Is Tragic Ceremony the movie Mario Bava would have made if he’d adapted Scooby Doo for the big screen?  Or does it more closely resemble some unholy collaboration between James Whale and Richard Kern?  Such comparisons suggest, but only suggest, the tremendous appeal of this offbeat triumph of ‘70s Italian horror.

The way that über-veteran Riccardo Freda directed Tragic Ceremony, you get the sense that he thought carefully about what would work for each individual sequence.  Maybe he didn’t think very long, mind you, but there are so many idiosyncratic touches that I’m inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.  However, one is left questioning whether Freda ever considered how the whole shebang was holding together... a fact that could in turn help explain why this movie is just so darn fun.

The many shifts in both mood and tone are sometimes lurching, sometimes dreamlike.  The repetitive flashbacks (and flashforwards?) made me wonder if the filmmakers were using them to create a kind of horror tone-poem or simply because it was cheaper than shooting new scenes of violence.  The makeup and gore effects are similarly inconsistent, with some being of the “How did they do that?” variety and others rigged together as if by a gang of overly enthusiastic middle-schoolers.  Strangely, and perhaps entirely unintentionally, the technical and aesthetic unevenness of the film actually adds to its disorienting effect—if you don’t throw your hands up early on, chances are you’ll settle in and enjoy the trippiness of it all.  The story itself is persistently elliptical, and again and again heads towards the precipice of total incoherence, with Freda always pulling it back at the last instant.  Even in the closing moments of the resolution, in which all the previous events are explicated for us à la Psycho, I was left scratching my head.

  Why didn’t this apparently brilliant character speak up sooner and, you know, participate in what us moviegoers quaintly refer to as the “plot”?  And why does this character himself, some sort of psychiatrist, give off such a sinister air?

Such questions may never be answered.  Equal parts gothic melodrama, psychedelic road movie, crusty occult thriller, and giallo-esque murder mystery, Tragic Ceremony resists most attempts by the audience to experience the story as linear and logical.  And the cinematography only adds to this churning mix of thematic and narrative elements.  Francisco Fraile lights patches of color extremely brightly in the midst of swirling chiaroscuro effects—it’s as if the movie itself can’t decide whether it’s in black-and-white or color.  The one key constant in the production is the star, Camille Keaton.  Freda doesn’t let her try to do too much and that’s a good thing.  Not because she isn’t a solid actress, but because he knows the uses to which her thousand-yard stare, sudden grimaces, and unconventional beauty can be put to in a move like this.  That is, Freda apparently learned something from the work that he and Bava did with Barbara Steele in the ‘60s.

To be clear, though, I don’t mean to make a virtue of all of Tragic Ceremony’s flaws.  There’s some crummy continuity editing and lame stunt work that really contribute to no larger effect than sheer annoyance.  Overall, though, the movie is like a haunted house at an amusement park that hasn’t been maintained too well:  the rusty tracks and creaking wheels only serve to make this psychotronic genre mash-up all the more compelling.

Dark Sky’s transfer is, as usual, quite strong and there’s a wonderfully revealing featurette in which Keaton speaks disarmingly about some early acting problems and the facial scars that made her self-conscious.  She comes across as classy and smart, and her memories of being an American ingénue seeking fame and fortune overseas are evocative not only of a particular time and place, but also of what it means to be a creative young person finding one’s place in the world.