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Santa Sangre (1989)

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

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Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Like some Fellini-esque nightmare, this heady mix of circus freaks (a tattooed lady, an exotic midget, sad-faced clowns) and weird religious and hallucinatory imagery (an armless virgin saint, writhing snakes, zombie brides) is pregnant with disturbing psychological undercurrents. Traumatised at an early age by a violent argument between his knife-throwing father (Stockwell) and trapeze-artist mother (Guerra), former child magician Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky), now 20, escapes from an asylum into the outside world. Reunited with his jealous mother, Fenix becomes her 'arms' in a bizarre pantomime act, a role which spills dangerously over into real life. With a tapestry of cultural references that embraces the Venus de Milo, Marcel Marceau, Liberace and Night of the Living Dead, Jodorowsky's is a strange, violent, but ultimately liberating vision.

Author: NF 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

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Cast & crew

Director: Alejandro Jodorowsky

Producer: Claudio Argento

Cast: Axel Jodorowsky, Blanca Guerra, Guy Stockwell, Thelma Tixou, Sabrina Dennison full cast

Genre(s): Fantasy

Duration: 123 mins


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