FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

jdelamater-01684 Santa Sangre is a 1989 Mexican surrealist psychological horror film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky. The film stars Jodorowsky's sons Aden and Axel Jodorowsky who play young Fenix and adult Fenix. Young Fenix is a boy with aspirations of becoming a magician living in a Circus with his Circus performer parents. Adult Fenix is a magician living in a psychiatric ward in Mexico City. Fenix and his mother Concha are very close. When Fenix's mother's arms are chopped off early in his life, he breaks down mentally and is sent to a psychiatric ward. Until one day he escapes and is reunited with his dead mother. He then helps her live out her life with the help of his arms. This leads the two to become dangerously codependent on each other. In this film analysis, I will explain how sex, violence, and the fear of growing up is shown symbolically as well as literally throughout the film.When we are children, we think about the freedoms of adulthood. But what we fail to realize is what those freedoms bring. Adulthood remains an even harder task when not properly transitioned. With Fenix's role as a magician, he plays out the ultimate transformation of death into life. He acts this out because he is constantly being haunted by the past. What was dead before, comes to life before his eyes. We see this through his mother as well as the many scenes in the graveyard. Fenix's tragic life begins when he catches his mother and father having sex. His mother's pleasure contrasts with the elephant's pain. The elephant symbolizes Fenix's innocence and childhood, which dies when he learns of his father's affair with the tattooed woman. This is shown later in the film when we see a naked and older Fenix hunkered down spewing blood out of his nose. The tattooed woman is the ultimate representation of sex and desires that Fenix's young mind is scarred by. The hesitance to grow up is first shown when we see young Fenix crying and holding his mother's waist as her building is about to be destroyed on top of her. Concha nurtures him when he needs her because she is the maternal figure. But his father takes a more masculine approach to his son's behavior. He wants his son to be more like him so he tattoos an eagle onto his chest. This can be seen as a sort of forced acceptance from his father as well as what his father believes to be the right of manhood. His father leaves more than just a literal mark on Fenix. When Fenix is met with a woman he desires later in life, he dresses up like his father and throws knives at the woman. He does this not only because this is what he knows to be a sign of affection towards someone desirable. But also because sex and violence have become connected through his traumatizing childhood. Fenix's fear of sex is learned very early. Not only through the elephant. But through his mother's reaction to sexual acts. When Fenix is young, he may not be mature enough to realize his father is having an affair. But what he does understand is that his mother's reactions to the tattooed woman's and his father's sexual interactions is wrong. This leads him to believe that all sexual acts can be seen as wrong. We see this when a snake is coming out of his pants uncontrollably when he invites a harmless woman to his home. When Fenix sees the tattooed woman when he is an adult, his repressed childhood comes rushing back into the foreground of his mind. This leads him to escape the mental health facility and regress back to his childhood. This regression to childhood brings his mother back. This leads Fenix to living out his mother's desires so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for his own life. What his mother represents at this point is his guilty conscience. She punishes him for his mistakes and shames him for his inabilities. This leads to Fenix's desire to become The Invisible Man. The Invisible Man represents Fenix's desire to disappear or not exist. After Fenix lets his mother go, he is then forced to take responsibility for his own actions as an adult in a dangerous world.Santa Sangre is indeed a surrealistic horror film and it certainly succeeds at that. But at it's heart, it is a story about growing up and the fears that can bring. I think that's why Jodorowsky chose his sons to play the role of Fenix. A lot of the success of the film depended on how far they were willing to go with the characters and I think he felt he could get that across to them more than a normal actor. With this film, Jodorowsky creates a coming of age film like no one has ever seen on film. A truly miraculous feat in many regards.

dfwforeignbuff a startling film I am surprised no remake has been made! How it came that a friend and my self came to be in a city where a theater actually shows this film on the big screen I do not know. (there were not that many bookings) Anyway we walked in no idea except my friend was Spanish and it was an art film theater and we usually went to see a lot of art and foreign films. Needless to say we were blown away and saw it a couple times. I saw the film recently DEC 2013 on net flix streaming in my TV room and it just did not translate well to a 65 inch screen. I wish this film would be re released. In the passing of 25 years the films scenes seem to be a little long but there are many many surprises in this film. I wish Net flix published its figures. I wonder how many people streamed it. I hope it got a wider audience. Really this is not a film for everyone and not a film for the feint of heart. Read Eberts review. Now its available on Blu Ray also. This is Axel Jodorowsky most accessible. his other films are TOO surrealist. really you need to watch this film 2 or 3 times to absorb the whole thing and the millions of bizarre details of the bizarre profound film!

MikaHaeli8 I'm not shy of watching bizarre films, but this was too much for me. It was just far too odd, and if it weren't for the graveyard scene (the most disturbing scene given that it triggered a phobia), then this would probably get a higher mark. It scores points for its quirkiness in its characters, the acting quality and the score, but the rest of it was a little nasty. I watched this in World Cinema a couple of months ago, and it made me cry. I'd give it a few more years before a re-watch, personally. The cinematography was great as well. Apart from the title - and this is not anything against its creators or the nationalities of its creators - you couldn't tell it was a Mexican/ Italian film. The quality of quirkiness gave it away.

emailmeben This now out of print movie is perhaps one of the best movies that nobody will get to see. The visuals are absolutely fantastic from the circus performers to the prostitutes. Every single character in this movie is odd, deformed or ugly in one way or another and often all of the above. The story centers around Felix who witnesses his mother killed by his father (cutting off her arms) and his father then killing himself. But that doesn't happen until about 30 minutes in. The scenes leading up to that are interesting to watch and necessary to show the full picture of Felix then and Felix in the future. After the killing the scene goes to this boy who is now all grown up where he manages to escape from the the institution he was locked up. My only beef with the movie is how easily he escapes. Putting that aside this man is totally psychotic, delusional and has hallucinations that have him killing people because his armless mother is driving him to. I would also like to point out that the movie plays homage to several great horror movies from the past including, "Psycho," "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligar," and "The Invisible Man" to name a few even though that's truly what it is in every aspect: horrible acts, characters and images sustain throughout this great movie.