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The Appropriate Tune: "Sabbath Bloody Sabbath", by Black Sabbath
In the pantheon of weird directors, your Monte Hellmans, your David Lynchs, perhaps no other director has so consistently struggled with motives that outstripped his means than Alejandro Jodorowsky. The most famous example is of course his ill-fated attempt to adapt Dune -- a 24 hour long film featuring the likes of Mick Jagger and Salvador Dali (before he outed himself as a fascist) and a young H.R. Giger, but even when we covered El Topo one could see him doing his best to not make just another western film. Perhaps I’ve said this before, but it makes sense that he eventually branched off from cinema in order to do graphic novels, where he was just as successful, if not more. Whereas films always deal heavily in compromise, the studio, the producer, the actors, the crew, in the world of comics Jodorowsky was unshackled from the chains of reality, free to tackle any idea that crossed his mind. All he really needed was someone to illustrate those ideas, which he did to great effect with his collaboration with Moebius. If you ever get a chance, you should try out The Incal or the Metabarons, it’s crazy stuff.
We’re not here to talk about comic books though, we’re here for films. So if El Topo was Jodorowsky’s spin on a western movie, why not see how he tackles a thriller?
Released in 1989 though Mainline Pictures, Santa Sangre was written by Roberto Leoni, Claudio Argento (relative of Dario) and Alejandro Jodorowsky, one of the last films he would direct until his return to filmmaking in 2013. Alex Jodorowsky (one of several Jodorowskys who show up in this film) stars as Fenix, a young man living an animalistic existence in a mental hospital. Fenix lived a troubled life, as we soon learn: A boy magician in an traveling circus, his father was a drunk abusive philanderer and his mother a religious zealot who had a shrine built to a raped and murdered schoolgirl who ended up murdering each other as graphically as they could. Certainly traumatic for a young child, and of course since this is a movie that means Fenix ends up becoming a Norman Bates-style murderer. No woman in the whole of Mexico is safe from this dangerously oedipal killer, except perhaps for Alma (Sabrina Denison), Fenix’s childhood friend who was spirited away after the inciting incident. What are the chances that they would be in the exact same place at the same time though?
I’ve perhaps buried the lead somewhat, committed the faux-pas of spoilers but there’s not that much suspense and mystery in Santa Sangre when you get right down to it. Even the strange obscurantist symbolism is a little bit too on the nose for someone who has made it through most of David Lynch’s filmography. A woman passes by and an actual snake slides out of Fenix’s pants, Fenix feels remorse for what he’s done so he literally dresses up like Claude Rains from the Universal film while also directly referencing the film and its reason for inclusion. It feels so belabored, and drags down what is already a plodding, 2 hour plus film. Calling it a ‘thriller’ is ascribing to it a bit too much vitality.
What about ‘horror’ then? This is a movie about a mentally ill serial killer after all, and Fenix does get to some serialized killing throughout the film, but this being Jodorowsky it can’t just be murder, it’s gotta be weird. In fact I’m reminded of Italy’s giallo pictures, with its cartoonish depictions of violence, but is even less realistic. Like the very first murder involves using knives to slice a woman’s arms off in one clean motion, despite them only being sharp to stick maybe a quarter of inch into a wood board. Same goes for the second murder, where the victim is spraying blood like a water hose yet the actual stabbing seems barely more visceral than your average Doctor Who episode. We’ve seen from El Topo that Jodorowsky isn’t afraid of dealing in genres that deal in violence, so it seems like he’s trying to do less with more for whatever reason.
Speaking of doing less with more, what is the deal with Jodorowsky and women in this movie? Seems like if you’re a woman in Santa Sangre you’re either insane or a prostitute, and if you’re sexually active then there’s a good chance you’re gonna be murdered. The only one to escape that binary characterization is our female lead, Alma, and even she has to deal with an attempted rape and an attempted murder, and she just so happens to be a deaf mute who doesn’t have a single word of dialogue who ultimately helps Fenix out. So in the world of Santa Sangre, women exist only for the benefit of men, either to help out of problems or to take out oedipal-induced frustrations, and if we were supposed to be seeing things from Fenix’s perspective then Jodorowsky doesn’t convey it well. Both cis and transgender women get it though, in case you were worried about inclusivity.
Acting wise I suppose Axel Jodorowsky isn’t bad, of all the Jodorowsky spawn in this movie he’s the best actor of the bunch. Blanca Guerra plays Concha, Fenix’s insane armless mom, and she plays an insane ghoul pretty well. Everyone else was everyone else, although I must admit I had no patience for the kid who played child Fenix. Lots of shots which emphasized his crying face and his big buck teeth, I kinda got sick of looking at him.
Music was done by Simon Boswell, and while I thought the score was good it seemed like there was a problem in how it was utilized. A suspenseful moment would have the appropriate synth noodling, but it would only last for like 5 seconds before an abrupt shift to a Latin folk song. A better use of that might be when a pimp takes some of the mental patients to the equivalent of skid row, where there’s colors and dancing and a saucy mambo number, and then we reach the corner and the fun stops. Not much else comes to mind about it.
When I first placed Santa Sangre on this list I was excited to see Jodorowsky’s take on a horror movie, memories of his comics and films flooding into my mind and building expectations, but it was ultimately more mundane and less enthralling than I was expecting. Perhaps this year has just put me off the mood for movies. Still there’s certainly enough weird here to entice the casual horror fan, so I’ll let it pass with a mild recommendation. Pour yourself a nice glass of paint/blood this Halloween and see if you can’t have a nice evening.
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