Italian poster | CIDIF
1989 — Italy
An INTERSOUND production, presented by CLAUDIO ARGENTO
Cast: GUY STOCKWELL, AXEL JODOROWSKY, BLANCA GUERRA, THELMA TIXOU, SABRINA DENNISON, ADAN JODOROWSKY, FAVIOLA ELENKA TAPIA and TEO JODOROWSKY
Director: ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY
Producer: CLAUDIO ARGENTO
Executive producers: RENÉ CARDONA Jr. and ANGELO IACONO
Screenplay by: ALEJANDRO JODOROWSKY, ROBERTO LEONI and CLAUDIO ARGENTO
Story by: ALEJANDRO JODORWOSKY and ROBERTO LEONI
Editor: MAURO BONNANI
Cinematography: DANIELE NANNUZZI
Production Designer: ALEJANDRO LUNA
Costume Designer: TOLITA FIGUEROA
Music: SIMON BOSWELL
This trailer is perhaps NOT SAFE FOR WORK. It feels a tad borderline, but discretion's advised, yadda yadda yadda.
Alejandro Jodorowsky kind of fell of the earth for a bit there. Having made a handful of films that were pretty big in the underground circuit in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, he pretty much disappeared from the scene. And then some sixteen years after The Holy Mountain (1973), Santa Sangre turned up. In the intervening years, he’d fled to Europe to try and get out of making a film version of The Story of O. demanded by his backer (and apparently to avoid paying back the advance for it), and then spent much of the ‘70s working on his infamous Dune adaptation. The rights to Dune lapsed in the early ‘80s though; his other shenanigans for the interim between then and ’89 seeming to focus on writing comics for the ever influential Métal Hurlant anthology, before producer Claudio Argento dug him up to work on this project that they’d decided was up his alley. (Oh, yeah, also during the ‘80s, he did a film of Poo Lorn of the Elephants that no one apparently cares about, least of all him.)
Don’t worry. After a disastrous film for the Salkinds a year later, he didn’t manage to make another for over two decades.
Anyway, Wikipedia helpfully describes Santa Sangre as “a mix of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) with Robert Wiene's The Hands of Orlac (1924)”, though it seems like the obvious other thing to mention would be that there’s some of Todd Browning’s Freaks (1932) mixed in there as well. If we want to get all non-cinematic, we could invoke Angela Carter’s novel Nights at the Circus (1984) a bit too. The film follows Fenix; played both as a child and as an adult by sons of the director (nepotism being a big thing in Jodorowsky’s films, though this one’s pretty restrained); a young magician and child of the circus, son of the ringmaster/knife thrower (Guy Stockwell) and the aerialist (Blanca Guerra). Also, his drunken father is screwing around with the tattooed lady (Thelma Tixou) with ever decreasing subtlety, while his mother’s running a religious sect to a local martyr (or rather murder victim). I’m sure you’ll agree that this all sounds entirely sustainable, but it all goes tits up anyway. After her sect gets declared heretical by THE BISHOP™ and the shrine is demolished, Mumsy catches Daddy in flagrante delicto and follows the only logical course of action and dumps sulphuric acid (which the circus just has, I guess) on his crotch, so he cuts off her arms. As you do. And that about wraps it up for the circus. The tattooed lady flees with her foster daughter, Fenix’s best friend/love interest. Also, the elephant dies.* Much later, Fenix resides in the psychiatric hospital, because shockingly this wasn’t the best thing for his development. When a bunch of patients are taken on an outing to cinema, he spots the tattooed lady working as a prostitute. It isn’t long before his limb deficient mother arrives seeking revenge, intending to have him act as her hands in a quite literal fashion.
And so, I’ve basically just glibly summarised the entire first act of the film. This has been labelled as being Jodorowsky’s most accessible film, which I guess might be hard to buy given that set up, but it isn’t exactly off the mark. The film’s slasher framework allows for an easy entry point and the film’s oddly fairy tale-esque tone makes it easy to follow, and furthermore it can function as a straight horror film if one’s so inclined for some reason. There isn’t really the mystery element one often expects of the subgenre; that Fenix is doing the killing is never really in question; instead focussing more on the psychology of the bizarre situation. He’s ostensibly being puppeted by his mother, Norman Bates style, but perhaps he’s just mad, also Norman Bates style. Either way, it’s all quite distressing and the question thus is whether he will break free of whatever is compelling him to violence. Regardless of the sympathy one might feel, and the film is indeed quite sympathetic to his conflict, it never really loses sight of the fact that he is a murderer, reluctant though he may be about it. The victims, short-lived though they may be, are fleshed out enough to be actual characters rather than disposable fodder, and the film never really tries to give the sense that they somehow deserve it really in a bid to make Fenix appear more sympathetic, nor are their deaths particularly relished in. It has a fairly legit interest in the characters’ motivations beyond ‘he’s mad, he is’, and its moral centre renders the film not particularly exploitative by the standards of the genre.
Jodorowsky’s style is such that the film has a dreamlike tone. I suppose this could qualify as ‘magical realism’, though the film’s interest in the protagonist’s shaky mental state and outright invitation to question which bits that we’re shown are indeed reality and which are the product of his mind probably precludes it from being a true example of form, compared to the more matter-of-fact approach to odder elements of, for example, Jodorowsky’s semi-autobiographical The Dance of Reality (2013). However, the film’s fantastical leanings are heightened by its use of colour, drawing stark contrast between the sterile environs of the day-to-day world and the gaudiness of the world of the business we call show, with the circus and the cabaret (and, perhaps tellingly, both the red light district and the church) bathed in vibrant and saturated hues compared to the muted tones of the hospital and the slums.
Interestingly (or not), the film was reportedly inspired by Roberto Leoni’s experiences working at the library of a psychiatric hospital, and interaction with one of the patients therein who took rather a ‘love conquers all’ approach to his paranoid delusions. An odd story. An unusual film. Despite best intentions, more than the genre (or medium, if we’re honest) typically has, it’s not exactly a good portrayal of mental illness, but its heart, its core does, like its protagonist, want to do good, seeing as it seeks some level of understanding, considerations of the whys and wherefores, and of the nature of trauma.
* With his disowned previous film,
Tusk (1980; the aforementioned adaptation of
Poo Lorn of the Elephants), being all elephant centric, one ponders if Jodorowsky was trying to say something there.
At time of writing, Santa Sangre is streaming on the BFI Player (including the Amazon channel version). I recommend JustWatch for keeping up with where films are streaming (including this one!). Alternatively, physical copies are reportedly available for rent via Cinema Paradiso.
The film has an 18 rating, with the BBFC claiming "strong gory violence and horror".
Logo designed by Pauli M. Kohberger.