Watching Alejandro Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain in 10 minute chunks on YouTube may not be the ideal way to view this cult movie but it doesn’t feel inappropriate. After all, the movie is not much concerned to maintain a narrative flow. Only in the last half hour does it finally get around to telling something that resembles a story. This revolves around the journey to the summit of The Holy Mountain on Lotus Island where nine wise mean live. These know the secret of immortatity and the mission is not to learn from them but simply to kill them and take their place. Even then there are plenty distractions and bizarre scenes.
If you watched the movie in a random sequence I don’t think it would be any more confusing – it may even help.
Along with ‘The Wicker Man’, ‘The Holy Mountain’ is one of the films regularly cited by the new ‘freaks’ of the avant-folk underground as an influence. Arthur Magazine’s new Uber-video channel include a profile of Jodorowsky and a kick-ass record label based in Portland, Oregon takes its name from the movie title.
The soundtrack, co-written by Don Cherry, is fairly whacky with jazzy/psych/drone interludes but it’s main appeal lies in the uncompromising celebration of altered states through mystical, transcendental experiences . Or, as one YouTube viewer put it more succinctly – “this is a fucking trippy movie“.
Jodorowsky is commonly regarded either as a madman or a genius and often as a combination of the two. (Although anyone who makes it a condition that all the women who appear in the movie sleep with the director cannot be said to be completely deranged ! ).
The movie’s cult status has ensured its longevity despite being obviously dated (it was made in 1973) with many unintentionally humerous scenes which look like raunchy Monty Python sketches. There are ‘artists’ who paint with their bare arses or the blind man who makes decisions based on a feel of his wife’s sex – wet for yes, dry for no.
You also see a mechanical vagina, a bottled testicle museum, a battle scene between toads and lizards,hot women dressed like extras on sci-fi movies, numerous Christ lookalikes. I could go on, but you get the point. Like the man said – trippy.
This spiritual hocus pocus, not to mention the gratuitous blood lettings and general debauchery, is a surreal period piece but has to be admired for the fact that it still looks subversive and cultish.
could you email a like to the you tube videos as i could not seem to find them?????????? sorry man,
This is strange! I watched the clips in 12 parts over the past couple of weeks but now it seems they’ve been pulled. There are some clips here and there but not the full movie. I thought it was too good to last!