Santa Sangre

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Santa Sangre
American theatrical release poster
Directed by	Alejandro Jodorowsky
Written by	Alejandro Jodorowsky Roberto Leoni Claudio Argento
Produced by	Claudio Argento
Starring	Axel Jodorowsky Blanca Guerra Adán Jodorowsky Guy Stockwell Thelma Tixou
Cinematography	Daniele Nannuzzi
Edited by	Mauro Bonanni
Music by	Simon Boswell
Distributed by	Mainline Pictures Expanded Entertainment
Release dates	19 May 1989 (1989-05-19) (Cannes) 24 November 1989 (1989-11-24) (Italy) 31 May 1990 (1990-05-31) (Mexico)
Running time	123 minutes[1]
Countries	Mexico Italy
Language	English
Budget	$787,000

Santa Sangre (English: Holy Blood) is a 1989 surrealist psychological horror film directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky and written by Jodorowsky along with Claudio Argento and Roberto Leoni. It stars Axel Jodorowsky, Adán Jodorowsky, Teo Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Thelma Tixou, and Guy Stockwell. An international co-production of Mexico and Italy, the film is set in Mexico, and tells the story of Fenix, a boy who grew up in a circus and his struggle with childhood trauma. It is included in Empire magazine's 2008 list of the 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

A naked man, Fenix, clings to a tree trunk in a cell at a mental asylum. A doctor and nurses coax him from his perch using a raw fish, which he starts to eat. As they dress him in coveralls, we see a tattoo of a phoenix on his chest.

Years ago, Fenix was a child magician in a Mexican circus, Circo del Gringo, run by his father Orgo, a knife-thrower, and his mother Concha, an aerialist. The circus includes a tattooed woman who performs with Orgo, her adopted daughter Alma (a deaf mute mime and tightrope walker whom Fenix loves), Fenix's dwarf friend Aladin, a pack of clowns and an elephant. Orgo flirts publicly with the tattooed woman.

Concha also leads a religious cult whose patron saint is a girl who was raped and had her arms cut off. Their church is about to be razed at the behest of the landowner, but the followers make a last stand against police and bulldozers. A Catholic Monsignor arrives to resolve the conflict, but he decides the temple is sacrilegious and leaves in disgust, so the demolition proceeds. Fenix leads Concha back to the circus, where she discovers Orgo's affair, but Orgo hypnotizes Concha and rapes her.

The circus elephant dies, much to Fenix's grief. It is paraded through the city inside a giant casket, which is dropped into the city dump. Hundreds of scavengers open it, tear apart the elephant, and take away the meat. Orgo chides Fenix for crying "like a little girl" and tattoos a phoenix onto his chest, identical to the one on his own chest, using a knife dipped in red ink. This tattoo, Orgo says, makes Fenix a man.

Later, during Concha's aerial act, she sees Orgo giving the tattooed woman a pearl necklace. She chases after them, finds them having sex, and pours sulphuric acid on Orgo's genitals. Orgo retaliates by cutting off both her arms, then walks into the street and slits his own throat. Locked inside a trailer, Fenix witnesses this. Afterwards, he sees the tattooed woman drive off with Alma.

The film returns to the present day. Fenix is taken to a movie theater along with patients who have Down syndrome. A pimp intercepts them, gives them cocaine, and introduces them to a fat prostitute. Fenix spots the tattooed woman, now a prostitute, and is consumed with rage. Back at the asylum, Fenix's armless mother calls out to him from the street and he escapes by climbing down a rope from his cell window. The tattooed woman tries to prostitute Alma, who runs away. An unseen assailant stabs the tattooed woman to death and Alma later finds her body.

Fenix and Concha go on to perform a stage act, "Concha and Her Magic Hands," in which he stands behind her and moves his arms so they appear to be Concha's. But she uses the arms of her son, a knife thrower like his father, to kill women he is interested in, including a burlesque performer and a transexual wrestler. She totally controls Fenix, who is fascinated by The Invisible Man, telling him that he is nothing without her and that no one sees him. He frequently hallucinates, and a dream sequence shows that he has killed and buried many more women, who haunt him.

Alma finds Fenix and they plan to run away from Concha, who tries to force Fenix to murder Alma as well. However, after a struggle, he plunges a knife into Concha's stomach. She vanishes after taunting Fenix by saying she will always be inside him. Flashbacks reveal that Concha in fact died after being maimed by Orgo and that Fenix has kept a mannequin of his armless mother he used on stage and at home. He destroys his homemade temple and throws away the mannequin with the help of his imaginary friends, Aladin and the clowns.

Alma removes Fenix's artificial fingernails and leads him out of the house, where police order them to put up their hands. As they both comply, Fenix regards his own hands with awe. Realizing that he has finally regained control of them brings him joy and peace.

Roberto Leoni, who had worked in the library of a psychiatric hospital where he had been in contact with people suffering from mental disorders, developed a story about dissociative identity disorder that he told Claudio Argento during a time they worked together. Argento appreciated the story and added to it, and with Leoni, they decided to present it to the director who seemed to them the most suited to the material, Alejandro Jodorowsky. After his cult film The Holy Mountain of 1974, Jodorowsky was asked to direct a film version of Frank Herbert’s epic 1965 science fiction novel Dune but the project had collapsed, and except for the children’s fable Tusk in 1980 he had stopped directing films, working as a comics writer in France.

Jodorowsky developed this story, also telling Leoni the story of Gregorio Cárdenas Hernández, which were in some respects similar, and together they wrote the script of Santa Sangre.^[2]

Roberto Leoni stated that an episode with a patient in the psychiatric hospital was probably the origin of Santa Sangre because over time he conceived "a story in which even the worst demon actually can't forget he is an angel." In fact, Fenix, the character that Leoni created together with Jodorowsky, is a serial killer, but "…every time he kills you feel sorry for him; that is, you are sorry more for him than for the victim."^[3]

Though a Mexican and Italian co-production, Santa Sangre is in English.^[4] In the United States, it was primarily rated NC-17 for "several scenes of extremely explicit violence". An edited version was released with an R rating for "bizarre, graphic violence and sensuality, and for drug content".^[5] Regardless, Santa Sangre did not receive a wide release in the U.S., only screening at a few theaters familiar with Jodorowsky's previous work.^[6]

In 2004 Anchor Bay released a DVD in the UK.^[7] On 25 January 2011, Severin Films gave the film a release on both DVD and Blu-ray with more than "five hours of exclusive extras".^[8] On Halloween 2019, Mórbido Fest held a celebratory 30th anniversary screening of Santa Sangre remastered in 4K by Severin Films from a scan of the original camera negative.^[9] In Italy, from 25 to 27 November 2019,^[10] the Videa film society celebrated the 30th anniversary by screening the 4K restored version at select theatres.^[11]

The film generally was critically well received, eventually being ranked 476th on Empire's 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.^[12] A reviewer from the British Film 4 describing the film as "one of Jodorowsky's finest films" which "resonates with all the disturbing power of a clammy nightmare filtered through the hallucinatory lens of 1960s psychedelia."^[13]

Roger Ebert said that he believed it carried the moral message of genuinely opposing evil, rather than celebrating it like most contemporary horror films. Ebert described it as "a horror film, one of the greatest, and after waiting patiently through countless Dead Teenager Movies, 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."^[14]

As of September 2024^[update], the film had an 89% rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 44 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.4/10. The site's consensus stated: "Those unfamiliar with Alejandro Jodorowsky's style may find it overwhelming, but Santa Sangre is a provocative psychedelic journey featuring the director's signature touches of violence, vulgarity, and an oddly personal moral center."^[15]

The film was screened at the V Muestra de Cine Mexicano en Guadalajara where several groups of people left the room during the screening.^[16]

Santa Sangre is considered a cult movie and the restored print of the film was screened in 2008 Cannes Classics.^[22]

It was also screened during Locarno Film Festival 2016 Histoire(s) du cinéma: Pardo d'onore Swisscom Alejandro Jodorowsky.^[23]

In 2001 filmmaker David Gregory released a "making-of" documentary film titled Forget Everything You Have Ever Seen: The World of Santa Sangre. It features interviews with members of the cast and crew.^[24]

• Santa Sangre at IMDb
• Santa Sangre at Rotten Tomatoes