When the film version of James Dickey’s 1970 novel Deliverance, directed by John Boorman, first appeared in 1972, it was perceived as a new kind of survival tale, one in which suburban men were confronted with the primeval forces of nature and completely traumatized by the experience. While it was mostly a character-driven adventure story, it had nightmarish elements that could easily classify it as a horror film yet it had a much broader appeal than a niche genre item. Nevertheless, some filmmakers took Dickey’s basic premise of some city folks venturing into unknown rural territory and turned it into a horror film template. Some of the more infamous titles are Wes Craven’s cult favorite The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Mother’s Day (1980), a sick black comedy from Troma Entertainment, Just Before Dawn (1981), directed by Jeff Lieberman (Squirm, Blue Sunshine) and The Final Terror (1983) featuring Daryl Hannah and Rachel Ward in early roles. My favorite though is the lesser known 1977 Canadian film Rituals (aka The Creeper), which comes close to generating the kind of white-knuckle tension that defined Deliverance while adding a number of gruesome horror tropes that make it consistently creepy and harrowing.
Despite a modest budget, Rituals is a cut above the typical exploitation thriller and anchored by solid performances from Hal Holbrook in a vigorous physical role (he performs some of his own stunts) and a small group of seasoned Canadian actors including Lawrence Dane (who also produced the film). The remote wilderness setting in Ontario, Canada with its forbidding green woodlands and desolate rocky hillsides (the site of a recent forest fire) also add a sense of complete isolation from the rest of the world.
It all starts innocently enough with five doctors gathering at an outpost in Batchawana Bay for their yearly camping trip organized by experienced outdoorsman DJ (Gary Reineke). Joining him are his brother Martin (Robin Gammell), Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), Abel (Ken James) and Harry (Hal Holbrook), who clearly has some issues with some of his fellow MDs. A pilot (Murray Westgate) drops the five men off near a river deep in the interior with the understanding that he will return in six days to pick them up.
Almost from the beginning things begin to go wrong. After a night of boozing it up, trading stories and playing pranks on each other, the campers discover that all of their boots are missing. DJ is the only one who brought an extra pair of shoes so he volunteers to hike to a nearby hydraulic dam for help. Meanwhile, his hapless companions muddle their way through the underbrush in DJ’s direction and set up camp at sunset. Later when Abel leaves his tent to urinate he encounters a severed deer head hanging from a tree. It is now apparent someone is messing with them but the taunts grow more deadly. (The viewer is already clued in that something is amiss from an earlier scene where a roving POV shot shows the doctors and the campfire from a distance so whose point of view is it?).
[Spoiler alert] The next day while Abel tries to take a group portrait of the men a bee’s nest lands in their midst…or maybe it was thrown. Panic ensues as the bees swarm and sting the men causing them to rush toward the river. In their mad scramble all of them trip and tumble down the hillside and, when they reach the bottom, they discover that Abel has died, either from bee stings or a heart attack or both.
Their annual outdoor trip turns into a real horror show when they attempt to cross the river and discover too late that the river bottom is lined with bear traps. Martin steps in one and subsequently breaks his leg, leaving Mitzi and Harry with the sole option of carrying the injured man out of the wilderness on a makeshift stretcher. This proves too difficult to manage so they create an inflatable gurney for Martin in order to float him down the river.
In the midst of all this, Martin is now babbling endlessly in an alcoholic haze about their stalker while Mitzi, also drinking heavily, becomes argumentative with Harry. Insults lead to a fight between the two former friends while Martin is carried away down the rapids and almost drowned. Now that he is almost comatose, Martin’s helpless state is the final straw for Mitzi, who wants to abandon him, but Harry is determined to haul him out of the wilderness. Part of the film’s effectiveness is depicting the unraveling of the group dynamic as anger, confusion and frustration among the doctors creates more problems than solutions for them.
The final third of Rituals has some shocking revelations about the fate of both DJ and Mitzi but the most horrific sequence is Harry’s desperate attempt to survive an attack by the horribly disfigured stalker (a former WW2 veteran who was so severely injured in battle that even a team of doctors couldn’t repair the damage and possibly made him worse). The film is full of grisly incidents – stabbings, a decapitated head on a pole, and a gory cauterization by gun power of a nasty leg wound. Yet, none of it feels gratuitous and is treated in a realistic manner as if these besieged men are in a real combat situation. In a way, they are, and by the end of Rituals, most viewers may feel just as exhausted, beaten down and shell-shocked as Harry’s semi-crazed protagonist.
For a low budget, tax shelter production, Rituals is surprisingly intense and disturbing and British-born director Peter Carter deserves kudos for taking the time to create believable characters with intriguing backstories without getting bogged down in needless exposition (the terse, well-constructed screenplay is by Ian Sutherland). The pace is swift and relentless and Carter is also wise to withhold showing the stalker up close until the end when his confrontation with Harry is truly alarming.
Carter has worked in both television and film since the late 1960s but most of his filmography is relatively undistinguished with the possible exception of The Rowdyman, a critically acclaimed drama from 1972 starring Gordon Pinsent and Rituals. His final film was Highpoint, a heist comedy starring Richard Harris and Christopher Plummer. It was released in 1982, the year Carter died at age 48.
Some may be be surprised to see Emmy award winning and Oscar nominee Hal Holbrook in such a gritty little unsung gem but the actor has always displayed great versatility in his choice of roles – everything from prestige productions like All the President’s Men (1976) and Wall Street (1987) to box office hits such as Magnum Force (1973) and The Firm (1993). He has also appeared in some memorable horror and exploitation films including Wild in the Streets (1968) from American International Pictures, John Carpenter’s The Fog (1980) and George A. Romero’s Creepshow (1982).
Rituals arrived at theaters in Canada in 1977 without much fanfare and opened in the U.S. the following year but quickly disappeared. Part of the film’s failure to find an audience might have been due to its spotty release by different distributors, who tried varying approaches to a promotional campaign. In some regions, the film was titled The Creeper and given a more straightforward horror approach on the poster.
Posters bearing Rituals as the title were split between positioning the movie as a survivalist thriller or a horror genre entry. An example of the former shows a grimacing Hal Holbrook pointing a gun with the tag line, “In A World Turned Suddenly Savage, The Answers Have Become – Brutally Simple!” Among the horror promotions is a poster version showing campers fording a river while a skull-faced entity looks down on them from above. The most ambiguous poster of all borrows a line from the 1907 Americana folk song The Teddy Bears’ Picnic: “If you go down in the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise.”
Thanks to the popularity of the VHS format in the 1980s, Rituals was rediscovered by a new generation of movie lovers and has slowly built up a cult following over the years. The film has since been released on DVD and Blu-ray but the image quality has always been uneven (especially the final sequence in the cabin), due to an accident in the processing lab which resulted in damage to the negative. It is still perfectly viewable, if not in stellar condition, and the Blu-Ray from Scorpion Releasing (released in January 2021) is probably your best option. It also includes an audio commentary by star/producer Lawrence Dane and on-camera interviews with Dane and co-star Robin Gammell plus original trailers. If you’re looking for an offbeat Halloween flick, try this.
Other links of interest:
https://www.filmink.com.au/unsung-auteurs-peter-carter/
https://lawrencedane.com/sitearchive.html
Cinema Sojourns 