Safe Return Doubtful

A Mexican and Italian collaboration, in Spanish, with the Director himself from Chile.

I’ve been meaning to get to Jodorowsky films for a while, and eventually began with this.

With its vivid colours which somehow make the blood stand out more clearly than ever, and its quirky surrealist style, it won’t be for everyone. From 1988 it is a real curio, and has acquired a cult status, an absurdist satire of organised religion, a gory pastiche of the slasher movie taking the viewer back to that infamous Hitchcock Psycho shower scene.

The circus scenes in the first half of the film work particularly well, common I believe in Jodorowsky films, as is his clever use of child actors, often his own family.

It’s visually very impressive and thoroughly entertaining.

I feel prepared now for his surrealist trilogy, which is I gather, considerably more weird..

My IMDB score 8 / 10