The Head movie of all Head movies, “The Holy Mountain” is made only more of a Holy Grail for cineastes because of its copyright issues and, hence, owning a copy is much like smoking a cuban cigar. The most intense pure surrealist film I’ve ever seen. Frightening, disturbing and beautiful images with the most bare bones of a “plot.” Not a word of dialogue for the first 20-something minutes. A naked ant-faced Jesus running around in the dirt (with a midget amputee as a pet) is pulled by a giant fishing hook into a castle in the sky with the same psychedelic interior decorator from “Casino Royale.” A magician inspires him to take a dump in a pot which is eventually turned to gold. Then, representatives from other planets, who are naked and spinning around in one of those carnival gravitron rides, explain what life is like on their home planets. Then they all climb up a mountain in search of immortality. But, um, despite this synopsis, the movie really is worth watching. If you can take the gross bits. I wish there was a cleaner copy than the Italian dub I have, but the negative has apparently been destroyed.
I have a pretty good quality avi file of this, but I haven’t watched the whole damn thing, and I doubt I will. Looked to me like a bunch of surreal Jesuses hopping around doing weird shit–and that’s what it looks like inside my head anyway.
Jodorowsky is at his best when he’s writing comic books. The Difool/Metabaron/Anomaly series are all fantastic.
I’d like to check those books out.
I suggest you skip ahead to the 50 minute mark & watch more Holy Mountain. That’s when things really go apeshit.