Alejandro Jodorowsky just might be one of the great cinematic geniuses of all time. That's not a statement I make lightly, either. In the past, if you had asked me about him, I would have said "Isn't that the weirdo guy who makes those arthouse films?" And I would have said so because I didn't know his work. Then, a year ago I saw El Topo and saw how visually striking and different (in a good way) his film making was. But a few weeks ago I saw Santa Sangre and I realized what the man could do with a film.

What at first might look and feel like a Fellini movie in vivid color and high on crack becomes a powerful meditation on family, death, and personal identity. This 1989 Mexico-based film starts as a family drama and ends as a wickedly bloody horror film. We first meet Fenix, a young man living in a mental hospital with a group of down syndrome teens. We then flashback to his childhood in a circus owned by his fat, adulterous father and his acrobatic mother who has built a church to worship the holy blood of a young girl who had her arms cut off. When his mother's blasphemous church is torn down by the catholics, she returns to the circus to find her husband getting a crazy lap dance by the flexible Tattooed Lady. Fenix is torn between his parents, who have their own problems and rarely have time for him. The animals and circus performers become his family. He meets a young girl with a white painted face named Alma and young love blossoms, but disaster is in the works for this volatile family. During a performance one night, Fenix's mom catches his dad doing the dirty to the tattooed hussy and POURS ACID ON HIS JUNK! The dad, in a fit of rage, CUTS OFF THE MOM'S ARMS and then kills himself by cutting his own throat...presumably because he doesn't want to live with a melted dick.

Fenix watches the whole thing and understandably it fucks him up and we fast forward back to the mental hospital. Now that we understand why he is there, we join him and some of his down pals on a field trip. The doctor decides to take them to see a movie, but it just so happens to be near the red light district and a pimp hijacks our boys and takes their money in exchange for getting them some action from the fattest, ugliest whore in the town. Fenix dips out and explores the parade-like world that is so different from his white-walled surroundings. Here he finds the Tattooed Lady, dancing and whoring, and something that was once dormant awakens within him. The next morning, back in the hospital, he hears his mother's voice. He escapes from the hospital through a window and finds his ARMLESS MOTHER waiting for him. She asks him to join him and they disappear into the mists. That night we see the Tattooed Lady again and find her living in a hovel with Alma, now grown up, but still in white-face. She tries to whore Alma out, but Alma escapes into the streets. And it was a lucky thing too because later that night the Tattooed Lady is viciously murdered...Argento-style ( the film was produced and co-written by Claudio Argento, Dario's bro).

Fenix and his mother start a cabaret act where he acts like her hands while she narrates a story that he illustrates with his hands and fingers. These scenes are transcendent and beautiful like nothing I've ever seen. Soon, however, Fenix is having trouble dealing with his mother and being a part of her and not really himself anymore and he rebels by becoming a cold-blooded killer. I will stop myself here because I would be the biggest asshole in the world if I said anymore about this movie. I will say that Alma and Fenix eventually do meet up again and the third act will surely take your breath away and might even bring a tear to your eyes.

I wasn't sure what to expect here, but I was pleasantly rewarded by a stunning, breathtaking thriller full of things to wax philosophically on. Jodorowsky manages to take us into a weird world, but making us care about Fenix and the gang and plugging us into this amazing tableau of sights and sounds the weirdness vanishes and it just becomes pure, raw cinema. The visual representation of a run-on sentence or poem. This is the kind of stuff they used to do in movies, where you would feel the pulse of the director and absorb the passion he had for his project and be able to watch a movie on his level, completely in sync. This is an astounding movie not just because it knocks you out visually, but because it touches you spiritually. There is more happening here than killing and high-maintenance mothers. The film is about Fenix healing his emotional wounds and about finding himself, and it can't help but make you wonder if you know yourself also.

- Jose Prendes