Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3211 in VHS
• Released on: 1998-01-01
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 123 minutes

Customer Reviews

Best Film I have Ever Seen EVER (period).
I saw Sante Sangre back in the early 90s in Tucson Arizona and walked out of the theater with my jaw dragging on the ground. The visuals of this film rival Fellini and the best visual artists. The depth of the material rivals the work of the worlds greatest symbolic psychologists, ala C. G. Jung. What this film is about is essentially the mental experiences of its main character, an insane circus performer who is traumatized by violence in his youth. He becomes a quietly obsesses serial killer who is possessed by his mother. Or so it seems. As with anything that is examining the unconscious impulses of a disturbed individual, nothing is clear or definite. Is he older now when the action takes place? Is he committed to an institution or free and wandering the world, killing his mother's enemies? Is he digging in a graveyard or just hallucinating it?

The beauty of this film is in the not knowing but the wondering. Even though nothing is clear, the visuals are beautiful and it is clear how such powerful images are inspiring this character to take strong action.

Most of my favorite films deal with archetypal images and universal symbols, so you might love this film if you like the work of Terry Gilliam, Thomas Harris (the Hannibal Lector series), Fellini, Salvidore Dali, and Carl Jung. You will enjoy this film. It is deep and wide and pushes you to expand your scope of mind.

Incredible
Plot: Spanish/Mexican circus performers. A young boy named Felix, his mother 'a trapeze artist' and the womanizing man shes married to. We go between scenes of Felix as a catatonic inmate in an asylum all grown up and scenes from his childhood. In the middle theres killings, psychological horror, then the great ending.

Theres everything in this movie, love, surrealism, sexuality, mimes, metaphoric stuff. Its very odd, yet beautiful. Picture the movie Psycho involving circus performers, Its hard to explain but shares a similar theme. This movie is beyond description, beyond horror.. The metaphors, the visuals, the whole presentation, the characters, the story, everything was something out of the ordinary and one of a kind. Never saw a movie like this before. I found out about this one in a book i have that names rare horror films. This is probably the best one so far... if not the most unique film ive ever seen. Dont miss this one.

More Logical, More Mature and Yet Still Fantastical
As a hardcore Jodorowsky fan I find Santa Sangre his most sentimental film. For anyone who's only seen his more famous work (El Topo, Holy Mountain) from the late 60's, the beginning of this will throw you for a moment. The look of the film stock is completely modern, but you'll soon get over this as his wonderful images begin to take you away. Where his earlier work is filled with the fantastical mysticism of a younger man searching for answers, Sangre is populated by a mature perspective into everyday extraordinariness. Earlier films blazed forward like a twisted locomotive, where this follows a more logical even pace, yet still finds room for his trademark visionary moments within the storyline. Sangre's story (reminiscent of Fando & Lis) draws the viewer in, becoming very personal; and the cast (featuring 3 of Jodorowsky's sons) is superb. Sangre would be a wonderful introduction for anyone tentative about the outlandish cinema of Alejandro Jodorowsky, and I recommend it as highly as his earlier work; as this is yet another side of one of the world's great directors.