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Estratto dagli Archivi Segreti della Polizia di una Capitale Europea
Tragic Ceremony
Trágica Ceremonia en Villa Alexander
Italy/Spain 1972
produced by José Guttiérrez Maesso for Produzioni Internazionali Associate
directed by Riccardo Freda (as Robert Hampton)
starring Camille Keaton, Tony Isbert, Máximo Valverde, Luigi Pistilli, Luciana Paluzzi, José Calvo, Giovanni Petrucci, Irina Demick, Paul Muller, Beni Deus, Milo Quesada, Alejandro de Enciso, Elsa Zabala, Pablo Garcia, David Thomson, Adriana Facchetti, Fulvio Mingozzi
written by Mario Bianchi, José Gutiérrez Maesso, Leonardo Martín, music by Stelvio Cipriani
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Seeking shelter from the rain and gas for their car, a quartet od
teenagers - Jane (Camille Keaton), Bill (Tony Isbert), Joe (Máximo
Valverde) and Fred (Giovanni Petrucci) somehow reach the house of Lord and
Lady Alexander (Luigi Pistilli, Luciana Paluzzi), who invite them to stay
for the night, then lure Jane away from the others ... to ultimately make
her the human sacrifice in a black mass. However, Jane's friends intervene
just in time, and while struggling with Lady Alexander, who was just about
to slay Jane, Bill stabs her by mistake. This leads quite to some
commotion in the satanist crowd that ahs gathered, as they suddenly and
for no apparent reason start to slaughter each other in the most violent
sorts of way.
Somehow our teen quartet escapes though, but soon they ahve to realize
that they now might be wanted by the police. First they try to find abode
at Bill's mother's (Irina Demick), but she is too busy with her new lover
to really care for her son's needs and just gives them some money and
sends them off.
Ultimately they wind up in the country house of Bill's dad - where Bill
soon ends up dead, and it seems he died with great fear. But while the
others still try to decide what to do with his body, Fred turns up dead as
well, his throat slashed.
Joe and Jane now make an escape deep into a forest, where they calm
down enough to start and make out - when Joe suddenly has a vision of Jane
with half of her face missing. He escapes in terror on a motorbike, but
finally runs it off a cliff into some pond, in which he drowns because he
has broken both his legs while Jane calmly watches him die.
Ultimately, Jane is admitted to a mental hospital, where she dies
before long - but a doctor (Paul Muller) explains that she has been
long dead and her body has been taken over by Lady Alexander ... who we
see driving away from the mental hospital at the end of the film.
Tragic Ceremony is a not at all uninteresting and certainly
well-directed (but as much could be expected from Italian horror maestro
Riccardo Freda) shocker of the Satanist variety obviously influenced by
the Sharon Tate murder/massacre (then still relatively current news),
however, every now and again the film falls short of developing its full
potential because the plot seems to repeatedly fall apart, most notably
when references are made to Bill's weird oedipal relationship to his
mother which ultimately lead to nothing. Plus the ending, in which Paul
Muller explains the plot away with possession is just too trashy for its
own good and does the film little justice.
Still the film is totally watchable, it's just a far cry from being
perfect.
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