The Holy Mountain
Country
Production
Genre
Budget
$750 000
Box office
$95 858
Director
Actors
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Horacio Salinas, Zamira Saunders, Juan Ferrara, Adriana Page, Burt Kleiner, Valerie Jodorowsky, Nicky Nichols, Richard Rutowski, Luis Lomelí
All actors and roles (10)
All actors and roles (10)
Scenario
Producer
Alejandro Jodorowsky, Roberto Viskin, Allen Klein, Robert Taicher
Camera operator
Composer
Artist
Audition
Editing
Federico Landeros
Whole Team (22)
Whole Team (22)
Short description
The Alchemist assembles together a group of people from all walks of life to represent the planets in the solar system. The occult adept's intention is to put his recruits through strange mystical rites and divest them of their worldly baggage before embarking on a trip to Lotus Island. There they ascend the Holy Mountain to displace the immortal gods who secretly rule the universe.
What's left behind the scenes
- Before filming began, director Alejandro Jodorowsky spent a week without sleep meditating under the guidance of a guru, and lived with the film's cast in a commune for a month.
- The lamb carcasses shown crucified on crosses in the film were borrowed from a local restaurant and, upon their return, were cooked and served to customers.
- The ritual scene at the beginning of the film is accompanied by Buddhist chants. The word “Shakyamuni” means Siddhartha Gautama, i.e., a descendant of Gautama, successful in achieving his goals.
- The film crew did not have permission to film a helicopter landing on a city street. One of the actors simply put on a police officer's uniform and stopped traffic on the street for the duration of the filming, after which the entire group hastily retreated.
- The film is based on the treatise “Ascent of Mount Carmel” by the Christian mystic and reformer of the Carmelite Order, Saint John of the Cross (1542-1591), and the philosophical novel “Mount Analog: A Novel of Alpine Adventure, Non-Euclidean and Symbolically True” by the poet and prose writer René Daumal (1908-1944).
- The first ritual scene in the film depicts gestures and movements that constitute a tea ceremony. Alejandro Jodorowsky later revealed that the women in the scene were not actresses.
- Alejandro Jodorowsky dreamed of filming a scene in which his characters jump into the “infinite waters” of the ocean. The actors jumped into the ocean and immediately began to drown. Chaos ensued. While the film crew pulled the actors out of the water, no one was thinking about filming. As a result, the director abandoned the scene altogether.
- A small octopus, purchased at a local market before filming, played the role of the tumor being removed from the neck of one of the thieves.
- During the beheading scene, the actor dealt Alejandro Jodorowsky a genuinely serious blow, cutting his neck and nearly killing him. As the director and lead actor later recounted, he would have died if the sword had been real.
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Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
