Usually I like to beat around the bush a bit, but let's dive right in.
This movie makes no sense!
In the future, if I come across an incoherent piece of film, I'm gonna rate it based on, "This is crap, but does it at least make more sense than The Holy Mountain?" Talk about a lame streak of movies. First Sweet Movie, then Emmanuelle, now this? It says a lot when the best movie I've seen in the last month has been Caligula.
You don't want to know what he's gonna do with that fist.
So what to make of The Holy Mountain? I'm hoping I can do this without writing a novel, because there is a lot to talk about. More important than the words will be the pictures...
It starts off promisingly with two creepy-looking women staring into the camera. We then see a priest in black and an awesome sombrero do a tea ceremony. Then he strips the women naked, shaves their heads, and they pose for the DVD menu picture. I doubt that was their intention at the time.
Then some of the trippiest shit I've ever seen flashes by the camera as the credits roll by. I mean eyeballs and blue tentacles and feathers and paisleys and shit. This is why I never want to try acid.
I'm thinking of having this tatooed on my face.
The film proper starts with an unconscious man who looks like Jesus in white pajamas lying spread eagle in a garbage heap and pissing himself. My guess is they showed him the credit sequence and filmed the results. A quadruple amputee hobbles over to his body and starts poking around with his uneven stubby arms. Eventually some naked kids wearing fig leafs over their bits approach and carry him away.
There are some gospel versus that Christians don't want you to know.
They strip him to his loin cloth, drape him on a cross as if he were crucified, and start dancing around. The guy comes to, jumps off the cross and yells at the kids, scaring them away. The amputee guy comes over and tries to appease Jesus. He accomplishes this by dragging a severed cow leg around in the dirt, and then lights up a huge joint and shares it with Jesus. Then he licks Jesus's forehead. They become instant friends.
Jesus carries his new amputee friend into a crummy-looking town. The movie was filmed in some South American country, possibly Mexico. On the street are a bunch of soldiers in gas masks killing random civilians. A group of monks march by carrying crucified animal corpses. A soldier undresses a random tourist and has sex with her in front of her husband, who of course starts taking pictures, possibly for the harassment lawsuit. Jesus and the amputee are eventually hired to work for something called The Great Toad and Lizard Circus.
Oh... but Toad and Lizard sounds so much better.
The show today is the conquest of Mexico. In probably the most awesomest segment of any movie ever, we see a bunch of lazy lizards in Mayan costumes standing around a tiny set that looks like Mayan pyramids.
They sit unconquered for a few minutes, then the Spaniards come rolling in...
The spaniards are played by toads in cute little suits of armor. The toads storm the pyramids (to traditional German conquering music) and conquer the lizards- i.e. trample all over the lizards and their pyramids.
Eventually, somebody spills fake blood all over the pyramids, then they explode for no reason. The whole thing seems super awesome until you realize that the toads and lizards were probably on the set when the director blew it up.
If the MPAA had seen this before Heaven's Gate, Michael Cimino might still be working.
Jesus bounces around the destroyed set for a few minutes, then winds up walking to a store selling Christs. Seriously, that's what the fucking store says: Christs for Sale. He gets drunk with some of the workers, who toss away his amputee friend, and they carry him into a warehouse.
While unconscious, Jesus is placed into a plaster mold. They make a mold of his body in a crucified pose. Then this happens:
Yes, this really happens.
When Jesus wakes up, he is surrounded by thousands of wax copies of his body, all made up as Christ being crucified. He screams at the sight and starts smashing as many of the statues as he can.
He leaves the factory carrying one of the wax statues and eventually runs into a bunch of prostitutes, one of whom is walking with a chimp. This prostitute takes particular interest in him and starts following him down the street as he carries his wax Jesus. They eventually come across a church with a bunch of people dancing with gas-mask wearing soldiers.
Jesus enters the church and goes to the alter. He places the statue of himself on the alter, then walks over to a mattress set up on the floor, which is covered with a sheet. He pulls off the sheet to see a bishop hidden underneath sleeping with the church's life-sized crucifix. The bishop grunts at Jesus a few times, and then throws him and his wax copy out.
Is there anything a priest won't have sex with?
For some reason, while lying on the sidewalk, Jesus bites the nose of the statue off, then starts eating its face as if it were made of cake. He acquires some balloons, ties them to the statue's feet and sends it flying off.
He meets back up with the prostitute and her chimp. They go to a marketplace in town which surrounds a tall, thin red brick tower. At the top of the tower a giant fish hook appears from a round hole. The fish hook descends on a rope and is carrying some goodies, one of which is a small bag of gold.
Jesus sees the gold, and decides to climb onto the hook as it returns to the top of the tower. The tower is about five hundred feet high and maybe fifteen feet on each side. There is a five foot hole at the top which leads into a cylindrical tunnel. Jesus enters the tunnel at the top and walks to the end. He punches through a paper door and enters this room:
Which is somehow far larger than the tower could hold. At the end of the room sits a guy dressed in white with his own awesome sombrero. To his right is a naked woman with a shaved head and some gnarly tattoos Jesus disturbs the guy in white, and he awakens prepared for a fight.
Gandalf the White during his brief dominatrix phase.
Jesus and Whitey start lame-fu fighting, which I imagine was tough to coordinate for the guy wearing platform boots. Whitey gets the upper hand and paralyses Jesus with a few dainty taps to the chest. Then the naked chick comes over with a knife to help remove a blue octopus from the guy's neck.
I know I've already used it once, but This Really Happens.
Whitey unparalizes Jesus, who just stands there staring at the guy who just removed a chunk of his flesh. Whitey poses a simple question- oh by the way, we are now 30 minutes into the film, and these are the first spoken words. Everything else thus far have been dubbed over grunts or useless background chatter. Anyway he asks Jesus, "Do you want gold?" Jesus gets excited and says yes.
Maybe some people do ask for the Larry Fine.
Whitey and the naked chick bathe Jesus in a fountain. This scene inexplicably features a long take focusing on the woman thoroughly scrubbing Jesus's anus (sorry, no screenshot). The fountain also contains a baby hippo. Best bath toy ever, if it weren't a dangerous wild animal.
Then Jesus craps in a glass bowl, which Whitey takes and puts over a fire. While Jesus takes a sauna, we watch as his poop slowly dissolves in stop motion, going through several mucky stages, turning to crystal and eventually into a shit-lump shaped hunk of gold. Whitey shows this to Jesus exclaiming, "You are excrement, you can turn to gold!" Uh... what?
What the movie doesn't tell us and I didn't learn until the credits is Whitey's character is actually called, "The Alchemist." So he actually managed to turn shit into gold. No wonder he can afford to buy his own hippo.
The alchemist shows Jesus a mirror, and Jesus screams and smashes the mirror with the hunk of shit/gold. They then go into some weird mirror house and get lost for a few hours, before Whitey has Jesus try to smash a stone pillar with a glass ax. Jesus fails, so Whitey does it for him. I assume he had some kind of point, but his accent is quite thick and I honestly didn't understand a word he said. Tip for future filmmakers: Your audience shouldn't have to use closed captioning if the movie is speaking their native language.
Next, Whitey takes Jesus into a room with life-sized tarot cards on the walls. He uses the cards to figure out what Jesus's destiny is. Is Jesus regularly featured on tarot cards? Also, you know your in for some real stupid shit when a movie plot (or anything for that matter) revolves around tarot cards.
So after figuring out that this guy who looks like Jesus represents the thief, I think, they go into a rotating room with a bunch of naked wax figures on the walls. Whitey starts spouting some crap about immortality and how if Jesus is going to quest for it- which Jesus has yet to suggest he wants to do- he'll need groupies with certain skills. So we get introduced to the rest of the crew, who are represented by the wax figures on the wall.
First, we zoom in on a male wax figure with shaggy hair. He says, "My name is Fon, my planet is Venus." Fon runs a factory and has lots of wives and children. Apparently, he picks out a female worker once a month, magically impregnates her, and marries her to add to his flock. His company makes mattresses, but on the side they specialize in reanimating dead bodies to do creepy stuff, like kiss their loved ones good-bye from the casket.
So they are in fact a nightmare factory.
Next is a woman with a shaved head. She says, "My name is Isla, my planet is Mars." And it's a dumb joke, but why is the man from Venus and the Woman from Mars? Anyway, Isla runs a weapons factory. She watches a bunch of peons test out her latest bayonets. Not by using them to charge at straw dummies like they do in real life, but by throwing themselves at stationary guns with bayonets at the end, thereby stabbing themselves in the chest.
And then this happens...
It supposed to be showing the results of some kind of drug that turns regular people into crazy killing machines. Well, it certainly is crazy. What isn't crazy is her line of specialized weapons, including a grenade necklace for hippies, and a menorah gun for Jews.
Not to mention this badass crucifix gun for Catholics.
Want.
Then we zoom in on this. We can only guess what his skill will be.
This is Klen, and his planet is Jupiter. From this point forward, when I think, "God of thunder," I'll have this picture on my mind. Anyway, Klen spends time showing us his house, his wife, he picks up his lover, and they go to his art gallery. He's created this gallery to celebrate the human ass.
Or humiliate it.
Then he shows off his masterpiece. It's a giant machine that simulates orgasms. He has his chauffeur test it out with a giant magnetic dildo, and he fails. Then his lover gets naked and picks up the dildo in order to stimulate the machine, and she succeeds. The machine wonks out and eventually has a baby. Uh, that's not what orgasms do...
At some point during sex, every man thinks to himself... CHARGE!!!
We cut outside somewhere. We hear a woman's voice say, "My name is Sel, my planet is Saturn. My customers are children." We are presented with this...
That this is not the most disturbing image in this movie says a lot.
So Sel does a bunch of dancing around for some children then is carried away on an elephant. She makes it to her factory where she starts taking off her makeup. She is then surrounded by a bunch of lackeys in order to change. I guess going to an office somewhere in her giant factory would be too ordinary. When she has changed her clothing, we find she has turned into Mom.
It's creepy, but I found her more attractive with the clown makeup.
Sel isn't all that interesting. Her factory manufactures games that supposedly prepare children to fight in the next big war. Been there, done that, saw the Nightline special. Moving on...
We cut to a shanty somewhere, and a male voiceover says, "My name is Berg, my planet is your anus." I guess he means Uranus. Here's something everyone should know... it's pronounced "YER-in-us" not "yor-A-nus." Please get over it.
So Berg is lying in bed when an elderly woman comes over with some type of rubber hand and starts rubbing it all over his body, focusing a little too much on his crotch. And it's not said, but I can't help but picture this woman is his mother. Which just adds all sorts of creepy to the scene.
There's another scene where Berg is in a tub while the woman sits nude on a really tall toilet and sings something. Whatever is going on here, I just don't think the world is ready for Berg, so let's discuss him no further.
We zoom in on a wax dummy with a mohawk as a deep male voice says, "My name is Axon, my planet is Neptune. I am a chief of police." I like to think that every movie has at least one good idea. Axon is The Holy Mountain's good idea. The first thing we see Axon doing is kicking ass.
Carrying Giant Gun = Kicking Ass.
The sequence that follows shows a lot of Axon and his followers getting into fights with hipsters, slicing people's guts open, leaving their victims bleeding on the street, and ripping a persons face off. I could watch a whole movie based on that premise.
Now all that is great, but Axon also has a dark side. We get to watch him initiate a new fellow, a young boy, perhaps about fifteen. In front of his crowd of a thousand or so followers, Axon cuts off the boy's testicles and puts them in a jar in order to display them on his wall of testicles in jars.
He then takes the kid back to his mighty palace presumably to molest him. I'm not sure what other conclusion to draw...
Joel Schumacher, eat your heart out.
I really hope David Fincher has not seen this movie, so he can see it, watch these scenes with Axon, and decide to do a whole movie based on this character.
Finally, we cut to this guy, who informs us, "My name is Lute, my planet is Pluto." Yeah, about that... things are a little different now, Lute, but don't tell your astrologer. Lute runs around his oversized igloo house with a bunch of kids for a few minutes, and then we see him attend a dinner somewhere with a giant ice-sculpture penis.
Lute throws the most awesome parties.
He presents the people at the dinner his plan for solving urban crowding. He says that people need shelter, not a home, so his plan is to house everyone in easily stackable coffins. Actually, I should say easily hangable coffins. Well, of all the solutions I've seen to urban crowding, this is certainly... another one. But where am I going to fit my plasma TV?
We finally cut to a helicopter dropping off the entire team at the alchemist's tower. Inside, he shows them all a little movie about his plan. They are going to go to some mountain somewhere to confront "immortals". He also says the key to immortality somehow involves the periodic table of elements. That's kinda weird for an alchemist to say, since the periodic table doesn't include the elements of nightshade or monkshood or elderberry.
He takes them into an eye-shaped room where they all sit at a round table. In the middle of the table is a fire pit. He tells them to burn all their money, and they reluctantly agree. They all empty bags of money onto a table and start dumping it into the pit... except for Jesus of course, because Jesus is poor. Instead, he tries to steal a couple bills from the pile. He gets caught, probably because he made no effort to hide it. Jesus is chastised by the others and throws the bills into the pit.
Next the alchemist has them burn the wax statues he had of each of them. None of them question why he had these statues in the first place.
We then cut to a jungle village, where the Alchemist and his team have gathered. They watch as one of the dudes from a village lights a match, blows out the flame, and catches the smoke in an upside-down glass. He places the glass open-side down onto some guy's back. This seems to create a welt or something on the guys's skin. And I wrote this whole paragraph before I realized this scene is completely inexplicable and has nothing to do with the plot.
Anyway, Lute makes a barf noise and starts walking away. The Alchemist follows him and asks what's wrong. Lute very loudly proclaims the man's feet stink and he can't bear to be near it. The Alchemist punches Lute and knocks him to the ground, demanding that he learn to love the stink. For some reason, we cut to a shot of Lute lying dazed on the ground while his mates give him a massage.
Next the group is sitting in a circle being fed bowls of green jello from some old lady. We briefly cut to a shot of the prostitute from earlier and her pet chimp. Remember them? I know I haven't mentioned them in a while. That might have something to do with the fact that it's been more than an hour since they've actually appeared in a scene. I guess they are following our heroes on their journey for some reason.
A bunch of stuff happens where the team has stuff painted on their chests and have acid flashbacks. They sit with a guy holding a drum for a few minutes, and are asked to count how many are in the team. I think Berg says there are nine, which there has been all this time. But they all start to wonder who is missing, even though none of the characters we've met up to this point are missing. There's a nearby jug of water, and they all look in, see a reflection, and realize they've found the person who is missing. They celebrate this by standing naked on top of a pyramid.
Interspersed with everything happening to these people are random shots of the prostitute and her chimp doing bastardized versions of the same thing. Which means we get a brilliant shot of a chimp meditating.
Somehow, the team is able to acquire a boat. They head out to sea, and along the way, they decide Jesus is still carrying a demon inside him. So they lay him out and form a circle around his body on the deck. After a few seconds of what I can only guess is a gentle massage, out of the pile emerges the amputee friend from earlier. He lies motionless on the deck for a second, then sits himself up and starts making goofy noises as he waves his arms around. Nobody notices him until Jesus breaks free from the pile and they have a happy reunion.
The rest of the team look at Jesus accusingly. The Alchemist demands that Jesus throws the monster overboard. Jesus clutches his midget gives him a defiant look.
Ooo... great prog-rock album name... Jesus Clutches His Midget.
The alchemist persists, and when we cut back to Jesus a second time, we see that he is holding nothing.
So, the amputee guy has been imaginary this whole time? This raises several questions. Mainly, who gives a fuck? He hasn't been in the movie for more than an hour. Couldn't we have just ignored him? Anyway, Jesus makes a motion like he is throwing something overboard. We hear but don't see a big splash in the water. Jesus is sad for a few moments.
When the boat reaches the mainland, the Alchemist spouts some mystical mumbo-jumbo and has everyone shave their heads and put on blue wind-breakers, giving their journey a really creepy cult-vibe. Then they meet a leprechaun who is holding a giant brandy snifter. He welcomes them to his island and says they should stop by his bar, which is a tiny shack called the Pantheon Bar. They all walk inside to have a look.
The "bar" is more like a grotto filled with lots of jerks in stupid costumes dancing around and acting high. One dude they stop and look at is reading inane poetry. Then they meet this asshole:
He goes on about how different religious artifacts were actually metaphors for his favorite drugs, like "The cross was a mushroom and that mushroom was the tree of life," or something, while his asexual assistant contemplates suicide. Finally, the team stop by to watch "The Champion".
He claims to have conquered the Holy Mountain, and to prove it, he shows how quickly he can move. He stands in front of a large pillar and in true "I Dream of Jeanie" fashion he disappears. He reappears triumphantly on the other side. A further demonstration fails to impress our travelers, because he did not actually climb the pillar, making his feat not all that great. The Champion claims to only be able to move horizontally, not up and down. Which is stupid, but I still found it kinda funny.
The team leaves the bar while the leprechaun dude yells obscenities at them, saying they'll be sorry for choosing the promise of immortality over his bar...
You know, I'm suddenly realizing how detailed this mini-recap is. I'm really trying to cut out the unimportant stuff and tell you only the most crazy things happening. But that's hard in a movie with this much crazy.
How much crazy? Just look at... well, this is a poor screenshot for that point.
So they're climbing a steep portion of the mountain on ropes. One of the girls, maybe Isla, starts acting all afraid of climbing. The others try to coax her into moving but she won't budge. So one of the dudes, I think maybe Lute, encourages her to rub her clitoris against the mountain. So she starts dry humping the rock face in front of her. She gets all horny, possibly has an orgasm, and finally starts climbing again. Jebus, somebody actually wrote that scene?
Yes, and I screencapped it just for you!
So they reach the top and climb over to the other side. For some reason the Alchemist puts a bag over his head as he starts to lead the team further along their journey. While on their apparent death march, they start tripping. Since they all have shaved heads I can't really tell who had what hallucination. But I think Fon has a dream of a bunch of horses half buried in mud. I remember hearing a joke about that once.
Then Klen imagines being pelted to death by gold coins. I would have picked rocks, large rocks. But that's me.
Axon pictures himself beating on a drum while two fighting dogs duke it out. For Axon, I wouldn't expect him to have a bad trip like that. I imagine him doing this every Thursday evening to unwind.
One of the girls, maybe Sel, hallucinates this:
I didn't show it or screencap it, but I'm pretty sure the fist is coming out of a cow's anus. OK, so I'm actually just making that up because I don't remember. For some reason in this movie's logic it makes total sense.
Then Lute I think has visions of a crazy grandma with a sword in a tree full of slaughtered chickens.
Burg sees himself naked while being eaten by giant spiders. The latter of which I approve of.
The best part? Those spiders are real, and the actor is screaming.
Then one of the dudes, maybe even Jesus himself, sees this:
I would describe the rest of the trip in words, but I'm afraid that writing what I saw might collapse the space time continuum. So here's a screenshot:
If your eyes haven't sucked into the back of your skull by now, please continue.
After all that, the team has reached a meadow, at the end of which sit a bunch of KKK guys around a short table. The Alchemist huddles our heroes behind an embankment. He identifies the figures as immortals, and tells everyone to wait a few hours before sneaking up behind and killing them, thus stealing their powers. Axon asks why the Alchemist isn't going to join them. The Alchemist says they don't need a leader any more. And after all the shit he's put them through, I expected them to beat him to death right then.
So the Alchemist departs, and Jesus follows him. They walk a distance and talk for a while about nothing, and the Alchemist produces a giant sword. He hands it to Jesus, kneels on the ground and says, "Cut off my head." I thought I heard a cheer at that moment, but that was only in my mind.
So Jesus raises the sword up above the Alchemist. He finally swings it down and a loud strike is heard. But when we see the Alchemist, we see him laughing and his head is not detached. And there's a decapitated lamb in front of him squirting blood everywhere. What the fuck?!?
The Alchemist finds this to be quite funny and says some more mumbo-jumbo. He eventually winds up telling Jesus he should go with the person who loves him most and stayed with him this whole time. So the prostitute and her chimpanzee walk up at this moment to join with Jesus. The alchemist says he leaves them his tower and all his possessions within. A whore, a tower, and a chimp? I guess that's better than immortality. Jesus made the right choice.
I guess it's been three hours, because the rest of the team is now approaching the KKK guys at the table from behind. They grab at their hoods and pull them off, realizing that underneath are Styrofoam dummies. They all find this hilarious. I would expect them to be pissed. After all they went through, there are no immortals from which to steal power. I would be looking for something to murder. And I'd start with the Alchemist.
Lucky for them, they don't have to go too far to find him. They pull the cover off the last dummy to find the Alchemist also sitting at the table. For some reason, Axon doesn't rip his face off.
Instead, they all laugh while he makes funny faces and invites them to sit. I think there's some kind of lesson in all this, but I still can't understand a damn word the man says. I guess I should turn on the closed captioning because this is supposedly the "climax" of the film. But seriously, if the filmmakers aren't going to make some kind of effort to at least allow me to understand the dialogue, then I have no interest in going the extra mile either.
Eventually, the Alchemist asks the question I do understand. "But is this reality?" He then gets all indignant and says, "No! It is a film!" Uh... what now? He then looks at the camera, and says, "Zoom out, camera!" And we pull back to the point where we can see the rest of the film crew surrounding the table. What the hell is going on?
In what I guess could be called a twist ending, the Alchemist says we have to escape this film before we can hope to achieve greatness or immortality. He says goodbye to the holy mountain, flips the table up on its end, and he and the rest of the team walk away. And that is finally the end.
Well, that was far more than I ever wanted to put into a mini review. But I just couldn't let this one pass by. People talk all the time about how movies fuck with their minds. Those people need to see The Holy Mountain. It will be some much needed perspective.
I went to Wikipedia and IMDB to learn some more about the movie. Apparently the director (who also played the Alchemist) gave his cast members psilocybin for some of the tripping out scenes. That would explain why I haven't heard of any of these actors... they're all dead now from mushroom poisoning.
A scene was planned where everyone jumps into the ocean for some reason. While shooting this scene almost the entire cast drowned. The worst part is that they did film some of this action, but it didn't make the final cut. I should have checked out the deleted scenes on the DVD.
The director himself was almost killed in the decapitation scene near the end. The actor playing Jesus really struck him in the neck with that giant sword and sliced his neck. If the sword had been sharp he would have cut his head off for real. The funny thing about that scene is it was shot in such a way that when Jesus swung the sword, you couldn't see what he was swinging at. So why did the other actor have to be there at all?
Apparently, George Harrison (yes, that George Harrison) was up for the role of Jesus. But he turned it down because he didn't want to do the anus washing scene. The director was apparently so adamant about filming his lead actor's anus being washed that he turned down having one of The Beatles in his cast. Maybe his movie would have made more than 7 dollars at the box office had he not been so obsessed over washing George Harrison's anus.
And I must say, the people at IMDB have to be nuts. This movie currently has a 7.8 (out of 10) rating. For what? The characters, aside from Axon, are uninteresting. The dialogue varies between insufferable and indecipherable. The action is non-existent. About the only thing this movie has going for it is you never know what's going to happen next. Since the director seems to enjoy throwing out the standards of movie making (such as plot, dialogue, character building) there is a certain bit of intrigue in just wondering what convention he is about to break.
It is a bit refreshing to have no idea what to expect while watching a movie. The downside is nothing the movie doles out is fun to watch, except in that, "Holy shit! What the hell were they thinking?" kinda way.
In closing, here's a few screenshots I couldn't fit into the above review.
If you still want to see it, be my guest... actually, see it by yourself.
-review submitted by Dave
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