Santa Sangre

Visionary… Feverish… Unsettling… Provocative… Surreal… Hallucinatory… This undisputed masterpiece by Chilean/French avant-garde filmmaker is all of those things and so much more! It’s Jodorowsky meets David Lynch meets Tod Browning in a warped tale of trauma and obsession, revolving around a young circus performer.

In the present (presumably 1989, when the film was made), a young man sits in an artificial tree in a cell, which turns out to be the cell of a mental asylum. His name is Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky, deceased son of the director) and we instantly know from his behaviour that he’s obviously a deeply traumatised person. Psychiatrists and nurses need to use all tricks in the book to make him eat anything at all and eventually succeed when they serve him raw fish, which the patient devours in no time.

The story than goes into flashback with Fenix as a young boy (played by Adán Jodorowsky, another son of the director) and we learn that he is the son of two circus performers: Orgo (an overweight Guy Stockwell) who is a knife-thrower and hypnotist, and Concha (Blanca Guerra) – a trapeze artist and aerialist. Fenix himself is employed as a child magician. Other important characters include a heavily Tattooed Woman (Thelma Tixou) who is abusive towards her little daughter Alma (Faviola Elenka Tapia), a deaf mute tightrope walker. Alma and Fenix are best friends and find it hard to relate to the adults around them, except Aladin (Jesús Juárez), a sympathetic dwarf who can relate to the children due to his own height (or lack of it). While Orgo, overly fond of tequila, flirts openly with the Tattooed Woman (who is also the target during his knife throwing act), Concha, apart from being a circus artist, is also the leader of a religious cult called Santa Sangre (Holy Blood) whose members worship a girl, who was raped by her two brothers and had her two arms cut off, as a patron saint. Welcome to the twisted world of Alejandro Jodorowsky!

After a standoff with representatives of the law, the landowner, and a disgusted Roman Catholic priest, the church is bulldozed. Tragically, Concha’s day is about to get much worse when, back in the circus, she finds out that her husband has an affair with the Tattooed Woman (long after everyone else in the circus found out – didn’t anyone tell her?) but things don’t fare much better for Fenix: after one of the circus elephants dies, he is heartbroken and cries throughout the bizarre funeral parade, during which the elephant is paraded throughout the streets of Mexico in a massive casket, accompanied by mariachi and mambo tunes. Arriving at a huge landfill dump, the casket is then dropped into the massive dump, only for hungry and poor scavengers to break the casket open and carve up the dead animal for its meat.
Naturally, this unpleasant scene upsets Fenix even more but Orgo, instead of acting like a caring father, takes his son back to the circus, binds him to a chair and starts carving a massive tattoo in the shape of a spread-eagled phoenix onto the boy’s chest – the very same tattoo that Orgo has. Ignoring Fenix’ cries to stop, Orgo remarks that the tattoo will make him a man.

If you think the day can’t get much worse for Fenix it does, because during the evening performance, when Concha is high up in the tent performing an aerial act, she can oversee what’s going on behind the arena and spots Orgo and the vulgar Tattooed Woman kissing before he takes Orgo back to her trailer. Raging, Concho cuts her performance short, locks Fenix in her trailer, grabs a bottle of acid from a medical cabinet and enters the Tattooed Woman’s trailer. Just as Orgo is about to make love, she pours the acid over his genitals… Ouch! Despite his injuries, Orgo manages to fight off his wife and, pinning her against a wall, cuts off both of her arms. The Tattooed Woman flees, grabs her daughter and off they drive in the woman’s van. Meanwhile and in agony, Orgo stumbles about on the ground and then slits his throat with one of his large knives – witnessed by Fenix, who is still locked inside the trailer screaming. Is it any wonder the poor lad ends up utterly traumatized?

Years pass and we are now back in the present and in the mental institute where the director organises a daytrip for the patients (which turns out to be a trip through a nightly Mexico City) with most of the patients suffering from Down’s Syndrome. During the outing, Fenix encounters the Tattooed Woman, who know works as a prostitute and forces her adult daughter Alma (now played by Sabrina Dennison) into doing the same – during one session with three GIs, Alma manages to escape through a window and run away while her mother falls victim to a brutal assailant, whose face we don’t see. Days later, Fenix’ mother – now without arms – waits on the street while her son escapes from the window of the mental institute with a rope. Mother and son now perform together as an exclusive act, with Fenix standing behind his mother, who pretends his hands are hers. However, Concha seems to have her devoted son completely under control and he carries out all her orders, including murder… especially when Fenix makes the acquaintance of females he feels attracted to. Reality and fantasy begin to blend and the increasingly deranged Fenix, together with his unhinged mother, are hell-bent on killing. During one harrowing yet strangely poetic sequence, Fenix throws the latest female victim into a grave which he dug and proceeds to paint her naked body with white paint when suddenly, many more white-painted female corpses rise from their graves like zombies – indicating that Fenix has killed much more women than we see in the film but… There is a massive and utterly unexpected twist towards the end, which this reviewer won’t give away.

SANTA SANGRE may not be everyone’s cup of tea (or tumbler of tequila) but it can’t be ignored that it is one of the ultimate ‘must see’ movies! Great performances and fantastic visuals make this a feast for the senses, hell, even the gory scenes ooze poetry – courtesy of a screenplay written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Claudio Argento and Roberto Leoni.

The film has just been released as a 4-Disc Limited Edition UHD & Blu-ray set, with over 8 hours of bonus features and an exclusive soundtrack CD. Highlights among the Extras include the feature-length documentary ‘The Word of Santa Sange’ / ‘Goyo Cárdenas Spree Killer’ – a documentary about the real life inspiration for the film / ECHECK – a short film by Jodorowsky / music video / interviews etc.