Rev Jan 29, 2024
Moving through Jennifer Oneill movies I arrive at Flower in the Mouth, (1975), where, I can report, Oneill once again nicely fills in her sitcast fates of the Odd Bedfellow, the Invisible Nude, and the Girl in the Red Zone. But, scrolling for it, I found that a copy of Tragic Ceremony (1971) with Camille Keeton has reappeared on youtube, and it has some twists that inform the process. I reviewed the movie almost a decade ago, but perhaps I did not fully catch on. The story is that a group of suave hippie guys seem to be exploiting rich girl Camille Keaton so that she can host them staying in nice places, sailing, and having a general all around good time (Apparently, in Scotland, but there is not a trace of Scotland in the movie). But when they are turned away from one of the friend’s parents’ house then caught in the rain they take refuge in another house ruled of Luciana Paluzzi. But Jane (Keaton) is immediately separated from the gang by Lady Alexander on the premise that whilst the men can sit and lounge around in the kitchen bored, a woman needs to be put up in a more respectable fashion. And, no wonder, as Jane zaps her
and she is kind of stunned, it also appears that Jane reveals a bit more of her class when not with the boys
as Keaton does offer her the body language which tacitly communicates, body is open for business, if you want, posed before a picture AND a profuse bouquet of flowers, it is indicated that Lady A has something evil, or nothing much on her mind.
I forget what this is, some sort of switcheroo,, herpes to offer an alibi for keep Jane there for a while
at some point, Jane seems to settle in, smoking, and this indicates perhaps that some sort of attractant force is taking her over, hypnotizing her, casting her into magnetic sleep, sensing presences, but still under the control of them. I think the candles indicate this splitting of self
then, she begins a gown prowl, to find out what it is that is pulling at her. At this point, she passes through a dark hall in the house filled with nearly a phalanx of Suits of Armor. Now, the Suit of Armor is one of the hoariest of haunted house tropes, it is the classic alibi formation which allows you think there might be a presence there, because it has a human shape, but then you are shown, see, no one there, just a suit of armor, which relaxes you, so you drop your guard. So it could be said that she runs into this battalion of suits of armor because they represent the young men she has been trafficking with, and who are exploiting here, telling her they are a danger, but then this allows her to discount that threat. And then in the same way it could be that the suits represent the other mysterious guests in the house, also to momentarily arouse fears, but in the end to see that they are no threat either. So, the suits en masse act as a field of sheets, to allow of possibilities, but ultimately ti discount them.
The Hall of Armor, Tragic Ceremony, 1972, Jan 29, 2024
this shot is a bit too normative, zig zagging her through. I place her in the Luor itself, coming through the in between. She is under the control of the Tyche of the house, Lady Alexander, though she does not quite know this, and then it would seem that the spookiness of the hall of armor carries her over the in between into the lower regions of the house. They then act as a kind of filtering device, which a field of this sort will, to reduce her, as she steps out into ambience, in a cypher symobolon, a being assigned a role, behind her back in this case.
But, I had a rrhexis on this shot, which further insight into it. IK was reminded in the straight forward way in which a suit of armor takes up a shot, just like in Return of Count Yorga, of the Virgin of Nuremberg. This form suggested a power of the Tyche turned bad which overshadowed the house. This more explicitly made the armor as if the soldiers sprung up from the planted dragon’s teeth armed soldiers designed to cut her to shreds. In this they became the figurative form of the shatterzone, ushering her into it, a zone of decomposition, to come. This reading makes them much more, active henchmen, as it were, of Lady Alexander, pricking her, bleeding her out,
Jane and the Armor, Tragic Ceremony, (1972), Jan 29, 2024
But, then, of course, the Iron Maiden form served as an aegix in September, its shadow maidening everything it touched, including a segment in the novelization of Halloween, when much is made of the depth of urness that little Michael Myers entered, by dunking for apples. This then makes me, in the half life again, seen the armor as bit more shallow and stout,
o, if the armor expanded to apple dunk bucket size,
The Dunk Armor, Tragic Ceremony, 1972, rrhexis, Jan 29, 2024
This is imaginary, the armor expanding into a dunk tank, which would allow her to gaze is, and see that she is disappearing, and blocked and threatened by the top half of the tank, a soldier, and this an aggressive golem very much under the control of the Maid, now become Lady Alexander.
This of course reminds me that the apple dunking was a major element of Christie’s Halloween Party, So, the Dunk House in the Rain in Venice, all aluminum,
The Dunk Hunk, Grande Canal, Halloween Party, 2023, Jan 29, 2024, The Dunk Hunk, Grande Canal, Halloween Party, 2023, Jan 29, 2024
And of course Christie made use of the dunking game as a key moment in the case, because it is the ultimate toxifugic form, You are asked to lean over a bucket of water, and dunk your head in to with your teeth alone bite and lift out an apple. It would seem impposibble not to see your eyes go apple and your mouth stuffed like a roast pig, making you suspect that you are being made the beast of the feast most made fun of. And all that, your back is turned, and your butt is in the air, vulnerable on two counts, and it is highly uncomfortable. I suspect it originated as a prank game to humiliate guests or make fun of them, as in karoke. But let me imagine Poirot in his mask, framed, but his face, not, seeing himself lampooned in the game.
Poirot Dunks for Apples, Halloween Party, 2023, Jan 29, 2024
I don’t remember if any woman made a wise crack, but, for children, cute, fun, if that, but for adult females, basically a rape machine, no?
Apple Dunk Rape Machine, Halloween Party, 2023, Jan 29, 2024
But, really, the half life of that is to see, in fact, a floating woman, her parts formed by the apples, in the tank,
The Cryptophasic Dunk Tank, Halloween Party, 2023, Jan 29, 2024.
And, sure enough, after Jane comes out of her filtering process, being refit as basically a robot of Lady Alexander, she is pictured as if a telemon or soldier of the candles she is now bearing, not just carrying.
and, then, she reaches the top of the stair, and ensures the sequence for which the movie is famous, her coming down the stairs, transformed into a field of sheets, by sheer curtains wildly blowing, dematerializing her as she walks, and this is her zone of decomposition
and the way that she is holding he candles so that it only lights her, as ifi making herself phantom as she walks, quite nicely done,
the sequence still holds up, and is very close to psychdodynamically pefecct, On my graphs, there is a bit more attention to conveying the idea that she is, literally, decomposing as she goes down.
The Staircase, Tragic Ceremony, 1972, Jan 29, 2024
So, while the copy I watched this time was poor, the blurriness, and the off-color blues, it kind of fit
but Freda is no slouch. He knows the mind, and what it needs. So, he actually did convey the idea that she decomposes. That’s when coming down the last few steps she has her pearl necklace break up into pearls, which go bouncing.
lovely still life, but again, my version would be to communicate more clearly that she is decomposing in that accident.
Jane Pearlesent, Tragic Ceremony, 1972, Jan 29, 2024
Once again, I defer to Fredo, he also knew that he had to communicate that, so he inserts here a shot of her pearlized eyes,
she now comes into the basement to see that Lady Alexander is performing a satanic ritual, and needs a girl as a human sacrifice. We now see how deeply Jane has been hypnotized because she relents without protest to lie down on the sacrificial altar and offer herself up to whatever they have in mind for her (anything from sacred sex multiple fuckings, to death by a knife to the heart, and its removal).
then comes the crazy section. I forget what causes it, but maybe Jane mis-stepped, in any case. Something goes wrong, and everyone in the cult goes crazy and begin to kill each other. It is a highly hysterical scene, I mean not funny, ha ha, but hysteria in action. Why did it happen? You can only understand this scene if you understand that Paluzzi as Lady Alexander is a witch a t the head of her coven. Oh, what happens is, somehow the knife goes awry, and stabs Lady Alexander in the stomach. This then, the fear of her dying, causes the cover in whole to lose its mind. This is just like in Suspiria, (1977) if the head of a coven is lost, the whole body of the coven, like a snake and its head and body, dies with her. Thus the utter hysteria.
At some point, t he guys come in and in another great scene the passing through the field of suits of armor is much more vertiginous and materially decomposed, almost melting, like in a Magnasco,
Jane has survived, they all think, and they come in to rescue her.
but what this shot is really saying is that Jane is now no more human than the suits of armor, and is, herself, merely a suit for Lady Alexandet, that is, she has become the Iron Maiden in which Lady Alexander contrived to fake her death and thus exterminate her own annoying cult. When you watch the movie the first time, you do not know this. And, because most people never “read’ a scrence for its psychodynamics, no one would see this. Butr, Freda has dramatically lessened the distance in materiality between Jane and the armor, and thus communicated the fact that she has like them been emptied out and is simply being used as an empty shell in which Lady Alexander to achieve her plans.
this explanation seems to require a creepy microscene of psychic action at the ceremony, in which Lady Alexander by way of opening the space between their bodies, creates a channel of spirit by which to waft out of her body over into Jane’s to continue on with her Plan
Lady Alexander Enters Jane, Tragic Ceremony, 1972, Jan 29, 2024.
But now, amongst the armor,
Jane in the Armor, Tragic Ceremony, 1972, Jan 29, 2024
And I can imagine Freda being asked, what did you see in Keaton, and him answering, I saw immediately that she was like a body over the wrong soul, that her outer body was somehow disconnected from her, and that as a woman she seemed to have no clear relationship with her body. I knew that that is what this movie had to be about.
And then of course in a more Saltburned script one of the men might say to the other, Didst thou///
Didst thou….? Oh, I’ve learned from Rossellini, when you talk of history, you must speak the language, but didst thou motive coming through the suits of armor this time that they all had codpieces. I hadn’t noticed that the first time. Why is that important? The other one asks. Because I take my intuitions, expressed in what is see one time versus another, and that’s what I picked up coming through, So what it means is she’s now with them, one of them, they ar all turned on by her, and in that silent hall they all are dreaming in metal about fucking her.
But, really, almost a picture in picture picture, that is, a summation of the psychodynamic richness of the whole movie, thought out by a master
I would have to check but my guess this is also the first time the dune buggy is shown full frontal, for the viewer to catch the pareidolia, and then cast it in suspicion at her aloofness upon Jane
and this is when the long Peggy Lipton hippie hair of time received its greatest expression, she is empty, possessed, out of her mind, another mind inside her,
this is conveyed by the fact that the hair comes down in a solid straight thick fall all the way past her shoulders to touch her breasts. I have already addressed this with Jennifer O Neill in Peter Proud but this hair is also talking.
this is conveyed by the fact that the hair comes down in a solid straight thick fall all the way past her shoulders to touch her breasts. I have already addressed this with Jennifer O Neill in Peter Proud but this hair is also talking.
Jane Karakomo-ontec, Trafic Ceremony, 1972, Jan 29, 2024
I prefer to call pareidoliac hair phantoms thrixes, but the word for long hair is karakomoontec, so there it is. It states without stating that she is now occupied by another being, that that other being is like her hair, in relation to her, which was originally cultivated that way as if to fold out part of oneself to act as guard to the rest of the self, the personal Phroura, a word I have not used in years, but maybe the source of lore of double-selfishness. And of course, I know of whereof I speak, having known one well.
Then, of course, the movie moves on, though in the tv segment it is mentiond that the the police think the murderers were a group of hippies just like the Manson gang, so there is that. But in the end the suave playboy who has been making a play for Jane the whole time finally gets what he wants, laying her down in the grass, a t which time she shocks him off of her by: Lady Alexander inside her showing him what is left of Jane,
and then he races off too fast on his bike, to die. The movie ends with Lady Alexander having completed her plot, so she goes home, rid of her annoying coven, and she killed the killers for fun too.
rmarts 