Theatre director, novelist, poet, and mime, Alejandro Jodorowsky has carried many different monikers throughout his 91 years; although for none of these careers is he more well-known than filmmaker. In fact, the director, known as the so-called “father of the midnight madness movie” may be more well-known for the legacy he cast onto other filmmakers’ gore-soaked, outtré psychedelic careers such as Nicholas Winding Refn. Now more than fifty years since the release of Jodorowsky’s first feature, “Fando Y Lis,” a box set of 4K restorations of his films is set to be released.
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The Alejandro Jodorowsky box set will include his surrealist feature films “Fando Y Lis,” “El Topo,” “The Holy Mountain,” and his new film “Psychomagic, A Healing Art.” It will also include his first short film “La Cravate.” Among these inclusions to keep audiences up at night, the set will include a slew of extras including a new interview with Jodorowsky himself.
Of course, even filmmakers with the most devoted cult followings like Jodorowsky have skeletons in their closets. During the press tour for “El Topo” in the 1970s, the filmmaker admitted to really raping the actress, Mara Lorenzia, on set and on camera for the scene in which his character rapes her in the film. After these comments resurfaced a few years ago, Jodorowsky responded blaming this all on the theatrics of trying to sell his first picture to Americans with shock value. The controversy surrounding the director even shrouded the release of the documentary “Jodorowsky’s Dune” in 2013, a documentary which followed Jodorowsky’s ill-fated and never-completed adaptation of the novel “Dune.”
The psychedelic films of Alejandro Jodorowsky are due in this box set on August 7. You can watch the trailer for the documentary and the box set below.