They don’t come much stranger.

You think you know weird? Well try an elephant haemorrhaging from his trunk, then being thrown off a cliff and eaten by the shanty town beneath. Or how about coked-up Down’s syndrome kids dancing with transvestites? Yes, it’s Chilean director and evil lovechild of Freud and Fellini, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s cult favourite and Oedipal nightmare, Santa Sangre (1989). “I ask of film what most North Americans ask of psychedelic drugs,” he says happily. And he’s not kidding.

Fenix (played by Jodorowsky’s son, Axel) lives in an asylum where he sits up a tree refusing to talk to anyone. Only his armless mother can coax him down so that the two of them can become a nightclub act where Fenix sits behind her and acts as her arms. Sadly, though, the act also extends to murdering any woman that Fenix finds attractive.

Ex-puppeteer and part-time comic-book writer Jodorowsky doesn’t make many films, not surprisingly. But when he does they’re pretty memorable, if you can stomach them. So go on, give it a try. You know you want to. Extras Disc One – tetchy, feature-length commentary from Jodorowsky. Disc Two - feature-length documentary, interview with Jodorowsky, short film, trailer, biographies, deleted scenes. (8/10) Jonathan Carter 06 February 04

Santa Sangre (Two-Disc Set), out now on Anchor Bay.