Santa Sangre
by Alejandro Jodorowsky
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Product details
Actor: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Sabrina Dennison, Thelma TixouDirector: Alejandro Jodorowsky
Cinematographer: Daniele Nannuzzi
Editor: Mauro Bonanni
Edition: VHS Tape
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 123 minutes
Release Date: 1998-01-01
Audience Rating: Unrated
Publisher: Expanded Entertainment
Studio: Expanded Entertainment
VHS Movie Reviews of Santa Sangre
Movie Review: Best Film I have Ever Seen EVER (period).
Summary: 5 Stars
I saw Sante Sangre back in the early 90s in Tucson Arizona and walked out of the theater with my jaw dragging on the ground. The visuals of this film rival Fellini and the best visual artists. The depth of the material rivals the work of the worlds greatest symbolic psychologists, ala C. G. Jung. What this film is about is essentially the mental experiences of its main character, an insane circus performer who is traumatized by violence in his youth. He becomes a quietly obsesses serial killer who is possessed by his mother. Or so it seems. As with anything that is examining the unconscious impulses of a disturbed individual, nothing is clear or definite. Is he older now when the action takes place? Is he committed to an institution or free and wandering the world, killing his mother's enemies? Is he digging in a graveyard or just hallucinating it?
The beauty of this film is in the not knowing but the wondering. Even though nothing is clear, the visuals are beautiful and it is clear how such powerful images are inspiring this character to take strong action.
Most of my favorite films deal with archetypal images and universal symbols, so you might love this film if you like the work of Terry Gilliam, Thomas Harris (the Hannibal Lector series), Fellini, Salvidore Dali, and Carl Jung. You will enjoy this film. It is deep and wide and pushes you to expand your scope of mind.
Movie Review: Incredible
Summary: 5 Stars
Plot: Spanish/Mexican circus performers. A young boy named Felix, his mother 'a trapeze artist' and the womanizing man shes married to. We go between scenes of Felix as a catatonic inmate in an asylum all grown up and scenes from his childhood. In the middle theres killings, psychological horror, then the great ending.
Theres everything in this movie, love, surrealism, sexuality, mimes, metaphoric stuff. Its very odd, yet beautiful. Picture the movie Psycho involving circus performers, Its hard to explain but shares a similar theme. This movie is beyond description, beyond horror.. The metaphors, the visuals, the whole presentation, the characters, the story, everything was something out of the ordinary and one of a kind. Never saw a movie like this before. I found out about this one in a book i have that names rare horror films. This is probably the best one so far... if not the most unique film ive ever seen. Dont miss this one.
Movie Review: More Logical, More Mature and Yet Still Fantastical
Summary: 5 Stars
As a hardcore Jodorowsky fan I find Santa Sangre his most sentimental film. For anyone who's only seen his more famous work (El Topo, Holy Mountain) from the late 60's, the beginning of this will throw you for a moment. The look of the film stock is completely modern, but you'll soon get over this as his wonderful images begin to take you away. Where his earlier work is filled with the fantastical mysticism of a younger man searching for answers, Sangre is populated by a mature perspective into everyday extraordinariness. Earlier films blazed forward like a twisted locomotive, where this follows a more logical even pace, yet still finds room for his trademark visionary moments within the storyline. Sangre's story (reminiscent of Fando & Lis) draws the viewer in, becoming very personal; and the cast (featuring 3 of Jodorowsky's sons) is superb. Sangre would be a wonderful introduction for anyone tentative about the outlandish cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky, and I recommend it as highly as his earlier work; as this is yet another side of one of the world's great directors.Movie Review: Saintly Blood
Summary: 5 Stars
What's artful about this film is that it keeps you on the edge of your seat during the entire dramatic and surreal epic and makes you go through a transformation by feeling fear, disgust, sadness, and confusion. There are many stories going on at the same time of love, jealousy, insanity, religion, and so on. The link between the characters is never clear, but Jodorowsky keeps you enthralled with stunning colors and odd circus people crawling about.
Concha is the hot-tempered (and slightly insane) Mexican who is part of some bloody cult, and married to the fat gringo. He cheats on her and when she catches him in the act, she pours what looks to be some kind of acid on his genitals, and he goes off and cuts her arms off and slices his throat in front of their young boy Fenix. Obviously after that, Fenix becomes disturbed and goes into an insane asylum. If you notice carefully, after the gringo kills himself and the ambulance comes, Concha is also pulled out on a stretcher with her face covered that perhaps indicates that she may have died.
Therefore, everything that happens after Fenix escapes the insane asylum could be delusional, because if you also notice, the mother and the young trapeze girl don't age
That was just an example of how this film could be interpreted, but I'm just one person. Many people could have other ideas, but that's what makes this piece so brilliant. It keeps you hanging and haunted. I don't want to give away the whole story if that's even possible, but at the end, I'm inclined to believe that Fenix did what he did to resolve his issues with his mother. You must see it! No subtitles.
Jodorowsky, who created this peculiar colorful masterpiece film, should be given credit for being original and not labeled and compared to Fellini, Bunuel, or Argento (who are also great). He is simply a foreign director doing his art his way, not conforming to Hollywood because in other countries art is not as commercialized as it is in the U.S. There doesn't always have to be a successful conclusion, a clich?d love scene, and a predictable plot.
Movie Review: Bloodied but unbowed
Summary: 4 Stars
Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowski has been a prominent yet somewhat elusive figure in the realm of cult films. His 1970 film "El Topo" became the first true hit of NYC grindhouse cinema yet over his film career spanning 40-some years he has only made a handful of feature films. Jodorowski is now back in the spotlight as the long-awaited sequel to "El Topo" is in pre-production for a tentative release in 2005. Having never seen one of his films I decided to try Santa Sangre (1989), apparently one of his more "accessible" films.
It was hard for me to figure out what exactly this movie was about but I will make an attempt at a plot summary anyways. Concha is the leader of a strange cult named Santa Sangre. On one fateful night she catches her womanizing husband sleeping with "The Tattoed lady" and confronts them, splashing a hot drink on the genitals area of her husband. In a fit of rage, he slices off both of her arms and then shortly after commits suicide by slashing his own throat. The armless Concha and her son then go on a revenge and killing spree, her son standing behind her and providing arms for her to commit the kills.
Santa Sangre is utterly bizarre. The story unfolds in unlinear fashion and character focus keeps shifting throughout the film. I often grow impatient with films that have such muddled and unfocussed structure (even if deliberate) but here I simply didn't care because I was so transfixed with the on-screen beauty and the art of Jodorowski's visuals. Dialogue is rather limited and even though it gets confusing you just want to sit back and soak in the beauty of what's on screen. Filmed in Mexico City, Jodorowski exposes us to striking architecture and a never-ending Mardi-Gras of parades, cults, circus troupes and individuals wearing lavish costumes and face paint. The sound and music throughout the film are nothing short of stunning. If I were to try to describe this film in one sentence I would probably say that it's surrealism without the pretentiousness usually associated with such films.
Although they appear sporadically, there are several scenes of bodily mutilation that will make even the most seasoned horror viewer gap in awe. It's hard to tell what Jodorowski was attempting to convey with this film. Perhaps exposing the worst in human debauchery? Every character in this film is deeply flawed on a human level. No doubt about it, Santa Sangre is a must for adventurous fans of international cinema. It's too bad the rights to his films are tied up due to disagreements with his distributor, I would love to see this stuff on DVD.
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