Santa Sangre (1989)

Title: Santa Sangre (1989)

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Writers: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Claudio Argento, Roberto Leoni

Cast: Axel Jodorowsky, Adan Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison, Teo Jodorowsky

Review:

Horror films are made by many different kinds of filmmakers, sometimes a horror film is made by an unknown director whom we’ll never here from again. Sometimes, they are made by a director who has chosen to make horror films his specialty. Guys like John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper come to mind. But sometimes, horror films are made by directors who don’t normally make horror films. Sometimes they make that one horror movie and never revisit the genre ever again, but hey, they took at stab at horro, and they did it well. Sometimes these directors who never make horror films end up making the most interesting horror movies because they shy away from horror film clichés, and more then likely infuse the horror film they are making with their own unique style and flavor.

For example Stanley Kubrick, made The Shinning (1980), an amazing horror film; yet Kubrick never made another horror film again. And it is a film that is very distinctively Kubrickian. It contains many of the elements that make a Kubrick film great. Scorcese is another good example, he normally makes Gangster movies, or period pieces, yet he made two horror films in his life Cape Fear (1991) and Shutter Island (2010), both great horror films in my book. Alejandro Jodorowsky -the director I’ll be talking about in this review- usually makes surrealistic films filled with symbolisms and visual poetry. He is not the kind of director you’d imagine making a horror film. Yet here we are discussing Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky’s first and only horror film to date. How did Jodorowsky end up making a horror film?

When a director like Jodorowsky wants to make a film, it is never an easy thing. He is the kind of director that most producers will probably run away from because his films aren’t easy sells. His films are always a strong departure from what we call a commercial film. In other words, if you are a producer, making back the money you invested in producing a Jodorowsky film, is never a sure thing. The same can be said of some American directors like David Lynch for example. Lynch is respected and admired by many a film buff, but trust me, producers are not knocking at his door dying to produce his next feature, which is probably the reason why we haven’t seen a Lynch movie in a while. Right now, the only way Lynch can make a film is if it’s a very low budget independent affair like Inland Empire (2006). But directors like Lynch and Jodorowsky love working with little money because it means they will have more creative control over whatever film they will be making. These type of directors are artists, surrealists and visual poets, they’d rather make a film with little money, but more creative control.

Sometimes, artistic directors like Jodorowsky haven’t made a film in a while, and when the itch to make a film comes, they sometimes make compromises. In the case of Santa Sangre, Jodorowsky was offered the chance to make a horror film. Dario Argento’s brother, Claudio Argento offered to produce a film for Jodorowsky, but the conditions were set: it has to be a horror film. Jodorowsky agreed, but if you know Jodorowsky, then you know he was going to make a horror film, sure, but he was going to make a horror film that was very much his own. This is exactly what happened with Santa Sangre.

Santa Sangre is a film about a young boy named Fenix. His father (an American named Orgo) runs a circus in Mexico, the circus is called “The Circus of the Gringo”. Fenix’s mother, named Concha, is the religious leader in a church that worships an armless saint. One day, Concha catches Orgo when he is about to be unfaithful to her with a tattooed woman who has just joined the circus. In a fit of jealousy, Concha poors acid on Orgo’s genitals! This angers Orgo so much that he takes two knives and proceeds to cut Concha’s arms off with one swoop! Concha falls to the floor, apparently bleeding to death! Fenix, their son, watches this whole event taking place. It affects him so much that he ends up institutionalized for the rest of his childhood and adolescence. Once he is a grown man, he decides to break out of the mental institution to reunite with his armless mother, who has apparently survived Orgo’s vengeful attack. Now, Fenix is under his mother’s command once again! And his mother wants revenge!

What makes this film a very Jodorowsky horror film is all the surreal moments that it has spread through out. If you’ve seen a Jodorowsky film before (El Topo, Fando and Lis, The Holy Mountain) then you know that Jodorowsky is fond of speaking in visual metaphors. Often times his films won’t have that much dialog because his visuals do most of the talking. Jodorowsky’s style of filmmaking feels as if a mute had suddenly decided to make a film, communicating only through moments, actions, and situations. This is an interesting contradiction about Jodorowsky’s films; dialogue is scarce, yet his films say a whole lot. Whole sequences may be silent, but the images speak none the less, they say everything they have to say through symbolism. This, in my opinion is the best way to watch a Jodorowsky film. You can try and watch it like any other film, but to me, the best way to watch them is by trying to decipher what he is trying to say with his visual metaphors, which are constant.

Santa Sangre may appear to be another crazy Jodorowsky flick, filled with freaks and oddities and symbolisms (and it is) but strange as it may sound, it is also a film that has its roots in real life events. You see, Santa Sangre is loosely based on the life of Mexico’s most famous serial killer; one Gregorio Cardenas Hernandez also known as ‘The Tacuba Strangler’. Gregorio a.k.a. “Goyo” was a serial killer who managed to strangle four prostitutes before he was caught. Now, I know what most of you are thinking, killing four people is not exactly enough to make him so famous, at least not when compared to other serial killers in history. But actually, what makes Goyo’s story interesting is not that he had strangled four women. What makes his case interesting is what happened after that. He became a writer, a painter, he studied psychology, chemistry. His paintings became famous and where sold for high prices! The guy even got married while in jail! After many years in a mental institution, he was released and considered completely rehabilitated! Stage plays, documentaries and films were made based on his life story. Jodorowsky’s Santa Sangre is one of them. It is a film that’s loosely based on Goyo’s life. I say loosely because it’s a film that takes Goyo’s story as a starting point and then goes its own crazy, surreal, Jodorowsky way with it. It’s an artistic interpretation of what happened to Goyo rather then a film that is strictly based on his story.

Goyo was a child that was very repressed by his mother, who was very domineering. In the film, Feni’x mother gets her arms cut off by her husband Orgo. So when Fenix reunites with his mother, she is armless. She ends up controlling Fenix’s arms and hands to do her bidding. She does everything through his hands, to the point where he can no longer control them himself! Santa Sangre reminded me of Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) in this sense. The mother doesn’t let the child be, she makes him murder women whenever they try to make a connection with him. It is a story about a mother who is jealous of her own son. This is where the horror element of the film kicks in because the mother wants to kill any woman who wants to get close to her son on an emotional or physical level. The question arises: Will Fenix ever regain control of his life? The element of circus life adds a Felliniesque air to the proceedings as well. Finally, I’d say that Santa Sangre isn’t a horror film in the strictest since of the word. It’s more of a surreal film, with horror elements in it. It’s dreamlike, it’s symbolic, it’s trippy, it’s disturbing, it’s a Jodorowsky film every step of the way. Santa Sangre is a unique experience you wont soon forget.

Rating: 5 out of 5

 

#4 of the Top Five Bizarro Films Countdown!

The Celluloid Highway's # 4 Bizarro Film: EL TOPO (Alejandro Jodorowsky, Mexico, 1970)

No list of weird cinema would be complete without the presence of experimental Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky. The question for me was whether my choice for this Top 5 would be El Topo or The Holy Mountain (1973). El Topo won out mostly because of the way in which Jodorowsky fuses his weird existential vision of human nature within the iconography and form of the spaghetti western. This might be a bizarre film, but it is still a genre film, and Jodorowsky ably ticks all the boxes when it comes to the grandiose, highly stylised and operatic violence one associates with Italian westerns. The Holy Mountain right from the off is more difficult to grasp, but El Topo benefits from the signifiers of genre which act as a familiar conduit into what turns out to be a very unfamiliar narrative world. Jodorowsky’s personality is so dominant in this film it almost feels like a vanity piece - in addition to directing his credits also include writing, acting (he plays the lead character), music (the haunting main theme is superb), production design and costume design. He gets a great deal of visual mileage out of the sun bleached desolation of Mexican desert landscapes, into which he thrusts downright surreal imagery. After eliminating a ruthless gang of bandits (the leader of which is castrated) El Topo begins his quest to defeat a series of legendary masters who all represent a different facet of human understanding. The strangest of which is one who is surrounded by hundreds of rabbits, who die at the same time he does. Jodorowsky pulls out his first major plot twist by having his expert gunslinger gunned down half way through. But this ‘death’ only leads El Topo on to greater things. Clean shaven and bald El Topo awakes in a mountain cave where he is surrounded by deformed outcasts, and is immediately acclaimed as a messianic character by the assembled group of disabled people. Things take an even greater turn for the weird when El Topo visit’s the town from which the cripples have been banished. A perverted town in which the local peasantry are treated as slaves and murdered for the pleasure of the wealthy few, and in which the local religion involves games of Russian roulette. Somewhere within the surrealism and savagery (because this is an incredibly violent film) is a three pronged allegory. The treatment of the Mexican peasants is surely a reference to the civil unrest in the country, the religious overtones and symbolism offer a critique of the blindness of religious orthodoxy, and thirdly this is an allegory about acceptance and tolerance, and self sacrifice. Does it work? - not at all, this is an incoherent mess of movie that leaves anyone searching for a linear plot tearing their hair out. But is it fun? - oh yes it certainly is, but it is only fun if you enjoy the images for what they and don’t take the whole thing too seriously.

The Film Connoisseur's #4 Bizarro Film:  Fantastic Planet (Rene Laloux, France/Czechoslovakia, 1973)

This animated film has a couple of interesting things going for it. Number one, it was a film that had many production woes because it was such a subversive film, because of this, the film ended its production in a different country than where its production began. The film actually took five years to complete! It speaks about a race of aliens on another planet who rebel against their masters and want to break free from their hold. The Omms are little creatures that look like miniature humans. The Draags are their would be masters. This movie touches upon many interesting themes like politics, religion, and personal freedom. Should men rule over other less educated less fortunate humans? Cant we all just learn to get along? Should the less fortunate revolt? Yes they should if you ask me! But aside from these heavy themes, the film also has something really great going for it. Its visual flare! On this movie you will see some really strange and bizarre imagery. The Draags for example are gigantic blue beings with these bulging red hypnotic eyes! They go into a trance where they change shape and form and become something else altogether! The planet they inhabit is filled with strange and interesting creatures, including one giant predator which actually sniffs its victims through its nose, devours them and spits them out! This movie is a masterpiece of old school animation and should be seen for that alone, but if you like heavy thematic elements with your animation, look no further than this awesome piece of French animation. It will prove to be a unique experience even without the use of hallucinogenic drugs. The film won the Grand Jury Prize that year at the Cannes Film Festival, and was later distributed in the U.S. by Roger Corman.