Jason slips into a Vortex and watches "Yeti: The Giant of the 20th Century" and "The Holy Mountain"

Hello readers, I'm trying to catch up with the handful of movies I saw last weekend. I don't know how I'll survive SFIFF.

So last Friday night I hung out in my favorite little movie lounge, the Vortex. A few drinks, and a couple of weird movies. First there was the poorly-dubbed Italian/Canadian flick, "Yeti: The Giant of the 20th Century". An industrialist discovers something in a giant chunk of glacier ice. He calls his scientist friend out of retirement to take a look, and he identifies it as a Yeti. He attaches giant electrodes and tries to shock it just enough to "hear its final heartbeat"--he has no idea that the Yeti will actually come to life, kidnap the industrialist's granddaughter, romance her by combing her hair with a comically oversized fish skeleton, and generally run amok. But like all giant pre-human monsters with size-related continuity problems (as near as I can tell, he's somewhere between 15 and 200 feet tall), he's just looking to be loved. Best part, he's got some awesome hair!

And then, Alejandro Jodorowsky's masterpiece of religious symbolism and mumbo-jumbo, "The Holy Mountain". His follow-up to "El Topo" (both of which are finally available on DVD, now that Allen Klein is too feeble to object), it's a weird, colorful mash of symbols about a group of seekers following Jodorowsky up the Holy Mountain in search of enlightenment. I can't summarize this movie, other than it's a brilliant, kinda silly treat. Go see it, dammit!