We first meet Fenix (played by Jodorowsky’s son Axel) as a mute, Jesus-like manchild residing in an idyllic Mexican asylum, and identifying himself so closely with the phoenix tattooed on his chest that he has for years been perched on a branch, squawking like a Birdy. It is a Fellini-esque headtrip of psychos and circuses, set beyond America’s borders and well outside the mainstream (despite being remarkably accessible). Yet Santa Sangre (or ‘Holy Blood’) relates to your average by-numbers slasher in much the same way that Jodorowsky’s earlier El Topo relates to the western, using the identifiable trappings of genre to stage a psychological, philosophical, theological and political rite of passage that expands both viewers’ minds and the possibilities of cinema. When Midnight Movie maestro Alejandro Jodorowsky ( The Holy Mountain) was commissioned by producer Claudio Argento, brother of giallo king Dario, to “make a picture where a man kills a lot of women”, the upstart director/mystic/prankster/mime-artist certainly delivered on his remit. The startling imagery makes it a memorable though not necessarily a likable film.Santa Sangre first published by Little White Lies Concha manipulates the wasted away Fenix to escape from the sanitarium, and then uses his hands in a pantomime act to seek vengeance against the Tattoo Woman subsequently, sliced and diced to death in a knife attack by mother and son. We return to the present, many years after the tragedy, where through a twist of fate involving a group of Downs Syndrome kids, a drug dealing and boom box playing pimp (Teo Jodorowsky, another relation of the director), a dead elephant and an obese prostitute, Fenix is reunited with the Tattoo Woman and her abused deaf-mute daughter (Sabrini Dennson), someone he once had a crush on, and his armless mother. In a rage and in pain, Orgo slices off Conchas arms with his knives and then slits his own throat with young Fenix witnessing it all (no wonder the kid grew up with severe psychological problems!). In a jealous rage, she exits the circus floor and douses Orgos genitals with sulfuric acid. One day, while performing her high-wire act, Concha spies Orgo screwing the Tattooed Woman (Thelma Tixou). As a passing to manhood ritual, Fenix’s father ties him to a chair and carves a big tattoo of a phoenix into his chest with a knife. His dad Orgo (Guy Stockwell) is a drunk and carnival knife-thrower. It opens with the nude twenty-year-old Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky, the director’s son) locked in a sanitarium cell and sitting atop a tree, where in a flashback we see how he was traumatized as a child magician by his dysfunctional circus parents: Concha (Blanca Guerra), a fiery trapeze artist who swings from her own long black hair and is also a crazed religious fanatic belonging to a strange cult that worships a woman who was attacked by two men who chopped off her arms, raped her and left her for dead in a pool of her own blood. It’s Jodorowsky’s first film after a 10-year hiatus, and is made on a higher budget than his usual films. Jodorowsky’s surrealist filmmaking techniques call for an unhealthy mixture of gore and an unbearable holier-than-thou critique of society. I have been turned on by his stunning visuals and turned off by his penchant for exploitative and gratuitous violence. Jodorowsky has been all of the following things in his artistic career: a puppeteer, a circus performer, a mime, a playwright, a film director, a novelist and a comic book author. It’s a weird film - an acquired taste that’s best suited for those with a strong stomach for bloodbaths and freaks. Maverick Chilean-born director Alejandro Jodorowsky (“El Topo”/”The Holy Mountain”/”Fando y Lis”), who worked his trade mostly in France and Mexico, helms this counter-culture, highly personal, tasteless, grisly and lurid avant-garde slasher thriller for the arty cult crowd (a film meant for the midnight screenings of the 1960s, like El Topo, but instead opened at regular hours since that craze had long passed from the big city American scene). De Jesus Aranzabal (Fat Prostitute), Pimp (Teo Jodorowsky), Sergio Bustamante (Monsignor) Runtime: 123 MPAA Rating: R producer: Claudio Argento Anchor Bay 1989-Italy-in English) SANTA SANGRE (aka: HOLY BLOOD) (director/writer: Alejandro Jodorowsky screenwriter: Roberto Leoni cinematographer: Daniele Nannuzzi editor: Mauro Bonanni music: Simon Boswell cast: Axel Jodorowsky (Fenix), Blanca Guerra (Concha), Guy Stockwell (Orgo), Thelma Tixou (Tattooed Woman), Sabrina Dennison (Alma), Adan Jodorowski (Young Fenix), Jesus Juarez (Aladin), Faviola Elenka Topia (Young Alma), Ma.
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