EDITOR’S NOTE: Rituals was on the CBS Late Movie on February 26, 1980 and January 6, 1982.
Canada, with your tax shelters and movies that are far north of odd, remains our constant bastion and perhaps a place to run to. Director Peter Carter also made a movie called High-Ballin ’, and it wasn’t a porno; instead, it was a trucking film, so we need to respect the artist coming in.
Five doctors go on vacation deep in the Northern Ontario wilderness. Every year, one of them gets to pick where they go, and this time, it’s D.J. (Gary Reineke) who gets to be the travel agent. He takes the guys—Harry (Hal Holbrook), Mitzi (Lawrence Dane), Martin (Robin Gammell), and Abel (Ken James)—to the Cauldron of the Moon, a practical location created by a fire a few years earlier. According to the natives, this is where the earth collided with the moon, and it should be a place of magic, but it’s really just where the doctors get drunk and argue about their lives, their ethics, and, well, just argue.
As our guys wake up for another day of cutting up, they end up getting cut up in a much different way. That’s because everyone’s boots have been stolen. I guess these guys never listened to Iron Maiden or cowboy lore. D.J. had said, time and again, to bring a backup pair of boots, and he ended up being the only one who did. That means he has to go back alone through the dangerous woods and bring back four pairs of boots. As the guys wait for their friend, they’re soon confronted by the carcass of a dead deer before they also discover a severed head. That snake is supposed to be the Staff of Aesculapius, the symbol of the American Medical Association, which shows that the stalker knows the doctors’ history from overhearing their conversations.
He also leaves X-rays taken from a military hospital, medals and discharge papers, which is his poison pen letter to these men, doctors with callous attitudes regarding their trade. They soon realize they are being hunted by an ex-soldier who first wants to degrade them before killing them. However, Harry, a war veteran, won’t let him get away with it.
That’s a real dead deer, by the way, in case you think the Italians are the only ones willing to sicken you with authentic snuffed-out animals on celluloid.
While this movie was obviously inspired by Deliverance, it’s also a proto-slasher, with a killer setting traps in the woods that predates the work of Cropsey, Madman Marz and Pamela Voorhees’ little man.
Director Peter Carter also made High-Ballin’, The Swiss Family Robinson TV series and the TV movie The Intruder Within. Writer Ian Sutherland also wrote Improper Channels, Highpoint and lots of TV.
Rituals was re-released as The Creeper.
You can watch this on Tubi.
