By Liam Cannon
It seems to me that we live in an era of senseless hyperbole, when too many people have lost their sense of proportion. Kanye West terms himself a genius after penning some dull chart-topping dross and terms like “epic” and “awesomeballs” are hurled about with gay abandon in praise of the most trivial concerns. I try to be selective about what I call “epic” – usually a Prog Rock mini opera or a series of books spanning decades, rather than my dinner. Not being an excitable teenager, or mentally deficient, I avoid using the term “awesomeballs” entirely. However, with all due consideration for proportion and aptness, there are many glowing epithets I can happily attribute to the Chilean enigma Alejandro Jodorowsky – a true artist, a rebel, a renegade… actually fuck it, I’m even going to call him a mage.
I would never claim to be a connoisseur of film. I intermittently chastise myself for not making the effort to catch up on classics or to keep my ear to the ground for new releases which might be to my taste. However, there’s always been a type of film I’ve particularly loved. Films like the Hungarian headfuck “Taxidermia” from 2006 or Japanese lunatic Takashi Miike’s mind-melting ‘Visitor Q” are examples which come to mind – the type of films where anything can happen and probably will, where the grotesque rubs shoulders with the breathtakingly beautiful and the low-brow co-exists with the profound. When I discovered his work in recent years, I realised that this type of cinema should probably be termed “Jodorowskyan”. In other words, when it comes to mind-bending, uncompromising cinema, this genial Chilean is pretty much the daddy.
Alejandro Jodorowsky is truly unconventional in his film-making. His breakthrough ‘El Topo’ from 1970, although it is generally termed a Western, is very much his trippy individual take on the genre. And even today, the less open-minded among us would hesitate to call ‘The Holy Mountain’, from 1973, a movie in any conventional sense of the term (for the record, I call it an all-time favourite). Likewise, the subject of this piece, “Santa Sangre” from 1989, is anything but a conventional horror film. It has variously been termed psychological horror or Surrealist horror, but to call it either does not do justice to its variety and depth. It displays the kind of irreverent, unpredictable and individualistic approach to the Horror genre that one would expect from the Chilean director, but conversely it’s also something of an homage to some notable heavyweights of the Horror genre.
“Santa Sangre” is generally thought of as the most accessible of Jodorowsky’s films. I would consider this to be true, but only because it is less laden with symbolism, mysticism, tarot references and surrealism, for example, than his other work. In depicting a central character’s downward spiral towards madness and eventually murder, we have classic horror fodder here. A nod to Hitchcock can be detected in the Freudian themes, but with his vibrant imagination, Jodorowsky very much puts his own stamp on it. For example, the central character Fenix (played by two of Jodorowsky’s sons, Axel and Adan) lending his arms to his mother, who has had her own arms chopped off by his brutal father, is an inspired aspect of this film. The scenes of son and mother dancing and playing piano together are both touching and memorable.
The shadow of the Italian Giallo genre is also apparent in “Santa Sangre”, which is not surprising considering that Claudio Argento , brother of legendary Italian Horror director Dario, assisted in writing the screenplay. All of the death scenes in this movie have a whiff of the Giallo about them. In the death scenes involving Fenix, we see the common elements of a first person perspective, shadowy locations, a dramatic repetitive musical score and ultimately a gory and bloodsoaked demise for an unlucky victim. These scenes, in their overall atmosphere, put me to thinking of Argento classics like “Profondo Rosso” and “Suspiria”. I find the music for these death scenes to be particularly reminiscent of the latter.
Although the film contains some very obvious nods to Hitchcock, the Italian Giallo genre and many horror conventions, there are a number of scenes which are quintessential Jodorowsky. I’ve found that when I’ve watched any of his films, I can count on there being at least a couple of scenes to leave me slack-jawed in shock and amazement. “Santa Sangre” is no different. In the earlier part of the film, we are shown how our protagonist Fenix’s troubled upbringing in a circus family has driven him to madness. When an elephant dies in the circus, it is afforded a spectacular send-off, with its giant coffin being sent careering down a steep cliff into a dump, at the behest of Fenix’s brutal father Orgo. We then see hordes of poverty-stricken wretches descend on the coffin, presumably to salvage what they can from the elephant for food. While this scene is not central to the film’s plot, it is classic Jodorowsky – strange, thought-provoking and visually striking.
Another scene I find particularly memorable is in the earlier part of the film when Fenix and a group of other inmates are released for an evening from their mental asylum. The other inmates are played by actors with Down’s Syndrome. A pimp (played by another of the director’s sons, Teo, who died tragically shortly after the completion of the film) takes Fenix and company under his wing, provides them with cocaine and brings them to enjoy the charms of an overweight prostitute. When I first watched “Santa Sangre”, this scene in particular made my jaw drop and will be every bit as shocking to a nowadays audience as it was upon the film’s first release in 1989.
Santa Sangre is an awe-inspiring, multi-faceted masterpiece. It combines Giallo-style Horror theme music with Mexican folk in its soundtrack. It marries time-honoured conventions of the Horror genre to the renegade and unique visions of Alejandro Jodorowsky. It is alternately touching and repulsive, profound and shocking. I honestly can’t say I’ve ever seen another film like it. If you’ve never had the opportunity to see it, make a point of doing so, as 25 years on from its original release, it remains an eminently challenging and rewarding watch.