***SPOILERS*** After a string of hits actor Laurence Harvey tries his hand in directing in the film "The Cermony" with himself as it star the waiting to be executed bank robber Sean McKenna. In fact McKenna was the one who tried to prevent the murder of the bank guard that he's now to play with his life for with the actual killer getting away, due to sloppy police work, Scot-free! Now faced with being shot at sunrise it's McKenna's kid brother Dominic, Robert Walker Jr, who's planning to spring him by impersonating the priest who to give him his last rites!At first the prison jail break takes the prison administration by complete surprise and is successful with a shocked, in seeing Dominic as a priest, McKenna making it out before the police knew what happened! But what shocked McKenna even more is the fact that his brother Dominic was also planning to check out of the country not with half of the money from the bank robbery but his girlfriend Catherine, Sarah Miles, as well! This leads to a violent fist fight between the brothers as the police start to close in on them. With Dominic making a run or drive for it his car crashes into a tree and explodes leaving him, or his face, unrecognizable.***SPOILERS*** Half baked final with Dominic due to his disfigurement mistaken for his brother Sean McKenna who's to be executed by a firing squad for Sean's crime. You expected a lot better then what you got with the movies bazaar mistaken identity ending which made no sense at all! With the person who was to be executed walking out of the prison without any of the guards as much as laying a hand on him. It was as if by them, those in charge of McKenna's, in screwing things up the first time around just called it quits and decided to let McKenna off in order to clear their guilty consciences!

I did not hate "The Ceremony" nor did I particularly like it. I think the biggest problem keeping me from really enjoying the films were the characters...I just didn't care about any of them. And, after a while I found my attention wavering.When the film begins, Sean (Laurence Harvey) is about to be executed. It seems he was part of a robbery gone bad--and someone was killed during the robbery. However, and this makes no sense at all, some of the folks at the prison are lamenting how sad it is that they're going to kill the guy. However, he isn't executed, as hie brother (Robert Walker, Jr.) arranges for him to escape.The most interesting thing about this movie is that the leading man, Laurence Harvey, not only starred in it but directed and produced it as well. While this wasn't always a bad thing, I do think Harvey overacted a bit when his character was in prison--and a different director might have gotten a different sort of performance. Additionally, the film suffers because I just didn't care on whit about anyone in the film and at times it seemed a bit lifeless, though the twist at the end was pretty interesting.

When I saw this in the sixties it really made me realize the breadth of acting ability of Ross Martin. I had only seen him in roles of the comedic sidekick prior to this role. His believability as the evil commandant was astounding. This made the movie for me.

If you didn't know this was a Spain/US production, you'd think it was a timeless fable: there are so few localized contexts. The supporting actors delineate themselves sharply, but Laurence Harvey steals the show, as always, with his intensity (check out his work in Tamiko, a neurotic romance set in Japan), and compounds this by directing with intensity: the camera is always zooming into people's faces from above, below, and sideways. It's dizzying. That said, the movie's worth seeing. All praise to early 60's B&W films.