A Few Words on The Holy Mountain

I realise that this is not really a review blog, and I have never reviewed anything on here in the past (maybe with the exception of a calamitous night of clubbing). However, I am moved to write about The Holy Mountain, a film I watched a couple of days ago, as I have never had such a reaction to a piece of cinema.
It begins with two naked women being shaved, an odd image for those of us who like naked women as it brings a distressing touch of Holocaust imagery or when they used to punish women for sleeping with enemy soldiers. As I became used to the image, I muttered to myself. Maybe this will be more intelligible in the next scene. This, after all, was merely an introduction and once it's over the story proper can commence.
Cut to a man pissing his over-sized nappy while flies crawl over his sleeping face. Then cut to him being stoned by children only to be saved by a man with no arms and no legs, tenderly kissing the nappy-man on his forehead after the rescue. Then cut to a recreation of the conquistadors' attack on a South American tribal city by lizards dressed up as soldiers and natives, ending in blood being projected fountain-like from the top of a model temple (the man in the nappy witnesses this, jumps onto the model city and begins crowing like a rooster).
It carries on like this for some time. Until (after having hundreds of plaster casts of his body in the shape of the crucifix by a man dressed up as a nun) the man in the nappy (although now he is merely wearing a tiny g-string) finds a large tower, which he ascends by age-old method of giant fish-hook. In the tower lives an alchemist who proceeds to strip the man in the g-string (which doesn't take long) and bath the crack of his bottom in a graphic manner. After the sponge bath, the now-naked man defecates in a glass bowl. The alchemist then turns the shit into gold while the now-naked man pukes up inside a giant glass egg. At this point I was deeply unnerved, and wasn't sure if continuing was a wise option, but I didn't have time to dwell on what I had seen. We are quickly introduced to seven people, each from a different planet in the solar system - for example, the man from Venus has many wives and has lots of sex, the man Neptune collects testicles for some reason (we join his story just as he has collected 1000). The film then concerns itself with nudity (most of which is gratuitous), castration, someone putting his finger up a bum (in an "art" installation), an old woman up a tree made of dead chickens, and the search for immortality.

So that about deals with what happens in the film (I skirt the word "plot" deliberately). What did I actually think of it? I hated it. It's true. I was equally disgusted and perplexed by it. But (and this is a big but, maybe it should be written BUT), I was hopelessly captivated by it. I couldn't look away, I wanted to watch it. I wanted to be disgusted and perplexed. This has never happened to me before.
I should say that I really don't like gratuitous weirdness in films. I get hopelessly bored by it and much of the cinema from around the time The Holy Mountain was made (1973) and it was very guilty of it.
A digression: I really don't like Lynch. I sat through his most recent, Inland Empire, bored senseless by the "cerebral" imagery (in actual fact, I think Lynch is taking the piss, and seeing how far he can push it until critics stop saying its good and pseudo-intellectuals stop blathering on about the condition humaine in relation to his fevered output).
Anyway, The Holy Mountain is a pompous, deliberately weird film that probably attempts to say something profound about the role of man and religion, the desire for immortality and various other things (mainly to do with sex or shitting). The real reason to watch it is to revel in what a self-indulgent (just witness the ludicrous, breaking of the fourth wall ending), incoherent and arty mess it is (although I will probably be accused of demeaning what the director, Jodorowsky, was intending to do by saying that but, in truth, I don't think Jodorowsky succeeded in saying what he tried to do, unless the film is deliberately mocking its audience by encouraging them to read into the graphic imagery on display, which would explain the ending).
I am conflicted about the film - and when I say I hated it, I really mean hated it. When I say I was captivated by it, I mean I haven't stopped thinking about it for days. I would be interested to know other people's views in the comments below, if anyone has braved this film...