Secret Rites (1971)

The success of ‘Legend of the Witches’ (1969), which ran for over 32 weeks in the West End meant another sexploitation flavoured documentary about the occult was inevitable. This time knocking on the coven door was Derek ‘The Wife Swappers’ Ford, a man whose obsession with sex in the suburbs and those who pushed the boundaries of socially acceptable behavior, explains his own personal attraction to this subject.

The resultant documentary, Secret Rites opens with a scene that allows Ford to take pot shots at the Hammer horror films of the time, as the dashing Captain Kronos like hero John Goodfellow breaks up an occult gathering, rescues his true love from a Satanic orgy and wards off the evil doers with his trusted crucifix. It’s a wildly over the top sequence, with the film’s narrator Lee Peters gleefully hamming it up on the soundtrack “a frenzied orgy…blasphemous rituals…it is the Devil’s night”.



For serious practitioners however this is exactly the kind of fictional malarkey that gives the occult a bad name. “That is a lot of rubbish” explains occult bigwig Alex Sanders “when people meet me in the street they’re so terrified of me, after seeing a scene like that, they think I’m going to put a curse on them.”

Aiming to right this wrong, Secret Rites purports to offer up a more realistic portrayal of a young woman’s initiation into witchcraft, as Penny embarks on the left hand path via a hair salon and the London underground (aptly passing a poster for Harry Kumel’s Daughters of Darkness on the tube). “Far from the image of the cranky spinster one might associate with witches” Penny began writing to Alex Sanders after reading the 1969 biography of him ‘King of the Witches’ a book that helped catapult Sanders and his blonde, and significantly younger wife Maxine into the public eye. Rarely out of the tabloids in those days, Sanders freely lent himself to all manner of documentaries, including the aforementioned Legend of the Witches, and regularly appeared on TV and radio to defend his lifestyle against such guardians of public decency as Dennis Wheatley, and Jimmy Savile- quelle ironie. Such was their notoriety that Alex and Maxine even got a gig as technical advisers on the big budget MGM thriller ‘Eye of the Devil’. By the time Ford sought them out in 1971, Sanders and his wife were effectively the John and Yoko of the occult world.



“I feel very nervous...it's like taking my exams all over again, it's like going on a blind date” sez Penny. Acting as go-between for Penny and Alex Sanders is Wendy Tomlinson, a female witch with a pleasant boho vibe to her, who sketches Penny in her studio whilst Penny asks her questions about Sanders and her upcoming initiation. Tomlinson had been featured in another occult documentary ‘The Power of the Witch- Real or Imaginary?’ made by the BBC, and her authenticity is never in question. Somewhat more suspect is new girl Penny…nee Penny Beeching, who in fact held an equity card, was on the books of the Askew modeling agency and had a few TV credits (Up Pompeii, The Morecambe and Wise Show) under her belt. Rather dishonestly Secret Rites portrays Penny as an everyday secretary, and the non disclosure of her acting and modeling credentials does pose questions over Secret Rites credibility. Penny never completely convinces as a wannabe student of the occult, what with her trolley dolly persona, and her vacant reaction shots to Sanders’ questions are a master class in unintentional comedy. Penny’s heavily dolled up looks and perfect, glamour model body earmark her as a plant among the more humdrum bodies of Sanders’ followers. She seems as much of an awkward shoe-in to this world as professional glamour models like Pamela Green and Margaret Nolan were in 1960s nudist camp movies.



Commenting on the King of the Witches book, Sanders tells Penny “in the book it shows us dancing around the fire naked” but reminds her “there is a lot more to it than that, and there’s a lot of hard work, lectures, reading, and writing the book of shadows out”. Not surprisingly though, it is the dancing around naked bit that takes precedence over the more scholarly aspects of the occult lifestyle in Secret Rites. Penny’s subsequent initiation involves much disrobing, with full frontal nudity from her and fellow initiate Brian, since “nakedness is considered by witches to be an essential symbol of freedom and equality”. For all of Secret Rites’ initial ridiculing of mainstream cinema’s depiction of the occult, its own 44 minute parade of full frontal nudity, men dressed as the horned one, and people dancing naked around the sacred circle, actually fits in perfectly with the era’s horror-pics like Curse of the Crimson Altar and Virgin Witch.

For such a media savvy, limelight loving fellow Sanders makes for a surprisingly stilted documentary subject, he is nervous and ill at ease in front of Ford’s camera. The most extraordinary thing about Alex Sanders was just how ordinary he was. It’s tempting to speculate whether Ford saw parts of himself in Sanders, both were balding, middle aged men who you could easily pass on the street without thinking there was anything remarkable about them. However in reality both men dedicated their entire lives, and poured all their energy into activities that would have been considered beyond the pale by conventional society. Sanders with the occult, Ford with exploitation filmmaking and swinging.

A witchcraft discussion group allows Sanders to reiterate the film’s criticism of the mainstream’s depiction of the occult. “People like Dennis Wheatley write about Satanism, and it gives an entirely wrong concept of what witches are” complains Sanders “we’ve been accredited with kissing the devil’s arse”. Sanders was his own best weapon against the media’s portrayal of the occult, what with his working class demeanor and flat, droning Northern accent, the result of both his Birkenhead birthplace and a Mancunian upbringing. If you’ve been raised to believe that powerful occultists were well-educated, aristocratic villains like Charles Gray in The Devil Rides Out, it is an expectation shattering experience to discover that the real life counterpart has an accent right out of Coronation Street.

Once he steps out of Ford’s obviously scripted Q&A sessions with Penny and the discussion group, is when Sanders emerges as a far more charismatic figure. Sanders the showman is especially unleashed during Ford’s filming of a witches’ ‘handfasting’ ceremony. Acting as priest, Sanders’ incredible get-up here -cape, codpiece, metal helmet with feathers bursting from it- impatiently anticipates the theatrical excesses of prog rock.



Given that the couple who are being married exchange their vows whilst naked, it could be argued that this is a rare example of a marriage ceremony where the priest has put more time and effort into his outfit than the bride and groom. Secret Rites’ major coup though is the filming of ‘the Egyptian rite of Ra’ a sex magick ritual featuring Sanders’ coven in full Egyptian regalia, and introduced with much exploitation film ballyhoo “it is the most secret and sacred of all rituals, and has rarely been witnessed, never before photographed”.

By rights, this film should be an abnormality in the Ford canon, given that it is his only attempt at fly on the wall documentary filmmaking (as opposed to the ‘dramatized reconstruction’ approach of The Wife Swappers) and despite his extensive work in the horror genre, his only occult themed movie as well. This doesn’t prove to be the case though, and with its focus on a secretive, sexually driven society, and the strong, curtain twitching, desire to peek in on it, Secret Rites fits in snuggly with Ford’s fictional films, especially his ‘group sex trilogy’ of The Wife Swappers, Suburban Wives and Commuter Husbands.

 

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Secret Rites is your typical Fordian mass of contradictions. Ford’s attitude is that is a respectful, if voyeuristic, outsider. There are no negative consequences to Penny’s involvement with the occult –an example of ‘Satanic panic’ this is not- on the contrary this is depicted as a life enhancing exercise for Penny. She gets to meet new and exciting people, go shopping for black candles, pay homage to Egyptian icons and participate in sex magick rituals, it must have made a change from appearing on Morecambe and Wise. On the other hand Secret Rites is true to the mondo movie ethos of giving thrill seekers a window into something strange, bizarre and offbeat. Any paid up member of the dirty mac brigade could buy a ticket to Secret Rites and see all those lurid tabloid stories about naked witchcraft orgies in the suburbs being played out onscreen. For a fly on the wall documentary, Secret Rites thoroughly manages to deliver the sexploitation goods. Then there is that horror movie opening sequence, intended as a condemnation of crass and sensationalistic moviemaking, yet its shot with such gusto, and is such a checklist of things within Ford’s wheelhouse –orgies, violent sex, blood rubbed on naked bodies, knives run over naked bodies- that it is difficult to believe Ford didn’t get a thrill from filming it.

I’m in no way, shape or form qualified to say whether Secret Rites has much credibility with regards to its depiction of Wicca. The involvement of a famous expert and practitioner like Sanders should technically guarantee the production some street cred. Then again Sanders was also involved in Legend of the Witches as well, a film that by all accounts doesn’t hold up well to close Wiccan scrutiny. On a purely visual level however, Secret Rites is stunning, with the film achieving the look of a Mayfair magazine photo shoot under the supervision of Kenneth Anger.



Secret Rites does put you on the path of wondering if Ford may have ever encountered Anger’s films during his pursuit of all things taboo and forbidden. There is more than a dash of Scorpio Rising about the motorcycle fantasy sequence in Ford’s Commuter Husbands (1973), albeit filtered through a heterosexual perspective, and played out among the back roads of Maldon, Essex.

Ultimately you’re left with the impression that both parties involved emerged with a good deal from Secret Rites. The left hand path received some positive publicity and a mouthpiece to bark back at their critics, while the British sex film industry were once again laughing all the way to the bank, remembering to pick up an extra swag of Eady money along the way. Secret Rites ends with a ‘don’t try this at home’ warning, with the narrator stressing “Alex Sanders has asked us to emphasize that no untrained or unprepared person should attempt to call down powers by means of these rituals, it would be foolish, it could be dangerous”.

As Peter Jackson’s character in Bad Taste says "I'm a Derek, Dereks don't run". Derek Ford never ran, especially from anything sexual. Chalk up Secret Rites as another of Derek Ford's trips into the sexual underbelly of 1970s Britain, no stone was ever left unturned by Ford and his missus…they were made for it.