Product Details

• Actors: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison
• Directors: Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Writers: Alejandro Jodorowsky, Claudio Argento, Roberto Leoni
• Producers: Angelo Jacono, Anuar Badin, Claudio Argento, René Cardona Jr.
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: Unrated
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Expanded Entertainment
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 123 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301955595
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #156,733 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Please watch this movie--it might change your life..., September 6, 2005

By 

David Perry "David M Perry, Huntington Beach" (the road to the next big thing) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Santa Sangre [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.2 Import - Great Britain ] (DVD)

What is a movie? Is it an entertainment? A work of ART? Is a motion picture only a lure to get you to engage in a mass spectacle of consumerism? Is it the catharsis of a crowd in the dark?

Are you an intellectual? Are you passionate? Have you even been interested in Archetypes and Collective unconscience? Do you know that when you take the journey with a story--that that story will always stay with you?

In 1989, a lot of things changed in my life. I really can't explain what they all were, but between August and December of 1989, my hair went from black to white, and I started on the life that I lead today. Then came Santa Sangre.

Allesandro Jodorowsky is what is frequently called a 'visionary' film director. What he is is a wizard and a shaman. Jodorowski is a Jungian psychiatrist who writes comic books and directs movies. He started way back in the sixties, and was actually the first person to direct for the beatle's Apple Corporation. As a result his first film (El Topo) is almost impossible to acquire or see. Like everything from Apple--there is an immense legal battle over it's soul.

And this guy's work has got SOUL that won't quit. Take the little number we are discussing today. Here you have the story of Fenix, raised in a circus by his parents Orgo (a hypnotic knife thrower played by guy stockwell) and Alma(who hangs by her hair and worships at the shrine of HOLY BLOOD hence the film's title.) Fenix cries as his pet elephant dies, gets a tattoo with a bowie knife from a quart jar of ink while biting on a stick,cavorts with a little girl mute tightrope walker, sees his mother's cult of blind women being driven away as their 'shrine' is demolished, and, finally, witnesses his own parents murder suicide over an affair with a tatooed woman. That's all in the prologue..

Vaudeville. Strippers. Murder. Clowns. Dwarfs. The Invisible Man. Chuco hoods. Illusion. Mime (mime?) Chemistry. Madness. Denoument. Samba-ing Down's syndrome children. Reincarnation of painted corpses as ducks or swans. ritual crucifixion. Taxidermy. Every bottle of booze has a dead crow on the label (just something I personally noticed) Ventriloquism. Symbolism.

And it's based on the stories of a real serial killer.

Jodorowski is not slick (although this is by far his slickest work) He is in no way pretentious. This film is bone deep and meant to stop your cognitive process, to derail and reboot your mind.

Allessandro Jodorowski is what we get less of in today's cinema--it is the real deal. A human soul laid bare by art. You might cry when you watch this. You will probably laugh. But if you know what's good for you, you will watch it again.

persevere,

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A visionary and haunting film., February 19, 2000

By 

Austin Elliott "godwinwoll" (Cairo, New York USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Santa Sangre [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Alejandro Jodorowosky has been making films since the 1960s.Though he has made only a handful of films(7 in all),given the quality of "Santa Sangre",a visionary and haunting work,one wishes he was more prolific.It is not possible to describe "Santa Sangre" with due justice within such a small review;the only succinct way of describing it:it as if Pedro Calderon had written "Psycho",or that Alfred Hitchcock had directed "La Vida es Sueno".Influenced by Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis,the mordant satire and wit of Luis Bunuel and the beautiful baroque pageantry of Fellini,"Santa Sangre" tells the story of a reluctant serial killer(!) controlled by his dominating and insane mother and details his struggle to be liberated from her.The mother worships an imaginary saint,whose hagiography and devotion entails repression,guilt and false self-sacrifice.The son's attempt to attain romantic and sexual normalcy achieves(surprisingly,given the subject matter)much pathos.The ending is transcendent and the film contains many memorable images.Despite the criticisms leveled against the film's violence,"Santa Sangre" is not gory-it artfully suggests rather than explicates.However,if your idea of cinematic excellence are movies like:"The Towering Inferno","Terms of Endearment" or "Ghost"-then probably this film is not for you.However,if films like:"The Exterminating Angel",Satyricon",The Devils" and "Wild at Heart" are for you compelling and important works of art,then "Santa Sangre" is definitely to be experienced.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful and distrubing, June 30, 2001

By 

Mark A. Kintzley (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Santa Sangre [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Wow,this film blew me away the first time I saw it. It is 10 times easier to watch than El Topo and 1000 times easier to watch than Holy Mountain (by the same director). Although as disturbing as the aforementioned, it maintains a discernable plot along with the surreal imagery for which Alejandro Jodorowsky is best known. It is a strange story with bleeding elephant, circus performers (i hate clowns and the circus, but the presentation in this film made it easy to watch), a fully tatooed woman, cult religion which worships an armless saint, a crazed mother with a son who is obviously too attached to mama, and a visually disturbing rite of passage into manhood. All of the nightmarish scenery is somehow manipulated through the camera by mr. jodorowsky to bring us a beautifully disturbing film with a wonderful story and a great plot twist ending. Not for all people, but if you are sick of the loads of big-budget schlock that really has no redeeming value like I am then this will come as a nice and refreshing suprise to you.

I am also a big Evil Dead fan so I must be right about this one! (Evil Dead is in no way similar to this film with the exception of maybe the gore)