Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea

The original title of 'Tragic Ceremony' is 'Estratto dagli archivi segreti della polizia di una capitale europea', which roughly translates to 'Extract from the secret archives of the police of a European capital', a nonsensical title that is oddly fitting for this strange mess of a movie.

Riccardo Freda had a long and spotty career, but managed to direct a few decent horror and giallo films, including 'I Vampiri' (with Bava), 'The Ghost' and 'The Iguana with a Tongue of Fire'. Despite having a decent cast, including Luigi Pistilli, 'Tragic Ceremony' is sorely missing a compelling character or solid plot, and instead relies on horror gags and schlocky special effects to keep you watching.

The story follows four hippies who go camping, where we find out they're harbouring a dark secret. They run out of petrol and seek refuge from a storm at...you guessed it...a creepy old mansion where satanic rituals are taking place. There are some interesting and eerie moments along the way, if you can stay interested through the incredibly boring bits.

The script is just abysmal and characters are so poorly drawn, the actors seemingly don't know how to act half the time-or maybe they just don't know how to act. No character arcs, no back stories, in fact, it's hard to even know why we should care what happens to them. There are several moments where something incredibly shocking happens, yet the characters don't bother discussing it, not a word, just move on and talk about mundane things, as if it never happened. There are massive plot holes, catastrophic logic failures and unnecessarily detailed explanations of paranormal events.

There is one scene that's almost worth watching the entire film for, but they manage to ruin even that by repeating it over and over via unnecessary flashbacks.

If you're a hardcore Italian horror fan, 'Tragic Ceremony' might be worth a watch out of curiosity, but most people will find it tedious and a tragic waste of time.

A free-spirited quartet of young hippie-types (Jane (Camille Keaton), Joe (Maximo Valverde), Bill (Tony Isbert), and Fred (Giovanni Petrucci)) are on a pleasure trip when their terminally unreliable vehicle becomes virtually unusable on a stormy night. They take refuge in the villa owned by the Alexanders (Luigi Pistilli, Luciana Paluzzi), who have a sinister agenda planned for the night. When our protagonists interfere, they are subject to more terror than they can handle.

Rather slow to start, and awfully talky at times, "Tragic Ceremony" is a standard tale in some ways (complete with the use of the "old dark house" and "stormy night" tropes), and delivers no big surprises, but it walks an interesting line between suspense and spectacle. The four main characters are set up as basically engaging people who are easy enough to watch, and the supporting cast is strong. (The great Paul Muller turns up at the very end as a doctor whose job is to provide a final bit of exposition.) Keaton, the memorable star of the infamous exploitation-revenge-thriller "I Spit on Your Grave", is a compelling, striking beauty from whom you can't take your eyes. The music (by the talented Stelvio Cipriani) is good, as well as the location shooting. But what really makes sitting through this somewhat obscure Italian genre flick worth it is the massacre that occurs at approximately the midway point. You can tell that the filmmakers were pleased with their "sword cutting into a guy's head" effect (the FX were by Carlo Rambaldi): we see it a total of five times before the film is over!

Director Riccardo Freda apparently resented the job of guiding this particular film, but the results on screen are still pretty effective. At least it doesn't play out in a *completely* predictable way; the films' second half makes it worth sitting through the first half.

Six out of 10.

An early appearance by Camille Keaton gives Tragic Ceremony its main point of interest. It's not as good as What Have You Done to Soalnge?, but her role is substantial enough for fans to check it out.

Probably it ranks as the second-best of her Italian-era appearances. Her icy beauty and blank expression are suited to her largely passive role.

The plot falls into the Old Dark House genre, with four fashionable and well-off young people becoming stranded at a mansion on a stormy night. Sort of like a straight non-musical version of Rocky Horror.

Black magic and other supernatural events follow, with logic going out the window. The supernatural elements keep this from really being considered as classical giallo.

But there is a fair bit of detective work and violent crime, so some people still put under the giallo banner. It's not apparent in the costumes and locations, but the action is supposed to be in the UK as Scotland Yard is mentioned.

Overall, it is a bit of a generic mix of Gothic horror and police motifs that never reaches its full potential.

This somehow odd film from Italian Cult Gothic Horror director Freda ("L'Orribile Segreto del Dr. Hichcock") is almost unknown and extremely difficult to find nowadays.

Made a year after his rough Giallo "L'Iguana Dalla Lingua di Fuoco" (see also my comment on that), the title suggests yet another Giallo (it means "Taken From the Secret Police Files of a European Capital" and fits perfectly into typical over long and wonderful Giallo titles like "Il Tuo Vizio e una Stanza Chiusa e Solo Io ne ho la Chiave" of the same year). But, in fact, this film is not a Giallo at all - but a Gothic horror story about a cursed pearl necklace and a strange Satan's Cult which gets confronted by a hippie quartet on a day out. The story sounds unique, and the film is it, too.

Made on a very low budget, Freda made more than the best out of it and created a strange movie with all the classic Gothic elements, and also boosts a handful of astonishing gore effects that echo the rude sequences of his Giallo a year before.

The cast is lead by Camille Keaton of "I Spit on Your Grave" fame, while Luigi Pistilli ("Reazione a Catena") delivers another neat performance as the leader of the strange Cult. The soundtrack is composed by Stelvio Cipriani and is cool as usual. A film worth looking for despite its rarity.

"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.