Movie Review – Santa Sangre

Santa Sangre (1989)
Written by Alejandro Jodorowsky, Roberto Leoni, and Claudio Argento
Directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky

The first (and only, until this film) Alejandro Jodorowsky film I ever watched was The Holy Mountain. That was fourteen years ago and took place on a very eventful night. I was staying at a friend’s place. The following day, Ariana would arrive from Puerto Rico. That night before consisted of eating a very poorly made but extremely potent homemade weed cookie my friend had at his place, eating Indian food for the first time while extremely high, and then watching There Will Be Blood high as balls. We returned to his place, still stoned, and he popped in The Holy Mountain. The film certainly left a mark on me based on those circumstances.

Santa Sangre is the story of Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky), a man who grew up as a boy magician in a traveling circus. His father, Orgo, ran the business and was an expert knife thrower. Fenix’s mother, Concha, was a trapeze artist but also the leader of a religious cult. The cult centers around a female saint who was sexually assaulted by two brothers and had her arms cut off. Their church is bulldozed after Concha and her followers fail to protect it, and she begins to lose her grip on reality. Concha discovers Orgo is having an affair with the tattooed lady, but he hypnotizes her. She manages to break free and tosses acid onto her husband, who responds by cutting off her arms in a mockery of her belief.

Years later, Fenix is an adult and living in a mental hospital. He’s regressed to the point of behaving like an ape. During a trip outside of the asylum, the man catches a brief glimpse of the tattooed lady who is now a sex worker in the city. Back in his cell, Fenix hears his mother call for him and sees her standing outside his window. She helps him escape, and they begin performing a stage act where Fenix stands behind his mother and presents his arms as hers. Meanwhile, someone is killing off women in the city, all of whom show an interest in Fenix. It’s a twisted, dark fairy tale of a story.

Jodorowsky is a filmmaker who is very much in the same vein as David Lynch. Their films are expressions of their thoughts and images that come to them. It’s delivered in a highly surrealist manner where the audience is meant to see things as both literal and metaphorical. If you go into the movie wanting something tightly plotted and straightforward, you picked the wrong picture. I enjoyed the fable-like atmosphere and structure. It reminded me of Federico Fellini mixed with giallo horror films. Jodorowsky is fantastic at casting, and everyone on screen looks interesting. Their faces tell us a story without ever needing to utter a single word.

Like many of the director’s work, Santa Sangre emerged from his own emotional & psychological issues. Jodorowsky was the product of a sexual assault, and his mother eventually told him, “I cannot love you.” Fenix’s character embodies many anxieties and neuroses that would come from a life lived in that mental state. Our protagonist was exposed to sex and violence at a very young age and ends up having a twisted view of his own sexuality. At one point, he hallucinates that his own erection is a python that he must wrestle with. He grovels in the presence of his mother with behavior that is hard to define as simply a doting son or someone sexually attracted to her. 

The giallo elements make sense as Dario Argento’s younger brother Claudio had a hand in writing the script. The kills reminded me of Suspira and especially Deep Red. The camera is the killer’s point of view, with only their hands and weapons visible. The spirit of Alfred Hitchcock hovers over it all, as he was a significant influence on giallo, too. This is more the psychological part of a Hitchcock movie that is allowed to shape the narrative than the procedures. Think of the proto-psychedelic sequences from Vertigo as how this film feels from start to finish.  

I would argue that Santa Sangre exists outside genres like Lynch’s film. They possess elements of many film genres but are marked with an artist’s signature that makes them unique. The film is just as much psychologically Freudian as it is a slasher flick. This horror film doesn’t seek to provide gory thrills to the audience but, as Roger Ebert correctly said, is about good defeating evil in a way that never glorifies evil. The bad people in this movie are repugnant, masses of festering walking rot where the cruelty & hate they have grown inside them have emerged on the surface. Yet, it’s also a view of the world, as seen through the eyes of a highly unreliable protagonist who does not have a solid grasp on reality.

Jodorowsky is the master of striking images. An elephant dies a bloody death (it’s a very cleverly staged special effect). Scavengers swarm the beast and tear it apart for its meat. A group of Down syndrome men are taken to the red-light district, where its denizens take advantage of them. Women are horribly mutilated by brutes. A mother demands total ownership over her son’s sexuality. It’s the pitch-black darkness of the world allowed to bubble to the surface, only slightly softened by the fable-like style of storytelling. Santa Sangre is a genuine work of art, a true expression of how an artist sees the world.