A Brilliant Conflict

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

"Tragic Ceremony" follows a group of hippies (three men, one woman) whose car dies during a rainstorm in the English countryside. They end up at a large estate where the lord and his lady offer them fuel for their car and a place to sleep. Unfortunately, the house guests are subject to a black mass and attempted human sacrifice that goes awry; they escape the event, only to be picked off one by one in the ensuing hours.This generally weird and largely unknown horror flick was briefly unearthed by Dark Sky Films, who released it on DVD in 2008, but it's still one of the lesser-known oddities of early seventies Italian horror. The film starts out rather orthodox with its young adult characters stumbling into a large mansion, but it doesn't follow the narrative trajectory one would expect. The film's centerpiece is undoubtedly the explosively gory black mass sequence, but rather than occurring at the climax, it instead happens about midway through; this gives the film's narrative arc a remarkably unusual shape that destabilizes the audience's expectations, be it for better or for worse.While this central scene boasts some creepy imagery and surprising gore, the dreamlike second act of the film is what I found to be most unsettling. After the surreal black mass sequence, the audience follows the four characters in the aftermath of it, which plays out with heady overtones. The heightened black mass scene seems to have the effect of unsettling the audience as much as the flummoxed characters who are trying to piece together what they witnessed, and from there onward the film begins to unravel in the style of a supernatural slasher flick. Their retreat to the country house offers a few chilling scenes, but perhaps most memorable are the one-on-one scenes between Jane and Joe in the penultimate sequence in the woods. There is a quiet, unsettling tone that is rather masterfully achieved in the last half of the film, and this sequence in particular offers some chilling images and atmosphere.Camille Keaton stars here as the female lead, just after she'd completed her debut work on the giallo "What Have You Done to Solange?" She has an ethereal but disquieting screen presence as always, and the performance is understated but effective. She is surrounded with three Italian/Spanish male actors, each of whom play off of both her and each other fairly well as disaffected hippies. The film has a clever twist at the end that is unfortunately marred by a slipshod imitation of the conclusion from "Psycho," which feels totally unnecessary and tacked on with little forethought.The silly handling of the conclusion aside, I still found "Tragic Ceremony" to be a weirdly unsettling film. It is certainly not a masterpiece, but the bizarre narrative arc combined with the moody cinematography and Keaton's haunted performance really lend some vitality to the proceedings. The last half of the film plays out like a dream (or a nightmare), and there is an appreciable sense of foreboding that can't be shaken by the audience anymore than it can the characters on screen. 7/10.

As I have said elsewhere, my abiding love for Italian actress Luciana Paluzzi has, cinematically, led me to some fairly unusual places. From my initial enthrallment with her Fiona Volpe character in 1965's "Thunderball" and on to such disparate fare as the British comedy "Carlton-Browne of the F.O." (1959), the Japanese sci-fi shlock classic "The Green Slime" (1968), the Jess Franco WIP flick "99 Women" (1969) and the blaxploitation actioner "Black Gunn" (1972), I have always found that a little Luciana makes any film go down easier. My most recent confirmation of this: the 1972 Italian supernatural cult item "Tragic Ceremony" (or, as it was called originally, "Estralto Dagli Archivi Secreti Della Polizia Di Una Capitale Europa," or "From the Secret Police Files of a European Capital"), in which Paluzzi's role is a small one, but one that adds immeasurably to the creepy proceedings.In the film, four young adults (though referred to as "hippies" both in the picture itself and in most commentaries on it, in truth they are more like free-loving free spirits), needing shelter after their dune buggy conks out in a teeming thunderstorm, knock on the first door they come across. Unfortunately for them, it is at the mansion owned by Lord Alexander (the great Luigi Pistilli, who, that same year, starred in the wonderfully named and just plain wonderful "Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key") and his wife, Lady Alexander (our Luciana), a pair of Satanists, who that very night are preparing to convoke a Black Mass with a group of rather unwholesome guests. And before long, one of the quartet, Jane (played by Camille Keaton, who earlier that year had appeared in her first film, the classic giallo "What Have You Done to Solange?," and who six years later would star in the infamous "I Spit on Your Grave," a film that I've yet to muster the courage to watch), perhaps influenced by a pearl necklace with a supernatural history that one of the three guys had recently given to her, is seen somnolently floating toward that Satanic ritual. But the Mass ends in an over-the-top bloodbath, and the four flee for their lives into the night. But sadly enough, their nightmare is only beginning....Directed with style to spare by Riccardo Freda, whose earlier horror films include Italy's first of the sound era, "I Vampiri" (1956), and the Barbara Steele vehicles "The Horrible Dr. Hichcock" (1962) and "The Ghost" (1963), "Tragic Ceremony" was one of this great filmmaker's final projects. Freda has incorporated modern, Gothic, Satanic and nightmarish elements into the film, in that order. The tragic ceremony of the title, the Black Mass in which all nine celebrants are butchered via beheading, face cleaving, shootings, knifings and a defenestration, is the literal centerpiece of the film, coming at the exact midpoint and separating the modern and Gothic sections from the nightmarish, supernatural tone of the second half. The Mass really is a bravura sequence. The celebrants truly do look evil; the dreary, dreamy organ music, black candles and pitch-black background create a chilling mood; the weaving, zooming camera creates an air of disorientation; the sight of Jane floating down a corridor, curtains billowing around her while she holds a candelabra aloft, is truly dreamlike; and the great and bloody carnage, accompanied by a lush piano-and-strings score by Stelvio Cipriani and abetted by gross-out touches by FX master Carlo Rimbaldi (of "E.T.," "Alien" and Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession" fame), is truly shocking. And Freda maintains the nightmarish, otherworldly feel of his film all the way to the end, as all four of our young protagonists begin to meet horrific ends (the sight of one of the four, his corpse countenance quite literally blue in the face, should linger in the memory for quite a while!). The film employs brief flashbacks and flash-forwards to accentuate the feeling of dislocation, and there is just no way for any viewer to predict what will come next, in this truly bizarre outing. Ultimately, the film just barely hangs together, with the question of that darned necklace still, uh, dangling before us; even a doctor's "explanation" of the wacky events we've seen, as the film closes, barely begins to cover it. I should add here that the thesping turned in by our young quartet is better than good, and needless to say, Pistilli and Paluzzi are just marvelous (sadly, the roles of both these two are decidedly brief). Paluzzi looks absolutely gorgeous, need it even be mentioned; this fact makes Fred's (one of the guys) statement that she has "a face like Dracula" only add to the film's strangeness!Some further good news: The Dark Sky Films DVD on which "Tragic Ceremony" can now be found is a nice-looking one indeed, with excellent subtitling, a decent image, and one excellent extra: a 13-minute interview with the Camille Keaton of 2007, entitled "Camille's European Adventures." Better looking than ever, well spoken and articulate, with a sharp memory and a nicely self-effacing disposition, Arkansas-born Camille comes off as a bright, 60-year-old sweetie here. Certainly NOT like the kind of gal who'd participate in a Black Mass ceremony, that's for sure!

Camille Keaton (best known for "I Spit on Your Grave") stars as Jane, one of four young people who run out of gas and are forced to spend the night at Lord Alexander's mansion. But Alexander and his wife are into some diabolical games -- Jane is hand-picked as a "virgin sacrifice". A ruckus ensues and the second half of the film has the gang of four trying to hide from police when they feel they might be implicated i na murder.This film, more properly titled "From the Secret Police Archives of a European Capital" is considered by some to be a cult classic. I don't know why. It has some things going for it -- Camille Keaton, who is alluring in a strange way (she shouldn't be attractive but in some scenes has such an innocent face). Some of the deaths are incredible, such as a head split in two (though this is diminished when they flash back eight times). And the makeup is astounding, particularly on Camille later in the film (I won't give this away... wait for it).But, overall, the film is nothing special. The camera work is awful ("shaky cam" all the time), the editing is very rough, with cuts tat don't line up right. And other than five minutes at Lord Alexander's mansion and the last few minutes, it's a boring plot. Mostly just kids sitting around and we're not really told their relationship to each other (Jane seems to be dating all of them). Oh, and plot holes. Who is the mysterious man at Bill's mother's house? What's the story with the pearls? Even the "twist" revealed later on has some hard-to-believe elements in it. Maybe I need to see it again, but I found most of this to be just a bit bland.The best and worst of the film is with the gas station attendant. On the plus side, we have a gas station encounter leading to a murderous house. I have often given "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" credit for starting this trend, but this film has a contentious claim to it as well. Someone should explore the history of this more. Why is this also the worst? Because the attendant is said to be "a relative of the devil" or "a ghost" but this is never explained. If the writer of this film lives, I need to track him down and beat him until he gives me answers.After these complaints, you'll be surprised to see me saying that you should see this film. But, if you like "cult films", Camille Keaton, old Italian movies or the 1970s approach to horror, this is a good title to be aware of. I do think it deserves a second chance from me... Oh ,and don't try to play the smoking game to this one (smoking whenever characters smoke) because you'll lose.

This late-ish effort from Freda plays as a modern day (70's that is) Gothic thriller, but comes out short of thrills. Certainly it's not a dreadfully bad film, it's jut got that feeling which many of Freda's later films have of someone who has given up when he's seen the first daily's. It starts out good enough, almost giallo like in tone, then takes a turn into Gothic territories with a decent (albeit terribly cliché) set up. Then suddenly Freda seems to have lost interest in the film and all we get is prolonged shots of Camille Keaton and burning candles. Then circa an hour into the film we get some sort of violent climax with decent-to-poor special effects. This is followed by a slow paced outro with a very obvious twist ending (If it's even intended to be a twist?). And throw a few very halfhearted explanatory scenes along the way and you got Tragic Ceremony. Thus in parts it's got its qualities. But then suddenly stumbles and collapses in front of you. A pity.btw stay away from the SHAROMA DVD, a useless murky pan& scan edition which kills of what could be a good visual experience.