Rituals (1978)

 

Rituals (1978)

 

Any film that makes an impact is borrowed from; more than that, it’s ripped-off from. Low-, and big-budget, cinema, mostly survives on mimicking the accomplishments of others if for no other reason than riding coat-tails at least makes it clear how to market your product.

 

Some films can be mimicked with integrity, those grasping the core of the original’s potency still find room for their own originality. A good example of that is the relationship between “High Noon” (1952) and “Rio Bravo” (1959), two high-profile Westerns with similar plots, the latter created largely because the enormously successful former, the work of Screenwriter Carl Foreman and Director Fred Zinnemann,  so pissed the creators of the latter, Director Harold Hawks and Actor John Wayne, they wanted to prove they could do the same thing only better and more legitimately “American.”

 

Other times there’s a perfect economy in the storytelling of the original that cripples most attempts at creating a new product, making all those following it embarrassing in their imitation, which most clearly applies to every single Slasher film released after “Halloween” (1978) but before “A Nightmare on Elm Street” (1984), then after “A Nightmare on …” but before “Scream” (1996) and then everything after that.

 

Among the Masterpieces of cinema that proved a particularly hard nuts to crack and feed on properly by later Filmmakers was “Deliverance” (1972). Many have fallen before its altar because the compelling central conceit proved such an attractive trap: Some inadequately prepared City Slickers find themselves over-their-heads in the wilderness while also being stalked by locals who have the home-field advantage; the attractions of the beautiful landscape turned deadly and the unseen enemies are irresistibly powerful, but doing more and/or different than original film was a more than a little bit daunting. Schlock cinema is ripe with degenerate “Deliverance” rip-offs, but there are at least two films that will never get the credit they deserve because they are rip-offs, but still capture much of the power of the original: this film, “Rituals,” and “Southern Comfort” (1981).

 

“Rituals” is a Canadian film from Director Peter Carter, a man of steady out-put across more than a decade (his last Directorial credit was in 1982, the same year as his death), but little fame despite a 1980 nomination for Best Director at the Genies (the Canadian Oscars), and screenwriter Ian Sutherland, whose career was somewhat longer, was also nominated for a 1982 Genie, but even less known; this says something about the place Canadian filmmaking holds in this world.

 

Both of these men deserve huge credit for the fact that a Rip-Off deserves attention, Carter captured the beauty and menace of the rawest wildness (Batachawana Bay in Ontario, Canada) and Sutherland gave us exceptional Characterization in the context of by-the-book Exploitation Cinema.

 

The story is about a group of colleagues, supposedly friends, going on a fishing vacation in the backwoods. Its quickly apparent that their bonds are more based on history and obligation than affection, because from the first scenes its obvious several don’t really like each other much anymore. They are all Doctors, some are more successful than others, and none are contemptable, but a couple are really annoying. They are all flawed men.

 

Our obvious Hero, Harry (Hal Holbrook), is in the same gesture presented as the group’s paragon of virtue and a self-righteous prig. The most annoying is Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), who is pompously judgmental, but when he badgers Harry about his life choices, we suspect he’s at least half-right in his assessments. Another is Martin (Robin Gammell) who, surprising for the film’s era, is out-of-the-closet gay and this is casually accepted, but less tolerated is that after his relationship with his partner ended badly, he suffered a nervous breakdown turned to despair and drink. Abel (Ken James) is pretty good natured, but the least prepared to rough it. And everyone is sick of Martin’s brother, DJ (Gary Reineke), the only competent woodman among them and the guy who chose this extremely isolated camping location, probably just to show off how he’s the most virile of the lot.

 

They are delivered to the location by a bush pilot’s seaplane. A memorable piece of dialogue is, "We're 225 miles from the nearest cathouse- that river is in the middle of the cauldron and the cauldron is in the middle of nowhere." The “cauldron” he speaks of is based on the name of the area, based on an Indian Legend, the “Cauldron of the Moon.” The idea, cauldron, comes up repeatedly, and repeatedly mutated, as the film’s key metaphor. It is evoked during scenes where the men struggle with roiling rapids, when the lush forest gives way to hills laid barren wasteland by fire, and finally, there’s a horrific death by fire.

 

Before they enter Hell, they are just vacationers, and hike even deeper into the Heart of Darkness unaware of what awaits them. They set up camp and spend the first night drinking, bonding, and bickering.

 

Problems start in the morning: Person or persons unknown stole their boots. DJ is livid, he’d specifically directed everyone to bring two pairs, now he’s the only one not barefoot. Returning to the lake where they landed is pointless, it’ll be five days before their plane returns, so DJ sets out for a dam that’s on the map in the complete opposite direction. Where there’s a dam, there must be a road, he’ll return with help.

 

The four remaining are unsurprisingly sullen and more than a little paranoid about the unseen prankster. They go as far as to suggest DJ is behind the prank.

 

The second night proves worse, for the prankster again returned to the camp while they slept and left a deer head displayed with weird ritualistic trimmings. With the ante so upped, the four wrap their feet as best they can a set off after DJ.

 

As they proceed, they repeatedly encounter booby traps, each scaring them worse and, one-by-one, injuring and killing them. Their assailant, sometimes viewed in silhouette on the top of a rise watching them, also leaves clues to his motives. It becomes obvious that the assailant knew that they, specifically, were coming, had some knowledge of them, and they were targeted because of their Profession. The motive is revenge, but a wholly deranged one, or as Mitzi, "We're payin' for somethin' somebody else did!" Harry responds, "A lot of careful hatred has gone into this."

 

Told with complete conviction, it is among of the rawest tales of survival, of both physical and psychological torture, I’ve seen in cinema. Director Carter deftly negotiates the ebb and flow of pace and tone, focusing on the slow, desperate trudge, punctuating it with moments of shocking and explicit gore, but also, stepping back, emphasizing the Characters, delineating their interpersonal tensions while demonstrating that even most obnoxious have worth. Willa Cather wrote, “Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.” Well, here, none are really wicked, and in the final scenes, even the real Villian (Michael Zenon) is recognized as someone who got worse than he deserved.

 

After the savageries had exhausted themselves, the film final, quiet, image is haunting.

 

Soon after its release, Actor Holbrook said of the film that it was, "the most satisfying and interesting thing I've done since ‘Pueblo’” a 1973 TV movie about a United States ship captured by North Korea. Among the minority that have actually seen the film, it is often considered among his finest performances. He had complaints though, it was hugely physically demanding for the then-past-50-years-old Actor, especially a scene where he dragged a stretcher with one of his injured friends upstream through river rapids, which took five days to film. Director Carter chose to film continuously, no going to nice hotel rooms for a weekend off, and that exhaustion and frustration that inflicted on his actors is etched on all their faces.

 

The Character’s grueling trek strips the layers off their civilized conduct. Holbrook’s Character Harry is most keenly aware of this, he’s the one who articulates that their adversary doesn’t merely want them dead, but degraded first. To put it in Religious terms, it becomes the difference between the Greater and Lesser Jihad, the Greater battle is to retain any values against seemingly insurmountable odds, the preservation of one’s soul, while the Lesser being that over overcoming the enemy, and in this film, the Greater is the Greater, but the lesser is still damned important.

 

When the group is reduced to just Harry, Mitzi, and Martin, and Martin is now an invalid, Harry and Mitzi find themselves battling each other; Mitzi wants to leave Martin behind to improve their chances of getting out alive. From the beginning, Mitzi is the hardest to like, but could very well have the most realistic world-view of the bunch.

 

(Actor Dane was also a Producer on this film, and though he didn’t reserve the most likable Character for himself, Mitzi was still a damned juicy role.)

 

Canadian film was perennially underfunded, and their best talent often moved south to Hollywood USA for greener pastures. It also has a remarkably bad track record regarding distribution given that many of the films were good and almost all of them were English-language. It was also a quite self-sabotaging industry, with their elite Critics decrying all Genre film, and especially Government support of such films, when the example of Australia demonstrated that government subsidized Genre film was the entrée to the foreign market, and the foreign market was the only path to any sustainable profit. No one objected to Government Grants and Tax Shelters for Art House Heroes like Claude Jutra (whose films were often in French), but snob Critics seemed unable to tolerate any home-grown film that pandered to the tastes of the USA. They were led by Robert Fulford's railing against Horror film Director David Cronenberg, then not only the most financially successful Canadian filmmaker of all time, but an undeniably a distinctive talent by any measure. It has been suggested by contemporary Critics that the hostile Critical environment of the 1970s played a role in this film’s release being delayed for two years and then its poor distribution thereafter.

 

But there was, of course, the fact that this film’s more recent champions can’t talk their way around: Good as it was, it was still a rip-off. When finally released, it was critically panned almost across-the-board, though it is mostly praised now. Among those hostile were TV Guide, Lenard Maltin and, worse, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert who tag-teamed it with abuse on their TV show (“Opening Soon...at a Theater Near You,” first aired 1975, and soon renamed “Sneak Previews”).

 

Trailer:

Rituals (1977) - Trailer HD 1080p (youtube.com)