The film exists because John Lennon saw El Topo. Lennon and Yoko Ono put up production money through Allen Klein.

Before the cameras rolled, the cast spent months on spiritual exercises guided by Oscar Ichazo of the Arica Institute, drawing on Zen, Sufi, and yoga practices, then lived together for a month in director Alejandro Jodorowsky's home. Jodorowsky was instructed by Ichazo to take LSD during preparation, and he administered psilocybin mushrooms to his actors during the filming of the death-rebirth scene.

In addition to writing and directing THE HOLY MOUNTAIN (1973), Jodorowsky stars as the Alchemist, co-scored the film, co-edited it, and designed both the sets and the costumes. He gathers a group of powerful figures, each representing a planet, and strips them of their wealth and vanity through rituals of purification. Horacio Salinas plays the Thief, a Christ-like figure recruited into the group, and together they travel toward Lotus Island, climbing the Holy Mountain itself to confront the immortal beings said to rule existence.

The film ends with Jodorowsky instructing the camera to pull back and reveal the crew, breaking the illusion entirely and declaring the quest for enlightenment a kind of performance. Few films have tried anything so direct, and fewer have gotten away with it.