Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A Major Disappointment

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

All I'll say is that most everything written by "reviewers" of this movie is wrong. completely.Fenix does NOT rejoin his mother. She was murdered by his father when he was a boy. Fenix -- and we -- saw it with his own eyes, just as he saw his father slice his own throat and commit suicide. Trapped in a trailer, looking out at the horror, he lost his mind.When the movie begins, Fenix is in a sanitarium, NOT a mental hospital. There are other residents there, mainly young men and women with Down's Syndrome or mental retardation. They are not crazy people. The sanitarium is just that.When Fenix is taken on a field trip to the city's red-light district, his trauma is revisited and his horrible childhood memory invoked when he spots the tattooed woman; the linchpin of his and his family's terror.After returning to the sanitarium, Fenix looks out his cell to the street below and HALLUCINATES his mother. She is not really there. She is a VISION, a dream remnant, a wish fulfillment. As was shown early in the movie, he was deeply attached to his mother. Recall the scene when the church of Santa Sangre was being bulldozed and Fenix "rescued" his mother as she stood defiantly in front of the demolition crew. He was a mama's boy through and through. That's why his dad carved the phoenix tattoo on his chest. It was symbolic of a passage from mama's boy to young manhood.All the scenes that follow with his "mother" are him using a wooden dummy of her body, as revealed at the end. Also at the end, with the help of the girl from his childhood, is his realization of his own identity apart from his mother attachment."My hands!" "My hands," he rejoices, even as he's standing in the crosshairs of a swat team. The hold his mother had on him, even years after her death, is finally broken.So, discount every review that contends his armless mother "reappears." She was killed years before. Her death was also a form of wish fulfillment, since she had worshipped the saintly girl who had been killed by her father after he learned she was raped. Her father severed her arms as well.

Woahou ... What a masterpiece ! I've bought Jodorowsky's movies without knowing what's going to happen, result : I've gain so much maturity by watching all of them, and Santa Sangre is definitively with The Holy Mountain the duo that clearly change my way of enjoying REAL art. This is just pure madness, surrealism at it best. Stunning soundtrack mixed with circus fantasy, an absolute mind trip to Jodorowsky dimension. Everything is beautiful in this movie, everything is well linked, all actors play fantastically, there's no mistake. I'm really happy that this kind of movie isn't "mainstream" like other sci-fi sh*t massively sponsoring by media and "people". I just wish to see more like them, and it's a hard job finding them because of their rareness. The only regret, as an audiophile, is that few tracks on the movie are unfortunately NOT present on the Original Soundtrack released on vinyl and CD, result > horrible DVDRIP MP3 audio for a frightening sound in the graveyard part (and also from the DVD menu) . Anyway, I just stand up like I did at the end of the movie, clap my hand loudly and say proudly with a tear drop : BRAVO - BRAVO !!!!!!!

You will never see a film quite like "Santa Sangre"! It is a uniquely artistic and well made horror film that presents the viewer with some of the most graphic, yet visually stunning and artistic scenes imaginable. The film concerns a young man named Fenix (played as a child by the director's young son then as an adult by his older son) who was born the son of a religiously obsessed woman who is part of a strange cult that worships a woman who was murdered and had both arms removed. This woman soon meets up with a circus owner who takes her and her son in but then begins an elicit affair with a woman who works for the circus who is covered from head to toe with tattoos! When Fenix's mother walks in on the two of them doing the deed, she douses her philandering husband's private parts with acid and he retaliates by cutting both her arms off before slicing his own throat! A few years later, Fenix (who witnessed this entire spectacle) is now in a mental institution and there is an unusual scene involving his leaving the institution for a night and roaming the streets with several mentally deficient patients while high on cocaine! Fenix is eventually freed from the institution by his mother, who miraculously survived the previous attack but is now without her arms. She takes her son under her wing and the two create a strange illusion type stage show involving Fenix standing behind his mother during the performance using his own arms to simulate her missing arms! He becomes his mother's arms during their everyday life as well in some intricately thought out scenes involving the two of them playing the piano and performing other daily tasks! Anytime Fenix becomes to closely attached to any female his mother compels him to kill her using her body and his arms until eventually Fenix can take no more leading to the film's unusual and unpredictable ending. This film is an absolute assault on your senses and even though it is graphic it must be seen to be fully appreciated!

It is fitting that the circus plays a prominent role in this film, as the entire film is a circus under Ringmaster Alejandro Jodorowsky.It is a kaleidescope of color, and fanciful imagery. What is real and what is imaginary? That is your mission in watching this film.Felix is crazy and the story is told in flashbacks. It is no surprise as his father committed suicide after being caught with the tattoo lady, and his mother had her arms cut off. But, did this really happen this way? He is in an insane asylum, after all.The film is filled with psychological themes and surrealistic imagery with heavy influence of Federico Fellini and Luis Bunuel. The graveyard scene is fantastic! It is an original in a mass of copycats.