That was an excellent one.

hyped garbage

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

After winning an Oscar for her role as the shrieking, voluptuous, vicious harridan in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolfe?", Elizabeth Taylor felt encouraged enough to look for riskier parts where her beauty and star power were deliberately played down. In SECRET CEREMONY, she had one of her most cutting-edge, risky role as the aging, down-trodden prostitute whose little daughter drowns. She meets a strange, mad girl, Cenci (Mia Farrow) who's convinced Liz is her recently dead mother, Leonora and takes her home where both women play a game: Elizabeth becomes Leonara and Cenci has found her mother alive and well. Director Joseph Losey creates a sumptuous world where most of the action occurs in this fabulous Victorian mansion, jammed with striking lamps, toys, dolls, furniture, lighting,etc. IT all contributes to making this an A Plus horror film where madness rules. A haunting musical score, outstanding lighting and camera-work and an unforgettable wardrobe for the star all combine to make this a true cult movie--which was lambasted by critics and audiences at the time of release but has since grown in stature as a treasured art-house classic.

I have liked this film since first seeing it upon its original release. It seems a little slow at times now and I'm really not sure I think very much of any of Robert Mitchum's, for me, lazy performance. In part, I feel this is not just his fault, as I understand that in the original story, some street kids (this was in Mexico) broke in and raped the Farrow character. So in the original her fear and excitement/obsession over sex is caused by this and not by any suggestion of impropriety on the part of Mitchum, playing her step-father. Seems to me this would have worked much better had the original scenario been retained. But never mind, we have what we have and we still have a most spooky and atmospheric movie, with Farrow and Taylor at their maddest, baddest and very best. Eerie location shooting in the art nouveaux decorated mansion and plenty happening to keep the hairs raised at the back of the neck. Unpredictable, worrying and well worth catching

This movie is a tad pretentious and muddled, but it'll get under your skin. All the characters are either so deluded (crazy rich girl Mia Farrow), desperate (middle-aged hooker Liz Taylor) or demonic (scummy pedophile Robert Mitchum) that watching it is like spending two hours in a psych ward with no attendants on duty. Also gripping is the atmosphere created by director Joseph Losey, who was considered as a genius in the 60s and is pretty much forgotten today. With wide-angle shots and a minimum of noise, Losey reinforces his characters' isolation and solipsism by making London, one of the most crowded cities in the Western world, seem as empty and quiet as a tomb.The plot is a psychological inversion of the classic haunted house story -- Liz and Mia take shelter from an outside world that threatens their relationship. And that relationship is, to put it mildly, weird. Mia lures Liz into her huge, empty home because she resembles her late mother. Liz indulges Mia's fantasy because as a homeless prostitute she's in need of shelter, plus, she lost a daughter who looked a lot like Mia. This arrangement could be sweet to the point of treacly if these two grown women didn't enjoy doing things like bathing together and discussing ex-lovers. And Mia has a particularly repulsive ex-lover in Mitchum, her former stepfather who started molesting the girl in her early teens. Though the experience clearly ripped Mia to shreds, the creep still has some power over her and the film becomes a battle of wills between Taylor and Mitchum. Along the way there's a fake pregnancy, a nightmarish seaside holiday and a visit to Mia's two horrid old-maid aunts. The movie isn't particularly pleasant or coherent, but it does pull off the impressive feat of telling its story the way its characters are experiencing it, and that's pretty damn disturbing when you're dealing with a bunch of warped people. See it, then watch a romantic comedy or something so you're able to sleep that night.

**SPOILERS** Psychological drama that has to do with two women who can't bring themselves to accept the deaths or a loved one and go into a mutual fantasy existence playing the parts of the persons that each of them grieve for. Cenci, Mia Farrow, has never got over the death of her mother who after suffering for some three years from an unknown or unnamed illness finally killed herself by downing an entire bottle of sleeping pills.Spoting this woman on a city bus who looks a lot like her deceased mother Cenci becomes so infatuated with her that she follows the women into a local Catholic Church where she goes to confession. After trying to get away from the pesky young girl the woman whom we later find out to be a street hooker named Leonora Garbowski, Elizabeth Taylor, gives into Cenci's fantasies of being her dead mother. So that instead of spending her life in cheap flea bag hotel rooms she can have a decent place to live, Cenci's huge Gothic mansion. At the same time Leonora starts to fantasize herself about Cenci being her daughter Judith who died or disappeared five years ago at the age of 10.Everything couldn't be better for the two women who feed of each others tragedies by trying to outdo themselves in who suffered the most until Cenci's step-father Albert, Robert Mitchum,shows up unexpectedly from the US. Albert a Philadelphia college professor is also somewhat of a sexual psycho who despite his strange vow, only to himself, of being celibate is at the same time sexually attracted to young girls, some as young as 10 years old. this attraction had him always on the run, or one step ahead, from the law during his entire time in the states. Albert shows up at the mansion sporting this atrocious leprechaun beard that even he's embarrassed with, did he need it to disguise himself from the cops looking for him. Thankfully he has it shaved off after five or so minutes of screen time.With Lenora knowing that her charade of being Cenci's mother is about to be exposed, by step-father Albert, she goes to stay at a fancy waterfront,on the English channel, hotel until Albert leaves. Lenora is then confronted with Cenci's mental deterioration where she becomes even more stranger and off-the-wall then she already was in the movie. Faking that Albert raped her and then, in what seems like a few days later, making believe that she's some eight months pregnant has Leonora completely lose it. In the conflict between the two unstable women Cenci finally realizes that she's, Lorona, not her mother and in effect attempts to kill herself like her real mother did with a bottle full of sleeping pills!Everything goes to pot for poor Cenci as she in effect throws Leonora out of her house only to ask her back moments later and then succumbs from the effects of her swallowing the sleeping pills overdosing and dying from them. Albert who for all the bad things in the movie that's said about him is really a somewhat decent guy, especially after he shaved off that silly beard he was wearing. Albert never as much as made, it must have taken everything that he had in him, a real sexual move on Ceni ends up with a knife in his gut courtesy of Lorona at Cenci's funeral as the movie "Secret Ceremony" finally comes to an end.Very strange movie that has it's high as well as low moments with one of them, the highs, having Elizabeth Taylor for once looking really sexy. That beach scene with her wearing a low-cut dress is a real turn on where she's as hot as she was in "The Sandpiper" back in 1964 with her husband actor Richard Burton.