Episode 12 of Season 2! Hosts Gratton Conwill, Matt Fields, and special guest Zain Hashmat discuss The Holy Mountain (1973).
Day 12
The Holy Mountain 1hr 46m
The Holy Mountain was released in May of 1973. It’s a Mexican surrealist fantasy film directed and written by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The director also stars as the Alchemist. The story of the film was based on the novel
Mount Analogue by René Daumal. However, since Daumal died before the novel was completed, Alejandro Jodorowsky had to create his own ending to the story.
Intent on committing to the spiritual and psychedelic themes of the movie, Jodorowsky used several unorthodox activities to steep the cast into the material. Spiritual exercises, yoga, communal living in the Director’s home, consumption of LSD, and mushrooms were just some examples of what went on behind the scenes. Before filming began, Jodorowsky went a week without sleep under the guidance of a Japanese zen master. Once filming began, things did not calm down. A scene involving the cast jumping into the ocean went awry when the actors started drowning. Nothing of the scene was captured as the crew had to rescue the cast from the water.
The film had an estimated budget of $750,000, which contradicts a popular claim that ex-Beatle John Lennon himself donated $1 million to the film’s production.
Due to the film’s bizarre nature, unhinged production, and (for its time) controversial subject matter involving religion and violence, The Holy Mountain has a big cult following. For over 30 years The Holy Mountain was not officially available on home video in the united states, but thanks to modern boutique media companies and a staying interest in director Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Holy Mountain is now widely available for fans to see.
The Holy Mountain has:
4.1 on Letterboxd
7.9/10 on IMDb
83% on rotten tomatoes
76% on Metacritic
84% on google
8.1 average CTS score
From the creators of Giant Monster BS: Gratton Conwill and Matt Fields bring you Only In Amityville season 2: Escape from Amityville!
Escape from Amityville is a limited series podcast event happening exclusively during October of 2021! Starting October 1st, we will review one movie every other day. Each movie will be a lesser known or appreciated, but culturally significant, horror movie made within the past 100 years. None of these movies have anything to do with the original tale of America's most haunted house, but in the spirit of the Amityville story, we promise to review chilling and horrifying movies featuring demons, monsters, and various ghouls! 15 episodes in total! The series finale takes place on Halloween night with a special mystery review. Fans of Giant Monster BS and/or Horror films will be right at home with this podcast. Vulgar, brutally honest, scary as hell, oh yeah... it's Escape from Amityville time Baby!
Only In Amityville is an ad-free, self funded podcast hosted by Gratton Conwill and Matthew Fields.
If you would like to support the show, you can donate to us at: https://anchor.fm/giant-monster-bs or buy our merch at: https://www.teepublic.com/user/cheesemouse2/albums/39997-giant-monster-bs-merch
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