Santa sangre (1990)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Pretty Good

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's reputation as the creator of some of the craziest films ever seen had been cemented in the early 70's with the release of his two most famous films, El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973). In this era of psychedelia and cinematic experimentation, weird movies were almost actively encouraged and so an extreme left-field talent such as Jodorowsky could flourish. But times changed and cinema became increasingly commercialized meaning that he did not make any comparable movies for many years, that is until Claudio Argento stepped up to help finance another surrealist feature, to that end we ended up with Santa Sangre. It's probably relevant to mention the Argento here; as Santa Sangre is not a million miles away from the kind of film his brother Dario was famous for directing, i.e. hyper-stylized slasher horror opuses. In fact, with this film Jodorowsky seems to be channelling his own style via Argento with Luis Buñuel and Federico Fellini mixed in for good measure. It's a heady concoction for sure and the result is rather good. It definitely has to be said that, while this is still very much a surrealist movie, it is nevertheless a much less experimental feature that Jodorowsky's earlier aforementioned works, hence, it is considerably more accessible, character-driven and has a pretty clear narrative. Irrespective of all this, it remains a somewhat strange film. Set around circus people, the story revolves around the son of a trapeze artist mother and knife-throwing strongman father, the latter of which has an affair with the tattooed lady, which results in a violent confrontation where he gets acid in the groin and she has her arms decapitated. The young son witnesses the carnage and ends up in a mental hospital as a result of the trauma. Years later he escapes from the asylum and reunites with his mother who he now provides the arms for. A series of brutal murders follows.To be perfectly honest this is my favourite of Jodorowsky's features. It's probably on account of it being a bit of a cross-over movie where he combined his uncanny ability for conjuring up surrealist imagery with a narrative that was easier to get involved in, plus I also thoroughly enjoyed the extra addition of some good old fashioned gory horror. So what we have is part psychological horror, part slasher film, part melodrama, part surrealist movie, part black comedy; and all of this with a strong Mexican flavor. As could perhaps be expected, there are a number of very striking images to savour too. There is the elaborate burial of an elephant via a sealed skip being ritually dropped off a cliff only to have the inner entrails ripped out to be used as food by the slum dwellers, there is a dwarf in an Aladdin suit, a super-sexy buxom tattooed temptress, a church dedicated to an armless saint, cabaret shows, mime artistry, bloody knife attacks, cocaine sniffing Downs Syndrome children and a sanitarium cell with a tree inside it. There are soaring shots over the streets of Mexico City, vivacious Latin music and elaborate religious imagery. In other words, this is bold imaginative film-making at its best and showed clearly that Jodorowsky certainly had not mellowed in the preceding years.

Santa Sangre is a 1989 Mexican surrealist psychological horror film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The film stars Jodorowsky's sons Aden and Axel Jodorowsky who play young Fenix and adult Fenix. Young Fenix is a boy with aspirations of becoming a magician living in a Circus with his Circus performer parents. Adult Fenix is a magician living in a psychiatric ward in Mexico City. Fenix and his mother Concha are very close. When Fenix's mother's arms are chopped off early in his life, he breaks down mentally and is sent to a psychiatric ward. Until one day he escapes and is reunited with his dead mother. He then helps her live out her life with the help of his arms. This leads the two to become dangerously codependent on each other. In this film analysis, I will explain how sex, violence, and the fear of growing up is shown symbolically as well as literally throughout the film.When we are children, we think about the freedoms of adulthood. But what we fail to realize is what those freedoms bring. Adulthood remains an even harder task when not properly transitioned. With Fenix's role as a magician, he plays out the ultimate transformation of death into life. He acts this out because he is constantly being haunted by the past. What was dead before, comes to life before his eyes. We see this through his mother as well as the many scenes in the graveyard. Fenix's tragic life begins when he catches his mother and father having sex. His mother's pleasure contrasts with the elephant's pain. The elephant symbolizes Fenix's innocence and childhood, which dies when he learns of his father's affair with the tattooed woman. This is shown later in the film when we see a naked and older Fenix hunkered down spewing blood out of his nose. The tattooed woman is the ultimate representation of sex and desires that Fenix's young mind is scarred by. The hesitance to grow up is first shown when we see young Fenix crying and holding his mother's waist as her building is about to be destroyed on top of her. Concha nurtures him when he needs her because she is the maternal figure. But his father takes a more masculine approach to his son's behavior. He wants his son to be more like him so he tattoos an eagle onto his chest. This can be seen as a sort of forced acceptance from his father as well as what his father believes to be the right of manhood. His father leaves more than just a literal mark on Fenix. When Fenix is met with a woman he desires later in life, he dresses up like his father and throws knives at the woman. He does this not only because this is what he knows to be a sign of affection towards someone desirable. But also because sex and violence have become connected through his traumatizing childhood. Fenix's fear of sex is learned very early. Not only through the elephant. But through his mother's reaction to sexual acts. When Fenix is young, he may not be mature enough to realize his father is having an affair. But what he does understand is that his mother's reactions to the tattooed woman's and his father's sexual interactions is wrong. This leads him to believe that all sexual acts can be seen as wrong. We see this when a snake is coming out of his pants uncontrollably when he invites a harmless woman to his home. When Fenix sees the tattooed woman when he is an adult, his repressed childhood comes rushing back into the foreground of his mind. This leads him to escape the mental health facility and regress back to his childhood. This regression to childhood brings his mother back. This leads Fenix to living out his mother's desires so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for his own life. What his mother represents at this point is his guilty conscience. She punishes him for his mistakes and shames him for his inabilities. This leads to Fenix's desire to become The Invisible Man. The Invisible Man represents Fenix's desire to disappear or not exist. After Fenix lets his mother go, he is then forced to take responsibility for his own actions as an adult in a dangerous world.Santa Sangre is indeed a surrealistic horror film and it certainly succeeds at that. But at it's heart, it is a story about growing up and the fears that can bring. I think that's why Jodorowsky chose his sons to play the role of Fenix. A lot of the success of the film depended on how far they were willing to go with the characters and I think he felt he could get that across to them more than a normal actor. With this film, Jodorowsky creates a coming of age film like no one has ever seen on film. A truly miraculous feat in many regards.

Woahou ... What a masterpiece ! I've bought Jodorowsky's movies without knowing what's going to happen, result : I've gain so much maturity by watching all of them, and Santa Sangre is definitively with The Holy Mountain the duo that clearly change my way of enjoying REAL art. This is just pure madness, surrealism at it best. Stunning soundtrack mixed with circus fantasy, an absolute mind trip to Jodorowsky dimension. Everything is beautiful in this movie, everything is well linked, all actors play fantastically, there's no mistake. I'm really happy that this kind of movie isn't "mainstream" like other sci-fi sh*t massively sponsoring by media and "people". I just wish to see more like them, and it's a hard job finding them because of their rareness. The only regret, as an audiophile, is that few tracks on the movie are unfortunately NOT present on the Original Soundtrack released on vinyl and CD, result > horrible DVDRIP MP3 audio for a frightening sound in the graveyard part (and also from the DVD menu) . Anyway, I just stand up like I did at the end of the movie, clap my hand loudly and say proudly with a tear drop : BRAVO - BRAVO !!!!!!!

This now out of print movie is perhaps one of the best movies that nobody will get to see. The visuals are absolutely fantastic from the circus performers to the prostitutes. Every single character in this movie is odd, deformed or ugly in one way or another and often all of the above. The story centers around Felix who witnesses his mother killed by his father (cutting off her arms) and his father then killing himself. But that doesn't happen until about 30 minutes in. The scenes leading up to that are interesting to watch and necessary to show the full picture of Felix then and Felix in the future. After the killing the scene goes to this boy who is now all grown up where he manages to escape from the the institution he was locked up. My only beef with the movie is how easily he escapes. Putting that aside this man is totally psychotic, delusional and has hallucinations that have him killing people because his armless mother is driving him to. I would also like to point out that the movie plays homage to several great horror movies from the past including, "Psycho," "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligar," and "The Invisible Man" to name a few even though that's truly what it is in every aspect: horrible acts, characters and images sustain throughout this great movie.