Secret Rites (1971)

 

Director: Derek Ford

Screenplay: Derek Ford

Cast: Penny Beeching as Penny; Shirley Harmer as a Coven Member; Lee Peters as the Narrator; Alex Sanders as Himself; Jane Spearing as a Coven Member; Wendy Tomlinson as a Coven Member; Maxine Sanders as Herself

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #248

 

The initial thing to address, in this documentary about a Wiccan initiation ritual and other rites performed at the coven of Alex Sanders, an English occultist, is that this definitely a fictionalised interpretation. We will get to the film's value as an artefact as we go, but just going off the main selling point of this micro-feature, Secret Rites' director Derek Ford is famous for work selling salacious content like The Swappers (1970), an anthology of wife swapping and swinging narratives. Penny Beeching, the young hairdresser wishing to join Sanders' coven, has a role in the television series Up Pompeii! (1970) with Frankie Howerd, and there were people not part of the coven hired as additional extras during that ritual scenes¹.

However, the interesting thing, as with any film, is that it still has legitimacy as a cultural document. More so as this does have a really funny and ultimately profound prologue, where you are introduced to a typical Hammer horror film conclusion as a parody. A nude Satanist orgy is taking place, with the oncoming virginal sacrifice of a young woman being talked of by the narrator, only for her fiancé John Goodfellow (wink) to rescue her with just a crucifix and the power of Christ. The film immediately cuts to Alex Sanders, a real practitioner of the occult, proclaiming this image to be rubbish, and later on even Dennis Wheatley, the author of the likes of The Devil Rides Out (1934) and other Satanic horror novels, is buried by his coven in the discussions. This immediately proclaims Secret Rites' virtue even if it is a fictionalised mondo documentary, that this is replacing the image of evil witchcraft stereotypes with Wiccans who, whilst still doing sky clad nude rituals, are ordinary people who pass the viewers on the street.

Even if Penny is a glamorised figure to enter this coven, the banality of her going from work at a hairdresser to the coven for her ritual is an image with profoundness, the occult and esoteric alternative religions seeping into ordinary British life. Even when her voice over talks of her family being slightly wary for her, no one is trying to stop her casually going to her induction ceremony as if a club. It is still of the time, with a lot of psychedelic music and m-o-o-g synthesiser sounds on the soundtrack, but for a document presenting the secret rituals of a community few have seen. This still has relevance in seeing how Secret Rites is trying to present the unordinary being of regular people. It is still sold for titillation - that whilst there is body positivity in varying shapes and equal opportunity full frontal nudity, this is sold on many nubile nude women. For whatever reason, alongside the more sombre documentary Legend of the Witches (1970)², this is rated for still being only suitable for eighteen year olds to see in modern British between them for BDSM nods, which is the only truly absurd content of the micro-feature too.

Even then, though it follows the trope of this type of feature of having to dampen the titillation for its audience with moralising, it is more progressive in this case as Sanders talks of people wishing to join his coven for nude orgies only to leave when learning you have to study a lot whilst you are there. There is more emphasis on very kitsch rituals here, with man in an elaborate goat's head doing nothing but lounge around the proceedings, but there is also talk of having to do lectures, reading and studying to be a coven member, which is a progressing thing to include. Rather than just nude frolics in occult circles, this is enforcing that these covens are more than scintillating acts of fornication but an alternative belief system with its beliefs, study and discussion. One of the most rewarding moments is seeing these people, with clothes on again post initiation ritual, talking about Penny's initiation afterwards in a discussion group.

The rituals themselves, for entertainment's sake, are kitsch in an amusing way. The rituals are likely as accurate as Alex Sanders wished them to be, bearing in mind Derek Ford clearly wanted to add some additional spice to sell the content. The final, forbidden ritual we the viewers finally see is clearly this fully. An Egyptian ritual of people who love each other to the point they believe they knew each other in past lives, and wish to union even their souls, it means a lot of homemade Egyptian iconography. Most of the rest of this content, including restaging the meeting between the goddess of rebirth and Death, obviously has to be taken into consideration of how Wiccan beliefs are relatively young, properly founded in the early 20th century, and where their sources on witchcraft belief came from, but they feel more accurate depictions in spite of the content around itself. Plus, and this would not be a surprise, Alex Sanders of the head of the coven with his wife (not  as prominent despite her importance in the conven) was probably taking any advantage to promote his beliefs even if spicing up his practices up for this little movie. Anything which feels more provocative, or has non-coven members involved, was likely a compromise for him to get more eyes onto his belief practices, whether right to do or not.

It is a fascinating piece, as much for these scenes in the darkened cavernous ritual area, of their era, but also as still a good document of how these movements were bubbling under the surface at this time, feeling as appropriately normal as anything else not taking place in a darkened cavernous ritual area. Certainly, for a purely pleasing sit, this is only forty seven minutes and you get to enjoy a psych-music scored piece of homemade occultism, which no one should find disappointing unless you are one of those awkward people wishing to call these nice ordinary people blasphemers. As they themselves point out, a lot of the lore on witchcraft, even kissing Satan's arse in nocturnal rituals, are misquoted or were weaponized, whether old pagan gods turned into Christian demons or that the ritual arse kissing is speculated to only be the case because the deity is taller than a person and that was the only place to show devotion to them. Maybe from the director Derek Ford this is a smuttier take on that important idea, but as a cultural artifact, we could have just had the evil witchcraft clichés but thankfully ended up with something attempting to be progressive. One where I can end a paragraph with that thought now buried in a reader's mind.

 

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1) A great source book which covers this film is The Bodies Beneath (2019) by William Fowler and Vic Pratt, covering the many strange and unique titles from British cinema and television, which throws a lot more speculation on what is real and possible reel filmmaking for selling something saucy.

2) The pair of films has been sold together on Blu-Ray and DVD from the British Film Institution as a compelling double bill in 2019, both including Alex Sanders and including perspectives on occultism at that time including its growing acceptance to some.