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Rituals

Rituals is a 1977 film from Canada and the USA, directed by Peter Carter, running 95 minutes. reelscum files it under slasher and hicksploitation.

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Year
1977 · 1970s films
Country
Canada · USA
Runtime
95 min
Director
Peter Carter
Updated
29 Oct 2026
Obscurity
obscure (59/100)
Also known as
The Creeper · Creeper

Defined in the glossary: Slasher, Hicksploitation

The Canadian Deliverance, and grimmer than the nickname promises.

Five doctors fly into the northern Ontario bush for a fishing trip, wake on the first morning to find their boots stolen, and spend the rest of the film being picked off by something in the trees that plainly planned all this. Hal Holbrook anchors it as the one man keeping his head while his smug colleagues come apart, and the wilderness does most of the work, with a stalker who reads the terrain far better than the men crossing it. It reached screens the year before Halloween and gets to the stalk-and-kill early, which is why people keep calling it a proto-slasher. For years it only circulated in a battered, murky transfer that made it look even nastier than it is. Bleak, cold, and better than its obscurity suggests.

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