Santa Sangre

By Jimmy Squarejaw

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s films are absolutely fascinating to me.  They are completely original and instantly identifiable once you have seen just one. Jadorowsky’s use of color, imagery, and symbolism is brilliant and in my opinion more powerful and disturbing than Dario Argento. I wouldn’t know what genre to consider Jadorowsky’s movies in other than his own genre.  All of his movies are as nutso as Salvador Dali’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU, but Jodorowsky creates a coherent plot out of all of the madness.  SANTA SANGRE is no different than his previous films even though it is one of his last films he made and it came out over a decade after his most prolific filmmaking period when he made El Topo and Holy Mountain.

SANTA SANGRE is about the life of Fenix.  He is shown growing up and fully grown during SANTA SANGRE.  In the beginning of the movie he is seen as a young adult, held in an insane asylum.  It’s not too bad though because he has a tire swing and a giant tree that he can climb around on like the filthy monkey he is.  After eating a raw fish provided by hospital staff, the film flashes back to Fenix’s upbringing at a circus and starts to fill us in on how he ended up in a mental asylum with a ridiculous eagle tattoo on his chest.

Fenix’s Dad is a giant tub of shit named Orgo who is the knife-throwing hypnotist of the local circus.  Fenix’s mother is a very dramatic trapeze artist.  It’s evident that Orgo’s eye wanders and catches the interest of the very slutty tattooed woman and her spread, lightly stained loins.  Orgo plays knife throw with her when he’s not getting tanked on booze, and the Tattooed Lady takes the liberty of getting turned on at every throw, even giving one of the knives a nice little dose of fellatio.  Well like all Hispanic women……well most women I guess, Fenix’s Mom doesn’t take to kindly to that and proceeds to freak the hell out instead of caving in to a possible three-way.  Orgo plays it cool and lays out some hypnotism to calm her down and all is well.  I wonder if that would work in real life? 

After Fenix’s Mom cools down we learn she is a part of a cult that believes in a saint that had her arms ripped off after she was raped by a conniving pair of brothers. Well as totally sane as that may sound, the landlord to their temple doesn’t like it too much and after the local Catholic monsignor pays the cult a visit and verifies that yes, this is totally batshit, the temple is torn apart by a few bulldozers.  Great, Orgo must’ve totally shit a brick sideways because without a cult Concha, Fenix’s Mom, is going to be spending more time at the circus inhibiting the Tattooed Lady and Orgo’s sexo fiesto!

In the midst of all of the wacky drama one of Lil’ Fenix’s closest friends, an elephant, starts to get sick and dump bloody gore out of his trunk.  After the big fella’ dies a public funeral is held with a giant black casket being paraded through the streets with all the pomp and flare of a royal funeral.  After the funeral, unlike a royal funeral, the elephant’s giant casket is dumped into the city waste pit letting all of the vagrants of whatever god forsaken town this is tear the elephant apart for food.  While watching this Orgo gives Fenix the fucking terrible eagle tattoo we saw before.  Back at the circus, it was a matter of time before the Tattooed Lady and Orgo get caught messing around and Concha again looses her mind and dumps acid of both of their baby making parts.  Orgo, although reeling from wide-open sores burned into his wiener, doesn’t like this too much and cuts Concha’s arms off before he slits his own throat. 

Well, as for his upbringing you could see that Fenix might be a little unhinged and one can totally see why he ends up in a mental ward.  After the Tattooed Lady gets burned she grabs her mute kid and splits into the hub bub of the Mexican city.  Sucks for Fenix because he loved that little mute girl, even if she had really bad yellow teeth that I couldn’t get past at all during her scenes.

We now flash forward to Fenix grown up and trying to be a good lad with his other mental asylum cohorts. There is something odd about the fact they all look the same and are the same height.  Oh, they all have Down’s syndrome. This for me is a good part to end off with, there is plenty more to this movie than I’ve described but give it a watch and you will not be let down, it’s an odd one!  It isn’t a psycho-gore fest full of rape and body procurement like we usually discus on this website, instead it’s an unsettling story told with bold symbolism and unique characters that, for me at least, will make you want to watch it repeatedly to try and figure it all out.            

Blake and Jimmy’s Extreme-O-Gauge!

Realistic Gore: 2 out of 5, not very gory but there are a few good scenes for the hounds.

Rape: 1 out of 5, there is an attempt that is nerve wracking but it proves to be okay.

Animal Death: 1 out of 5, the elephant isn’t real but it’s still unsettling.  There’s also a weird abusive chicken scene.

Necrophilia: 0 out of 0

Torture: 0 out of 0

Overall Movie: 5 out of 5, I recommend all of Jodorowsky's films. This can be watched numerous times and is entertaining as fuck!