Trivia

Other noteworthy figures said to be fans of the film, besides John Lennon and Yoko Ono, include directors David Lynch and Samuel Fuller, actors Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper, and performers Bob Dylan, Marilyn Manson, and Peter Gabriel. It has been claimed that this movie was the beginning of Gabriel's inspiration for the classic Genesis concept album, 'The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway'.

Years later, Alejandro Jodorowsky, ashamed of the part he forced his own son to play, invited him to his house. He went with his son to the backyard and asked him to dig. Inside the hole, there was an old teddy bear and an old picture of his mother, and Alexandro said: "Now you are 8 years old, and you have the right to be a kid".

First released as an underground film, it was thanks to John Lennon that the film acquired a worldwide distribution. He was so impressed by this movie that he urged a close friend of his to buy the rights and take charge of distribution.

Alejandro Jodorowsky said the film was not intended to be a comedy, a tragedy, a political film or a religious film. It was everything.

Following the release of the film, Jodorowsky courted controversy when he claimed that the infamous rape scene in the film was unsimulated: "When I wanted to do the rape scene, I explained to Mara Lorenzio that I was going to hit her and rape her. There was no emotional relationship between us, because I had put a clause in all the women's contracts stating that they would not make love with the director. We had never talked to each other. I knew nothing about her. We went to the desert with two other people: the photographer and a technician. No one else. I said, 'I'm not going to rehearse. There will be only one take because it will be impossible to repeat. Roll the cameras only when I signal you to. And I really... I really... I really raped her. And she screamed." He went on to state, "Then she told me that she had been raped before. You see, for me the character is frigid until El Topo rapes her. And she has an orgasm. That's why I show a stone phallus in that scene . . . which spouts water. She has an orgasm. She accepts the male sex. And that's what happened to Mara in reality. She really had that problem. Fantastic scene. A very, very strong scene." In 2019, Jodorowsky addressed his earlier comments, clarifying that it was part of a publicity stunt and he didn't actually film a real rape scene: "They were words, not facts, Surrealist publicity in order to enter the world of cinema from a position of obscurity. I acknowledge that this statement is problematic in that it presents fictional violence against a woman as a tool for exposure, and now, fifty years later, I regret that this is being read as truth."