A young man is confined in a mental hospital. Through a flashback we see that he was traumatized as a child, when he and his family were circus performers. Back in the present, he escapes and rejoins his surviving and armless mother.
Visionary and haunting, Santa Sangre is a mixture of blood poetry and gobbledygook that keeps springing astonishingly to life.
– Peter Travers,
Rolling Stone,
26 Nov 2012
fresh:
Drawing on his training in mime and his fascination with Gnosticism, Jodorowsky converted a story about a bizarre murderer into a grand work of art, full of symbols and imagery that reach beyond language to something primal and original.
– Noel Murray,
AV Club,
26 Nov 2012
rotten:
What Jodorowsky lacks is a sense of humor, in the absence of which his films turn ludicrous.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Tribune,
15 Nov 2013
rotten:
Santa Sangre's content puts it beyond the call of duty for even the most slavishly devoted art-house denizen.