With an acrobat in a sanitarium, elephant trunks spouting blood, and a religious cult whose patron saint is a rape victim, Santa Sangre isn’t going to be an easy watch, especially with the avant-garde direction of the iconic Alejandro Jodorowsky. It’s tough to watch the explicit scenes, both of Fenix’s childhood circus reality and his adult hallucinations, with the hallucinations visually recalling his childhood trauma. But through these terrifying, freaky images, Jodorowsky takes his own memories and crafts it into a twisted, but deeply personal psychosexual nightmare, confronting the exploitative nature of faith and family through various circus acts. Santa Sangre is one of its kind.
Synopsis
A former circus artist escapes from a mental hospital to rejoin his mother – the leader of a strange religious cult – and is forced to enact brutal murders in her name.
Storyline
After escaping from the sanitarium, former circus artist Fenix reunites with his armless mother, becoming her arms to enact murder and revenge.
TLDR
Kinda weird to cast your own children into this kind of film, though for young Fenix, I can’t say it would be easy to cast any child at all.
What stands out
When a film is practically named Holy Blood, it’s no surprise that it will be bloody. Santa Sangre has a lot of gory, violent, downright disturbing scenes that’s just part and parcel of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s style. View at your own risk.
