HotToastyRag If this movie didn't come out the same year as Rosemary's Baby, I'd wonder what possessed anyone to make it. I'll chose to believe everyone wanted to help launch Mia Farrow's spooky movie by releasing a similar film at the same time. That's my standard for recommending this movie: if you actually liked Rosemary's Baby, rather than just appreciated it, then you can feel free to watch Secret Ceremony.Elizabeth Taylor's daughter is dead, and Mia Farrow's mother is dead. Miraculously, Liz looks like Mia's mom, and Mia reminds Liz of her daughter. Somehow they find each other, bond quickly, and become enmeshed in each other's strange, sick lives. This is a very weird film, with unexplained plot points, melodramatic acting, and mentally-ill characters. Mia repeatedly reenacts a rape scene while she's alone. She calls Liz "Mom" and takes a bath with her, and the two girls giggle about what nuisances men and sex are. Robert Mitchum costars as Mia's stepfather, but unless he, too, wanted to support Rosemary's Baby, I don't know why he agreed to be a part of this movie.This movie is so strange, awful, and convoluted, it makes the 1968 horror flick seem like a Mister Rogers' episode. If I'd cared enough about it, I would have been seriously disturbed, but thankfully, I didn't let the film get the better of me.Kiddy warning: Obviously, you have control over your own children. However, due to some very strange and upsetting content, I wouldn't let my kids watch it.

writers_reign There is, of course, a clue in the name of the character played by Mia Farrow but how many Joe Publics did the producers expect to be hip to the rarely performed five-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelly or the story on which it was based. On the other hand those same producers do appear to be targeting a pretty hip audience; for example practically every comment posted here refers to the Liz Taylor character as a prostitute yet in the version I watched there is no mention, visible evidence, or even a hint of whether or not she even has any kind of job nor any explanation of why she allows herself to be picked up by Mia Farrow or why she is apparently free to abandon her home indefinitely. In short it's the kind of film where the audience must take this kind of sloppiness plus the odd snatch of Pinteresque non sequiter punctuated dialogue in its stride. On the plus side the acting is excellent as is the camera work.

boblipton The major talents involved with this movie -- director Joseph Losey and actors Robert Mitchum, Elizabeth Taylor and Mia Farrow, have done some great work and some lousy work -- Mitchum was inclined to phone in performances unless he got interested. But, like many people who get involved with the arts, when they were doing something on the edge, they doubtless knew they could fail -- but a lot of the people here seem to fall into the common fallacy that great talent can never fail -- as if DONOVAN'S REEF is a great film because it was directed by John Ford or A COUNTESS FROM HONG KONG was a laugh riot because it was directed by Chaplin. Or that every performance given by Paul Newman was great. Sometimes people make mistakes and the greater the genius, the greater the mistakes.About the only good thing I can say about this movie is that the camera work by Gerry Fisher is excellent and occasionally distracting. After that, everything bogs down because of the idiotic, minimalist story in which nothing is ever really explained -- but the plot is that psycho Mia Farrow's mother has just died so she falls in with psycho hooker Elizabeth Taylor, whose daughter has just died, until psycho step-daddy Bob Mitchum, in a hideous beard and sporting an accent that varies form Irish to Australian to his basic accent, discourses on statutory rape.That's very little to build a hundred-minute movie on and, despite everyone -- except possibly for Mitchum -- doing their best, there are long periods of nothing. Some might look upon these as meditative sequences. I find them boring.So what is the result? You have characters you don't care about doing very little of interest in a cluttered world -- I suspect the set decorator was getting a kickback from prop suppliers -- and the question arises why this was released at all. Answer: because some people would go to see it based on the track record of the major talent involved and even if the project would not show a profit, at least the loss would be ameliorated.... and forty years later some money is still being picked up by showing it on cable TV.

emuir-1 I have been an admirer of Joseph Losey's films for many years, but if they are going to show this clunker, why not dust off the far superior Accident, which starred a pre Cabaret Michael York, as well as Stanley Baker and Vivian Merchant? Although not THE most awful film I have ever seen, this film plays as a ridiculous parody. Once again Elizabeth Taylor plays a hooker, and an over the hill one at that! Mia Farrow decked out in a ridiculously top heavy black wig acts the demented waif. Robert Mitchum must have needed the money. Miss Taylor does not miss an opportunity to pose with furs and flimsy negligee, presumably to cover up her limited acting talent. Every time she opens her mouth and that strident quaver comes out I want to switch off and pick up a book. Did no one ever give the woman voice lessons? The only thing going for this film is the splendid art direction. The film was worth watching just for the lovely stained glass throughout the house.