Monday, May 4th, 2026
This week at Hot Wax Coffee Shop, Sacrilegious Cinema offers a deviant dyad, delving into Mexican movies as homage to Cinco de Mayo the following day. This excursion hones in on Hispanic horror, showcasing the artistry through beautifully visceral imagery contrasted by intense exploitation and sleaze of the sub-genre, specializing in the corruption of Catholicism to herald in deliverance with desecration. Feast your eyes on a creative emblem of ferocious folk horror and become acquainted with Latin based filmography.
At 8PM, we deviate from grounded division and take a detour into the chaos of its supernatural diametric. We find ourselves in Mexico where we meet orphan Alucarda upon her arrival to a Catholic convent, quickly befriending fellow student Justine in a sapphic subtext loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampiric novella, Carmilla. The girls summon a sinister force in their endeavors, enticing a covenant with the devil and infecting the sanctitude of the school in their sacrilege. Devised by director Juan López Moctezuma, ALUCARDA (1977) expels a taste for the Satanic Panic, ushering in an exploitative perversion of religious iconography, abandoning any semblance of coherence in favor of the sordid symbolism embedded in the narrative, existing in a turbulent realm where the line between possession and hysteria dissipates.
Invoking an infernal flame, Alucarda baptizes the atmosphere in blasphemy, christening the corruption of the cloth to showcase a masochistic menagerie of self flagellation, with nuns donning blood-stained gauze-like garb- an emblem of their devotion to penance. This juxtaposition of faiths highlights hypocrisy, where sadism acts as atonement and hedonism is disguised as Catholic guilt-both parties a glutton for punishment. This bizarre brand of folk horror revels in the eroticism of sin, delighting in the thrill of temptation and tainting the lines of morality, imposing abuse of their collective scriptures to maintain control in a pandemic of mass psychosis. From orgies to exorcisms, this low-budget foreign film offers all the impiety one could ever yearn for. Commence the hellfire and holy water. This is heresy.
Then, at 10PM, we are thrust into the traumatic existence of Fenix, cataloguing his disorderly upbringing leading to his discharge from a psych ward, ultimately reuniting with his domineering matriarch, Concha, in her devious endeavors. This homecoming inevitably results in the reintegration of Fenix into a deformed iteration of his old carnie life, in addition to indoctrination into a dangerous Catholic cult led by his mother. Avant Garde director Alejandro Jodorowsky’s SANTA SANGRE (1989) submits a surrealist religious horror unlike any other— perusing themes of identity, maternal abuse, control, self sacrifice and sin culminating in a deeply disturbing albeit gorgeously grotesque tragedy, blending psychology with theater of the absurd.
This slice of cinema spawned from Mexico bears an Oedipal familiarity akin to Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho in relation to mothers and murder, though departs in its unique tone and vision entirely alien from the aforementioned, and rather, more reminiscent of a psychedelic giallo flick— which comes as little surprise when giallo master Dario Argento’s brother, Claudio, is responsible for producing this picture. Santa Sangre is a phantasmagoric nightmare, guiding its audience through big tops, asylums and dilapidated churches, which reign supreme as beloved motifs throughout, boasting self-sabotage among sheer beauty and unadulterated pain. Fenix’s unresolved childhood anguish bleeds into his adulthood, holding him captive as he is doomed to endure a life as his mother’s metaphorical mannequin- dramatic irony at its greatest- exemplifying sovereignty and the accountability equipped with ownership of one’s actions, condemning our protagonist to a bitter end where autonomy is not only a transgression, but a death sentence in martyrdom.
Bidding all Disciples of the Devil to come forth- prepare for confession.
FREE popcorn included with a mandatory purchase- no cover charge with a 1 drink (or snack) minimum from the bar. (Movie nights offer psychological insight accompanied by behind the scenes information and observations by your horror hostess).