Fando y Lis

"Over the years, as legal wrangling has kept them off our screens, the films of Alejandro Jodorowsky have built up quite a reputation, one you'd think it impossible to live up to. But these movies - El Topo, Holy Mountain (pictured) and Fando & Lis - are simply staggering. A relentless cascade of seemingly unrelated and wild imagery, they're the sort of films where you're not sure if you're even awake when you're watching them. What's even more remarkable is the careful and precise imagination that every frame exhibits. Even film-makers like David Lynch and Luis Buñuel have, on occasion, inserted arbitrary elements into their films. Jodorowsky, on the other hand, has method and madness working in perfect tandem. His commentaries on these discs reveal that there's not one image without some sort of meaning - to him at least. That's quite a claim, when the bizarre religious, spiritual, alchemical and sci-fi influences conjure up such unforgettable sights as psychedelic shotguns, a testicle collection, a computer giving birth, monks dressed as women then ridden like horses, a desert ranch of dying rabbits and a man having his anus scrubbed while a baby hippo looks on - a role originally intended for George Harrison. Holy Mountain and El Topo are available separately but the boxset is a worthwhile investment as it includes a lengthy documentary on the man - with plenty of information on his magnificent failure to get his version of Dune made - and a pair of soundtrack CDs."

— Phelim O'Neill de The Guardian

"For all its invocations of theater of cruelty, Fando and Lis hardly ever scares up anything stronger than unpleasant whimsey."

— A. O. Scott de NY Times