Prepare to be comprehensively freaked-out this April when the free monthly Lobotomy Room film club (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People) presents the peculiar London-set late 1968 psychodrama Secret Ceremony! It's precisely the type of film John Waters would describe as a “failed art movie” – but that’s one of my favourite genres, and if you’re going to make a failed art movie, make it this wildly baroque, inscrutable and claustrophobic!
Screen diva Elizabeth Taylor (costumed by Dior and coiffed by Alexandre de Paris) stars as Leonara, a blowzy middle-aged prostitute tormented by the death of her young daughter by drowning. One day profoundly disturbed poor little rich girl Cenci (post-Rosemary’s Baby Mia Farrow at her most waif-like) latches onto her, decides Leonara represents the return of her recently deceased mother and drags her back to her haunted art nouveau mansion in Holland Park. Once installed there, Leonora soon clashes with Albert (Robert Mitchum), Cenci’s sexually predatory stepfather. From there things just get progressively more twisted … (To put Secret Ceremony into context: the same year, Taylor and director Joseph Losey collaborated on the even more berserk Boom! (1968), the flop film based on a Tennessee Williams play - another movie I love!).
So, won’t you join us to watch Secret Ceremony downstairs in the glittering surroundings of Fontaine’s bar in Dalston on Thursday 20 April 2023? Perhaps the £6 cocktail menu will help make Secret Ceremony more comprehensible! Numbers are limited, so reserving in advance via Fontaine’s website is essential. Alternatively, phone 07718000546 or email bookings@fontaines.bar to avoid disappointment! The film starts at 8:30 pm. Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8:00 pm. To ensure everyone is seated and cocktails are ordered on time, please arrive by 8:15 pm at the latest.
Read more about Secret Ceremony here.
-screenshot.jpg)
Oh, Liz Taylor was having a ball with "middle-aged sluttish vamp" roles in this era, wasn't she? Not content with playing "Martha" in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf there was also my fave X, Y & Zee, as well as others I haven't seen such as The Only Game in Town or Reflections in a Golden Eye... Jx
ReplyDeleteTaylor made so many odd films. They're the ones you used to find in the VHS dollar bin at the video rental place, as no one would rent them. There should be film festival devoted to them.
ReplyDeleteIf you liked Boom!, you'll like Secret Ceremony. The Taylor film that's also hard to find is Ash Wednesday (1973). What I dream of is the British Film Institute here doing a Shelley Winters retrospective with all of her rare horror / exploitation / hagsploitation films!
Delete