Santa Sangre

1989 Jodorowsky funk

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A boy is traumatized by some horrible experiences that took place during his young life with the circus involving a tattooed woman, his knife-throwing daddy, and his mother who worships a no-armed woman with the religious cult across the street. Following his release from an asylum, he tries to put his life back together again. That's made difficult when he runs into his no-armed mother who controls him and demands the use of his arms. His childhood sweetheart and a little fellow try to help him out.

It's really the type of movie that makes a plot synopsis pointless which explains the half-hearted effort I gave it up there. This is a psychosexual Freudian (aka Freddian) horror-comedy that is probably unlike anything you've ever seen or in some cases unlike anything you'll ever want to see. My plans were to make Santa Sangre my Oprah Movie Club pick before I got depressed about that whole thing and passed. I'm sure it would have been dug by all. This is Jodorowsky's third best film after Holy Mountain and El Topo, and although it's not as bizarre as those two, it's pretty bizarre compared to everything else. I still chuckle a little when I see this labeled as one of his most accessible. Jodorowsky seems to have had more of a budget to work with in this one, and he uses it to compile some artful visuals and utilize his vivid imagination. Not that he needed much money to help him out anyway. Drenched in film-school symbolism and saturated in cartoon colors and Part-Fellini (probably just the circus thing), part-Psycho, part-Bunuel, and all Jodorowsky, there are scenes throughout this that will linger in the mind for a long time. There's an elephant funeral that has to be seen to be believed, and the choreography and timing required for the scenes where the mother "uses" her son's arms is impressive. There's also a great little person, Jesus Juarez as Aladin. And you get a scene where some actors with Down Syndrome visit a prostitute. Exploitative? Yeah, probably. Original? Definitely. Oh, and there's a scene where a guy peels off his own ear. I'm sorry. I should have warned you all about spoilers before typing some of that. It's a challenge, but it's a thoroughly entertaining one. Shame about the dubbing though. It's also a shame that this guy can't get financing so that the rest of us can see his dreams. I keep reading that he's making a movie, but then I'll see where the Russian producers "just disappeared mysteriously" and then there's no movie.

By the way, I follow Alejandro Jodorowsky on Twitter. Highly recommended despite 95% of his tweets being in a language I don't speak. I think probably Canadian. He's like an advice columnist. One follower asked him, "Any advice for mental clarity?" and he answered, "On Sundays, lock yourself in the house and repeat, incessantly, one word: ass." It's sound advice.

Deliver Us from Evil

2006 documentary

Rating: 13/20

Plot: Apparently, Catholic priests have been molesting children and the church has been covering it up for years. Who knew? Director Amy Berg finds herself a pedophile willing to speak on camera about his experiences with being shifted from parish to parish following molestation accusations.

She finds him and takes him to a park to interview him. A park just crawling with sexy little children. It's difficult for me to figure out why exactly. I guess she was more concerned with getting a nice shot of Father O'Grady leering at a little boy than just letting his words speak for themselves. Getting it all directly from the pedophile's mouth is really the only novel part about Deliver Us from Evil. This is all old news, right? This is just Amy Berg jumping at the chance to shock and awe with a documentary subject, finding herself a bad bad priest and a composer who isn't afraid to pour it on pretty thick and then pretty much letting the documentary make itself. Because there's not exactly anything new here. There's nothing about this that will help anybody heal or help solve the problem. It's shooting priests in a barrel, and although finding parents willing to cry their eyes out on camera makes for some pretty good documentary footage, it's all pretty pointless in the end. And speaking of parents, you get just as upset at the parents in the stories of these molested children as you do the criminal priests and the higher-ups who help cover it all up. Father O'Grady, by the way, seems mentally ill. I'm not real sure why he agreed to appear on camera anyway, but there seems to be something wrong with the guy's mind. Other than the insatiable urge to touch children, I mean. There's just something missing, and you can see it in his eyes. Don't get me wrong--the information in this documentary is important. I just really didn't like the film's style, organization, or length. It felt like a television expose that was twice the length, one that wasn't exactly organized in a way that enhanced the experience. It's like a color-by-numbers documentary that didn't quite know when to quit. I guess I can be happy after watching this that my mother quit being a Catholic before I was born and that I'm smart enough not to put my children in situations that are dangerous to them. Other than that, I'm not sure why I needed to watch this.

The Pumaman

1980 Italian movie about English-speaking Aztec superheroes

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Kobras, an evil gentleman, has gotten his hands on a magical Aztec mask which he intends to use to control the world. An Aztec arrives to find somebody, specifically Pumaman, to stop Kobras. Well, it's either an Aztec or Jack Nicholson's buddy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The Aztec locates Pumaman, paleontologist Tony Farms, and gives him a magic belt which gives him yellow pants, a black shirt with a picture of a mask on the front of it, and a red cape. Suddenly, he's got destructive claws, night vision, and the ability to fly, and he's all ready to put a stop to the evil Kobras's evil plan.

Well, Pumaman sort of flies. It's not exactly the best special effect I've ever seen. It's essentially the actor bent slightly at the waist and making a flailing motion with his hands in front of a blue screen. It's not good at all, but apparently the producers of The Pumaman thought the flying effects were their ticket to box office success because it seems that over half of this movie is scenes of the low-grade, no-budget superhero stumbling through the air. The costume's ludicrous. I'm pretty sure I could grab articles of clothing from my closet and drawers to put together a better costume than Pumaman's. Add dopey fist fights, a space ship thing that looks like a Pokemon ball, Stonehenge, fake heads, disco funk, and black leather outfits. Despite the low quality of the movie, there's still a lot of wisdom squeezed into the dialogue of The Pumaman, most provided by the Aztec. Before watching this, I didn't know that dinosaurs became extinct because they forgot how to love each other. Now I do. And I'll definitely take the "It's not how one sleeps but how one wakes that is important" proverb to heart. I don't know anything about Aztec religious beliefs, but I'm going to have to find a church to see if I can get my hands on one of those belts. Or an Aztec buddy! Pumaman!