The Cinematheque

New Restoration

“Dazzling, chaotic, indulgent … It shoots out enough ideas to fill a dozen movies.”

Robert Murphy, Time Out

Dennis Hopper’s little-seen follow-up to the epochal hit Easy Rider is one of cinema’s legendary films maudits (cursed films). Given carte blanche and a large budget by Universal Pictures, the actor-director took a film crew and a cast of pals—including Kris Kristofferson, Peter Fonda, Michelle Phillips, and Samuel Fuller—off to Peru, where they made this radically self-reflexive New Wave wonder, the acid-trip tale of a Hollywood company shooting a Western in the Andes. Hopper plays stuntman Kansas, who becomes caught up in the local indigenous community’s alarming new religious rituals. Rebel Without a Cause screenwriter Stewart Stern co-wrote the script. Hopper described the film’s production as ​“one long sex-and-drugs orgy.” The unconventional narrative structure suggests a director under the thrall of both psychedelics and Godard. The film bombed at the box office, derailing Hopper’s directorial career. He remained convinced it was his masterpiece. It screens here in a brand-new restoration.

“One of the craziest (and druggiest) movies ever made, it’s also blatantly self-deconstructing and meta to the max.”

J. Hoberman, Village Voice

“You should think about Godard a little when you watch it … I was trying to use film like an Abstract Expressionist would use paint as paint.”

Dennis Hopper