Santa Sangre

Born in an asylum, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unforgettable third film (after El Topo and Holy Mountain—and years trying to get Dune made) is a cavalcade of burning images, a carnival of phantasmagorical fireworks, a circus of strange… Mexican trapeze artist Concha discovers her husband the knife thrower in flagrante with the tattooed lady and pours acid on his assets. He responds by cutting off her arms. Crazed, she ropes in their understandably perturbed son to, literally, fill her sleeves.

We’ll say no more about the story except to note that if you are of the kind to be offended by graphic depictions of all that is unholy, liberally sprinkled with Catholic iconography, well, this is definitely not the movie for you. Yet for all its transgressions and impieties, Santa Sangre is a work of the poetic realm. It’s an apologia for a serial killer, expressed with grace and pity.

A movie like none other I have seen before… a film in which the inner chambers of the soul are laid bare…. I am reminded by Alejandro Jodorowsky that true psychic horror is possible on the screen – horror, poetry, surrealism, psychological pain, and wicked humor, all at once.

Roger Ebert

One of the great hallucinatory experiences in cinema, a visually intoxicating horror trip. A perfect introduction for those eager to travel down more rarely explored routes of international film.

Nathaniel Thompson, Mondo Digital

Superbly bizarre… a freaky-erotic cult item… An extraordinary film: creepy, humid, unwholesome – touched with moments of crazed inspiration.

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

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