B- Movie Review: El Topo (1970)

Ha! Mexican Western from 1970, with subtitles, so no more lost in translation. And it start in silence, well this is new. I miss some good tunes for the opening though. So it begins with a man with an umbrella riding through the desert, thus an Umbrella Man, and he has a little naked boy with him. He tells the boy that since he's now 7, he should bury the picture of his mother and his toy, because now he's a MAN! But why is the boy naked? What's Umbrella Man's relation to him? Is Umbrella Man some kind of pervert? All very valid questions. Anyway, then the Opening Credit start, and the text is flimsy and may give people migraine, also they talk about some mammal that likes to dig, I don't care.

So after the credits they arrive in a village that has been massacred. And out in the desert we meet three Perverts, one is in love with women's shoes, one likes to pile bananas with his sword and one just likes to fuck rock. Anyway, the Umbrella Man and the Naked Boy arrives and the Umbrella Man kills the Three Perverts, but not before he makes them tell him who massacred the village. They tell him it's a Colonel who has taken over a Monastery nearby. And at the Monastery the Colonel's men, all Pervy Stooges are molesting and humiliating the Monks. The Colonel himself is a lazy bastard, since he can't even get up or dress without assistance from his female sex slave (in this movie I have to point out she's female). Anyway, the Pervy Stooges are submissive little fuckers, because they literary crawl in the mud when the colonel arrive, and bark like dogs. Because of that the Colonel is about to share his Sex Slave with them, but then Umbrella Man appears, and the French, I mean the Stooges all surrender instantly. Then there's this weird duel with the Colonel that involves alot of staring. They have gun, why don't they just shoot each other. Anyway, then the Umbrella Man is stripping the Colonel, is he going to rape him? Apparently not, just castrating him (with the help of the Colonel's former stooges I might add). The Colonel commit suicide and the Stooges are executed, also Umbrella Man is apparently God, and will thus be referred as such. So God ditches the kid (finally) for the Sex Slave and they ride out to the desert. Then they try to find water, but it is bitter, but since he is God, it becomes drinkable.

The Sex Slave tell God that she will only love him if he kills the Four Revolver Masters of the Desert. And that's pretty much the story of the 2nd Act. The first Master is Blind Effeminate Jesus, the 2nd Master is a dude who's in an incestuous relationship with his mother and a pet lion (AWESOME, and with that I mean the lion, not the incest), and the Third Master is a Musician who lives alone with a bunch of rabbits. The theme is God cheats in all these fights to win, since they are all much more skilled than he is. God and the Sex Slave are also joined by a Woman with a Masculine voice, who kind of show them the way to all the Masters. At one point there is a cat fight between Masculine Woman and the Sex Slave which end with the Sex Slave being whipped by her and then leading to Lesbian Sex (Hooray!). The Fourth Master is a Hermit that have traded away his revolver long ago, thus unable to fight God. And here's how God lose, he can't fight the Hermit, since the Hermit lack a weapon, and also the Hermit doesn't care for his life, and thus have nothing to fight for. To prove this the Hermit commit suicide, which means he is a moron. Anyway, God goes cuckoo crazy because of this. He also prays alot to God.... wait, which God does God pray to? He prays alot in this movie, but what kind of God does God worship? This movie has some deep theological shit.

Anyway, the Lesbian Woman then shoot God in the arms and legs, because she want to get on with the Sex Slave, she then tells the Sex Slave to choose and she chooses the Lesbian Woman and shoots God in the stomach so he collapses. When God is shot in the Arms and Legs the bullet holes look like the nail holes from Jesus on the Cross and stuff, so I guess it's SYMBOLISM, or something like that. God is then found by some people who drags him to a cave where he wakes up several years later as Blond Transvestite Jesus. He says to the people in the Cave (who are all malformed thanks to generations of incest) that he's not God, which means transforming to Blond Transvestite Jesus robs you of your Godly Powers. Then he shaves and cut his hair, and thus transform again this time to a Bald Monk, and together with a midget woman from the cave they venture outside on a mission to dig a tunnel to free the malformed people back there. So they arrive in a town where slavery is practised, and where everyone is a Sadistic Fuck. They round up slaves in a rodeo, and marking them like cattle is prime time entertainment. There are also two sadistic Gay Sheriffs that seems to run the town, and there's an intense Russian Roulette scene in the town church, that involves a monk (not to be confused with the Bald Monk) who has recently arrived in town. Now I won't go in more closely on the ending, but it's quite bloody. The movie feels artsy smartsy, and you really have to be in that mood to watch through it. The third act feels like a whole different movie, and that can throw you off. I must say I'd like the third act if it was it's own movie, but in this, it felt like it didn't fit in.

But the movie is not bad, if you have nothing against subtitles, and want an artsy, but brutal Western full of all kinds of perversions, this movie just might be for you.