and decides to let it go. Sadly, just as the underground people near the town, the cultists are waiting for them with guns. El Topo helplessly witnesses his community being murdered by the cultists. In a fit rage, as if El Topo was possessed by God, he ignores the pain from several fatal bullet wounds and proceeds to take a rifle and start to kill all of the cultists in the town, men and women, old and young. Some are forced to abandon the town en masse (probably the slaves). After everybody in town is killed, El Topo takes an oil lamp and then pours oil on himself and sets himself on fire, an act reflecting the self-immolation of Buddhist monks and others that were protesting the Vietnam War, which was still going on at the time of the filming.

El Topo's son and girlfriend survive the ordeal and made a grave for his remains, which becomes a beehive full of honey, as the first gun master's grave became. Since his dwarf girlfriend gives birth to their child at the same time as his death, the ending leads the viewer to believe that the child is the reincarnation of the gunslinger-turned-monk (borrowing the idea of Tibetan Buddism of reincarnation of the next Dalai Lama). The Son of El Topo, now dressed in his father's garments, the dwarf and the child ride off on a horse in the same fashion that the Son of El Topo and El Topo did in the beginning of the film.

All in all, I highly recommend this flick to anyone who is a true fan of cinema and the uniquely different. Jodorowsky's film will forever remain an integral part of my love for antidisestablishmentarianism in all mediums. (After 36 plus years I finally got to use that word!)

"Helen" liked his trip through the ugly fantastic as well. He at times , like myself, was a bit overwhelmed by the redundant images of ideology so prolifically force fed to the audience. He also found this "whimsical folly of experimental film" a bit draining scene after scene, but never the less diligently stuck it out to the bitter end. Moreover Helen and I both agree that this film would have been far more compelling and insightful if we had been full on BAKED. I don't mean the casual "hit" or "night cap" but pass out in your own urine and vomit for 26 hours , totally "Freak'n LIT," type of high.

Ultimately this piece is not for everyone, especially your mentally disfigured drug addict friends, but it certainly is a Hell of a lot better than watching reruns of "Knight Rider."

Sweeny Todd or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

What can I say it is a musical? I hate musicals except for that lovely rendition of "Chicago" beautifully performed by Richard Gere , Catherine Zeta-Jones , Renee Zellweger and Queen Latifa. (No I'm not gay) Keeping that in mind, Tim Burton's version of the classic play was pretty good, but it is still a musical all be it a good one. There is of course very little dialog (less than 15 or 20 minutes) but that is to be expected. The sets, characters, makeup and cinematography are all distinctive Burton. Burton's Todd may be a little graphic for the more squeamish but pretty freak'n cool for the rest of us who love the blood spurting cranked up to full a al "Kill Bill."
Johhny Depp once again shows his versatility as he quite ably sings his way through the lead role. The supporting cast does just as well as they perform in this macabre tale that finally proves musicals can be watchable for heterosexual men, women and small animals the world over. All together I liked it and would recommend it for anyone who is a fan of Burton or Depp. The story, though basically a Greek tragedy, is still timeless and entertaining enough to hold your interest throughout. I had always heard that English food had a reputation for being bland and uneventful, certainly a stigma this movie will forever cast aside. One of the high points through out the feature is Mrs. Lovett and her meat pies.

Plant didn't like this one as much. He said the music creeped him out, kind of like the time he was used as a prop on the set of "Signs" and had to listen to hours of Mel Gibson and Ted Sutton talk about their years spent in the Hitler Youth. He still can't watch any M. Night Shyamalan film to this day. Then again who really can. Seriously. a kid reading cereal boxes foretelling the future. What next, all of the bees dying off and people disappearing? Please, somebody, anybody, stop him before he directs again. Plant also didn't believe Alan Rickman (one of his favorite actors) was properly cast in the role of Judge Turpin. He would have liked to have seen either Randy Quaid or Paul Reubens.

At this point, I am seriously starting to doubt Plant's motivation. Sometimes I don't think he cares about movies as much as he used to.

They're Strippers, no they're Zombies... They're Zombie Strippers

This movie has yet to grace the silver screen with all it's majesty and beauty, but we wait with baited breath none the less. I saw the trailer for this little Gem on a recent rental and knew we would have to see it as soon as possible. Will it disappoint, will it be an utter pile of steaming B-movie dog shit? Probably, but what would be midnight horror flick isn't? However any movie that manages to finagle a plot with scantily clad strippers, flesh eating zombies and retain not only Robert Englund (A Nightmare on Elm Street , The Adventures of Ford Fairlane) but Jenna Jameson ( Strippers Ball) to boot, well ... has to be worth the price of admission alone. While it is doubtful any Academy Award nominations will come out of this movie, I can pretty much guarantee it will be memorable or rather, impossible to forget. I recommend calling up your significant other and making a night of it, make the large popcorn or buy it at the theater (if it makes it that far) and down a 12 pack or two before you settle in to watch this latest installment in b-movie soft porn horror shows.

Plant also shares my boyish enthusiasm for this flick but mainly because he has been a huge fan of Jenna Jameson ever since he was old enough to rent his first porno.