"I
want to return to horror, but in a spiritual way. In the study of horror
movies, I don't see this; they don't know they exist in a spiritual sense.
They are! We are! You are! Through the madness, through the monster of
the unconscious, through death ... transcendence. If somebody would do
that, it would be of great importance."
Alexandro Jodorowsky on Santa Sangre (1990) and the horror film
The merging of Chilean writer/director Alexandro Jodorowsky (writer
and director of the incredibly bizarre El Topo and its even more unbelievable
follow up The Holy Mountain) and writer/producer Claudio Argento (brother
and producer of many classic Dario Argento films), Santa Sangre is a
haunting masterpiece unlike anything seen before.
To
describe any of Jodorowsky films is nearly impossible to do - they need
to be seen to be believed. This tale of Fenix, the son of a cruel circus
knife thrower, and his mother, whose arms were cut off by her husband
after she spills acid on him for messing around with the tattooed woman
- is true theatre of the absurd.
Years
later Fenix leaves an insane asylum (where he lives naked in a tree
and eats raw fish!) and reunites with his mother using his arms as her
arms he walks behind her mimicking her movements and even painting his/her
nails! The tattooed woman meets a grizzly death at the hands of this
Bizarre team (the death is very Argento-like earning the film an NC-17
rating, otherwise known as the kiss of death as far as distribution
goes), and soon this bizarro psycho-like story goes even more ballistic!
Huge woman wrestlers, mime girls, assorted midgets and freaks are all
involved in the action, nothing shocking to old Jodorowsky fans, but
will confuse and dazzle those unfamiliar with his work.
Santa
Sangre is stunningly photographed (the opening birds eye P.O.V. through
the city is fucking insane, the oddly poetic sight of villagers descending
upon an elephant carcass and chopping it to pieces) and completely original
from beginning to end. We guarantee you have never seen anything like
it. Highly recommended.
