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The Western died in the 1970s, but according to Roger Ebert<\/a>, that had absolutely nothing to do with “El Topo.” The 1970 surrealist Western was one of a handful of films to receive a perfect score from the esteemed critic, who evidently found it to be a masterpiece even while several of his fellow critics dismissed it as meaningless.<\/p>\n Widely known as the very first “midnight movie,” “El Topo” was guaranteed cult status when it started screening at 12am at New York’s Elgin Theater in December 1970. The film came from Alejandro Jodorowsky, a Chilean auteur who, two decades later, would make the surrealist “Santa Sangre,” a horror movie just as beautiful as it is terrifying<\/a>. Before he could do any of that, however, he had to make an impression in the U.S., which he more than did with “El Topo.” The film, which Jodorowsky wrote, directed, scored, and even starred in, contained many of the surrealist elements of his later horror masterpiece, but it was all done within the framework of the still burgeoning revisionist Western (which he infused with a countercultural spiri)t.<\/p>\n The film follows the titular gunfighter and outlaw as he wanders the desert alongside his young son in search of enlightenment. Along the way, he encounters a woman who tells him of four fellow gunfighters who reside in the desert and who El Topo must defeat in order to gain her love. That’s about as straightforward a pr\u00e9cis as you’re gonna get with this movie, which became known as the very first “acid Western” for good reason. As such, you might expect Ebert to have shunned it like many of his colleagues. But not only did he give Jodorowsky a fair appraisal, he absolutely loved what he saw.<\/p>\n