Video (including excrement being alchemized into gold) is NSFW.

The Stranger didn’t shower much attention this week on Alejandro Jodorowsky’s crowning achievement, The Holy Mountain, which is playing at Grand Illusion Feb. 9-15. So I will try in my amateurish manner to convey why it is important that you don’t miss this rare screening of his 1973 cult classic. I am no film critic, but I am a connoisseur of psychedelic experiences, and few in any discipline can surpass The Holy Mountain when it comes to extreme sensual dazzle.

You can read a synopsis of The Holy Mountain here, but a dry recitation of the plot cannot do justice to the stylistic flamboyance and intellectual promiscuity that Jodorowsky flaunts throughout the movie’s 114 minutes. In its exploration of occult practices and dissection of religious, ideological, and philosophical hypocrisies, the film is supremely ambitious. Jodorowsky strives to scrutinize several belief systems in order to find the meaning of existence and the secret to immortality. In the process, he renders some scenes as unbearably sublime while others come off as ludicrously farcical. No matter their tone, though, every shot is a masterly display of composition and rich, lysergic detail. The tonal shifts can be shocking and disruptive, but they all work in service to Jodorowsky’s sui-generis examination of humanity’s follies and noble searches for eternal verities. His vision is expansive and requires a vast repertoire of mises-en-scène to manifest it.

I have never seen a film that better combines hallucinogenic imagery with incredibly deep, mystical music (soundtrack by Don Cherry!), while also addressing so many profound religious and philosophical issues as does The Holy Mountain.

It is Jodorowsky’s masterpiece, and the wildest mind-fuck you’ll ever have in a cinema. I say this after viewing it five times—once even while not tripping. You will never forget this unique film, and you’ll probably want to see it at least twice in order to absorb everything that’s happening in it.

Here’s All Movie Guide’s take: “The Holy Mountain is beautifully shot and designed, and it suggests what might have resulted if Luis Buñuel, Michelangelo Antonioni, and George Romero had all dropped acid and made a movie together.”