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Santa Sangre

Santa Sangre is a 1989 film from Mexico, directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, running 119 minutes. reelscum files it under transgressive & midnight.

Poster for Santa Sangre
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Year
1989 · 1980s films
Country
Mexico
Runtime
119 min
Updated
29 Oct 2026
Obscurity
known (26/100)
Also known as
Holy Blood

Defined in the glossary: Transgressive & midnight

Jodorowsky's late masterpiece. A circus, a cult, an armless mother, and her son's hands.

Alejandro Jodorowsky's return to form after years away, and his most accessible major film. A young man raised in a circus and traumatised by his knife-thrower father and armless cult-leader mother becomes, as an adult, the literal arms of his mother, murdering at her command. It is a giallo, a melodrama and a surrealist confession at once.

It is beautiful, violent and deeply strange, drawing on real crime and Jodorowsky's own obsessions. More coherent than his 70s work without losing the delirium. One of the great films of transgressive cinema.

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