HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973)

Jodorowsky’s fever dream of a capitalist apocolypse.

File Under: Surrealism, Psychedelia, Mysticism, Avant-Garde Cinema.

Chilean-French director Alejandro Jodorowsky detonated cinema with his "Holy Mountain", a savage hallucination that transforms film into a ritualistic assault on modern humanity's diseased soul, a grenade lobbed directly into the rotting heart of Western civilization.

From its opening moments - a Christ-like Thief covered in flies, marinating in his own urine - Jodorowsky declares war on the conventions of narrative structure. Lizard conquistadors re-enact historical atrocities. Naked children parade through streets dripping with surreal violence. Tourists photograph massacres like pornographic souvenirs. Each frame is a provocative middle finger to cinematic tradition, a kaleidoscopic of societal madness.

The film mutates between brutal satire and mystical allegory. When the Thief joins the Alchemist's band of archetypal figures— each representing one of society's corrupt institutions— the mission becomes a metaphysical heist against the Immortals, those bloodless rulers perched in their mountaintop fortress of pure capital. Strap on your seat belt.

“Holy Mountain”, Alejandro Jodorowsky. 1973, Mexico. Running Time: 114 Minutes. English-Spanish. Available for rent on Amazon Prime and Roku.