a review of 圣血

Another one I'm burning off of my queue before we get to the main event in October. On one hand, it's definitely of a piece with the other Jodorowsky films I've seen (El Topo and Fando & Lis, plus the documentary about his failed attempt at Dune) in terms of phantasmagorical weirdness and Jungian themes. On the other hand, it becomes more of a straightforward genre piece the longer it goes. It's sort of like Jodorowsky reimagined Psycho, but with Norman Bates as a highly skilled Mexican magician-slash-puppeteer. In some ways, the movie has some of the same neither fish-nor-fowl properties of contemporaneous films by Ken Russell or Peter Greenaway, which also flirted with genre conventions in the midst of avant-garde grotesquerie. Shudder currently has a documentary about the making of this movie, and I think I might give it look tomorrow.