Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 4K Restoration Collection Clip Explores the Midnight Movie [Exclusive]

Abkco has given us an exclusive clip from their upcoming Alejandro Jodorowsky: 4K Restoration Collection. The deluxe box set includes the surrealist filmmaker’s movies The Holy Mountain, El topo, and Fando Y Lis. In addition the 4K set includes Jodorowsky’s most recent project, Psychomagic, A Healing Art. This set is a must-own for fans of Jodorowsky and Abkco will be releasing it on Friday, September 18th.

Our exclusive clip from Alejandro Jodorowsky: 4K Restoration Collection finds the 91-year old director reflecting on the release of El Topo. Apparently, after the movie was made, they could not find anyone to buy it, due to the disturbing imagery. The movie cost $500,000 to make and Jodorowsky didn’t have that kind of money, noting he had to either come up with it, or go to jail. Luckily, John Lennon and Yoko Ono stepped in and played the movie at midnight, which went on to create a buzz around El Topo, while simultaneously kicking off the midnight movie.

Included in Alejandro Jodorowsky: 4K Restoration Collection are a ton of extras and ephemera. The box set features a 78-page book with photos and essays, a set of art cards together with four Blu-ray discs, and two CDs housed in a high-quality case. The CDs contain the soundtracks for The Holy Mountain and Psychomagic, A Healing. New content includes recently shot instructions with Jodorowsky and his son Brontis, who made his acting debut as the young boy in El Topo. Also interviewed, his long-time personal assistant Pablo Leder. In addition, the 4K restorations include new introductions by Columbia University professor Richard Peña, and a mini-documentary “A to Z of The Holy Mountain,” narrated by Jodorowsky biographer Ben Cobb.

Fando Y Lis boasts some of his most disturbing images, while also serving as Alejandro Jodorowsky’s first feature. The movie is an extraordinarily ambitious and excessive adaptation of a controversial play by Fernando Arrabal, which tells of young Fando and his paraplegic sweetheart Lis’s journey through a series of surreal scenarios to find the enchanted city of Tar. El Topo is packed with vivid imagery, and known as the director’s most violent and notorious movie. It sees the Jodorowsky play The Mole of the title: a master-gunfighter journeys across a desert dreamscape with his young son (Brontis Jodorowsky) to duel with four sharp-shooting adversaries.

In The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky himself plays The Alchemist, a guru who guides a troupe of pilgrims, each representing the planets in the solar system, on a magical quest to Lotus Island where they must ascend The Holy Mountain in search of spiritual enlightenment. Psychomagic, A Healing Art is Jodorowsky’s newest project which explores the director’s therapeutic work, showing by means of real acts, what Psychomagic is: its principle, how it is practiced, and how it applied in life. In the film, Jodorowsky works directly with real, suffering people who are eager to solve their problems through the use of this radical and transformative mode of therapy.

At the age of 91, Alejandro Jodorowsky is as relevant as he’s ever been. In addition to completing Psychomagic, A Healing Art, he supervised the color correction of the 4K restorations of his essential films using the original 35mm elements, with vibrant results. The TVOD release, also set for September 18th, includes Fando Y Lis, El Topo, and The Holy Mountain in 4K with new to digital extras available exclusively on iTunes. You can check out our exclusive clip for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 4K Restoration Collection above.