A seriously disturbed young man takes refuge in a tree on the grounds of mental institution and refuses to descend. Flashbacks depicting how he ended up in his current state, including how his philandering knife throwing father relieved his acrobat mother of her arms following their circus act, prove not to be nearly as strange, nor tragic, as events to come. Alejandro Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre is an audacious, colorful, complete and consistent original psychadelic-horror vision, although this doesn't always necessarily translate to compelling viewing. Replete in production values, the finale is a knockout.
*** out of ****
