Review of El Topo (1970) by Nick S — 11 May 2009

Warning: This won't be popular with many people. But what a load of tripe that was! Seriously, this is bullshit. BULLSHIT!! Now I'm all for a little bit of over the topness here in there and I'm all about the violence in my western/action films.

And the story sounds great, as a lone wolf sets off to find and defeat the 4 great gunslingers of the west, or at least I think that's what it's about. But then came thedeformed midgets. The weird gay abuse stuff, the crazy damsel in distress wench called whatsherface, the absolutely SHITE sound effects, god man!! The third act as well is just brutal to watch.

Not just in terms of the violence (I did at least get a kick out of all the incest people getting gunned down as they tried to escape too quickly! Fools!) but in terms of how boring it was. There's strange, then there's just completely uncalled for mindfuckery and this comes under the latter.

Jesus wept!! There was actually a perfectly good story here and if most of the surrealness was taken out (or at least the stuff which REALLY didn't need to be there) then you've got something engaging and cool.

But this is just too fucking "out there" and not in a good way.