El Topo (1970)  

Sat. Jul. 18 

Doors – 7:00 PM  

Organ Overture – 7:30 PM  

Film – 8:00 PM  

Tickets - $6  

2hr 5min | Not Rated, NOT FOR KIDS | “Acid” Western | Mexico 

Every summer as temperatures rise, The Senate Theater greets the heat with our annual Hot, Sweaty & Weird film series, focusing on cult favorites, underground classics, and B-movie schlock. For our third film of the series this year we invite you to experience El Topo, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s brilliant and deranged “acid” western on our big screen!

With intense violence and bold psychedelic imagery, this existential trip into a phantasmagoric world is rife with religious symbolism and heady philosophical exploration. It melds a messianic narrative with a surreal reimagining of the western genre’s lone gunman archetype. With equal parts provocation and mind-bending entertainment El Topo shocked and enthralled audiences in the 1970s. It was perhaps the single film most responsible for popularizing the “midnight movie”, opening space for the controversial and avante-garde cinema that otherwise would never have found an audience.  

Dark, discomfiting, and arguably sacrilegious, Jodorowsky’s western cult classic is like a spaghetti western if someone slipped a certain “secret ingredient” into the sauce. It just might make you say, “Woah, heavy!” like you’re facing the certainty of our collective mortality at the precipice between salvation and oblivion. 

It’s not for everyone, and definitely not for children. It can not be overstated that if you would rather avoid depictions of sexual violence you should not attend. But for anyone interested in exploring the strange frontiers of cinema, El Topo is essential. 

Parking is available in our gated lot, on Gilbert, and Michigan Avenue