Available from Luminous Film & Video | Review by Crites
Opening with a boat at sea in a scene which all too closely resembles The Raft of the Medusa in imagery and coloring to bode well for its passengers, a bunch of Spanish hippies sail off toward a camping holiday. It's the sailboat of a spoiled rich kid, Bill, whose 'friends' clearly take advantage of him, but that's not the heart of the story.
It really begins when, back on land, the gang's dune buggy runs out of gas, at night, and just before a violent thunderstorm. And where should they end up but at a creepy old mansion, Villa Alexander. Presided over by creepy old Lord Alexander and his younger but perhaps even creepier wife, our hosts are at that very moment hosting a creepy gathering down in the basement that is in the earliest stages of a... yes, a tragic ceremony.
It's a variation on the Black Mass, and our single female hippie, Jane, finds herself inexplicably drawn in as her three friends play cards upstairs. Just as she's about to be sacrificed on the altar of the Prince of Darkness however, her traveling companions just happen to come storming down into the basement and disrupt the ceremony. In the chaos that follows Bill helps high priestess Alexander stab herself with her own dagger, and as if possessed her followers then proceed to butcher each other in a grisly hallucinogenic bloodbath.
Siphoning some gas from one of the mansion's vehicles Bill and company run away to his mother's house, but she's too busy with one of her young lovers to put her son and his hippie friends up for the night. The crew instead swaps their dune buggy for a pair of motorcycles and heads out to pop's country home. There they watch a newscast on the massacre, which is likened to the Manson Family murders, and in the process learn that they've left some dangerous clues about their presence at the crime scene.
A short while later Bill is found dead and drooling in a closet, his face painted bright blue. Fred is next, his throat slashed with a straight razor. Survivors Joe and Jane take off on one of the motorcycles, and when they stop for rest in a field Joe puts the moves on her. Leaning in he starts to kiss her, but when he pulls back for a moment he sees that the lower half of her face is completely eaten away. Joe jumps on the bike and guns it, and after a frantic race through the woods casting panicky glances over his shoulder he loses control and sends the bike hurtling off a small cliff into a lake. Jane, her face intact once again, appears on the bluff to watch him struggle - while he may be a sailor Joe is no swimmer, and he soon disappears beneath the surface.
The next we see of Jane we find that she's locked away in a mental home...or is she?
Not nearly as suspenseful as it needs to be or as shocking as it wants to be, this would-be thriller from 1972 depends upon the gimmick of possession and a few scenes of gore to carry the entire halting production. Which ends up coming off like a cheap take on one of EC's weaker offerings; none too great.
The transition from film to digital video hasn't been an entirely smooth one for TRAGIC CEREMONY either; the picture is presented in full screen, resulting in obvious cropping on either side. Region-free, the film is presented in Spanish with optional English subtitles and stars Camile Keaton, Luciana Paluzzi, Maximo Valvaero, Luigi Pistilli, Giovanni Petrucci and Pepe Calvo.
