The Wicker Man is now widely regarded as a ‘cult classic’, produced in 1973 directed by Robin Hardy, this grainy 1970s film is a surreal horror/mystery film. Starring Christopher Lee (a Hammer Horror regular), Ingrid Pitt (another horror regular) and Britt Ekland (Roger Moore’s Bond Girl in The Man with the Golden Gun), this film boasts an impressive cast.
The film follows the work of a prudish police sergeant called Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) who receives a letter about a missing girl on a mysterious island. He ventures to the island, only to be frustrated in his search for the girl and horrified by the local heathen beliefs. This film is a folk horror film which is largely entertaining and amusing, but the triviality quickly shifts at the right moment. The audience is lulled into a false sense of security much like the Sergeant.
Spookily, the film starts with an introduction thanking Lord Summerisle and the people of his island for an insight into their religion. This gives the audience the impression that the film could be real, could be based on actual events, and this is frightening. On further thought a Google search tells us that the Summer Isles are a group islands off the coast of the Highlands of Scotland, not a single island and only one of which is inhabited. In the 70s however, there was no internet, so there may have been people who believed that Summerisle existed and was full of scary pagans.
There is a largely ill received 2006 version of The Wicker Man starring Nicholas Cage, this film failed because it missed the true core of the story, that religion is the divide between Howie and the residents of the island. From the very beginning it is clear that religion is incredibly important to the film, the church scene at the beginning is highly contrasted with the ritualistic dancing of the people of Summerisle. It is amusing to watch Howie walk around this island horrified by naked girls, gruesome sweets, phallic symbols and the general weirdness. There is such a contrast that it is really quite funny. These scenes seem bizarre; there is a weird group sex scene which even the least prudish of us would find a little uncomfortable to watch, but luckily it’s very short. The flustered policeman is tormented by the local customs and frightened by the macabre.
Christopher Lee is excellent in this film, he is a cheery but frightening Lord Summerisle, and like the general atmosphere of the film his character is rather unsettling. There is a lot of full frontal nudity; Britt Ekland plays Willow, the landlord’s sexy promiscuous daughter, and the infamous wall slapping scene has her dancing sexually around the room naked, which is very odd. Filmed in Scotland with Scottish accents, it reflects the idea of a remote community isolated from the modern world, particularly as it has the potential to be true. The name of the film is also somewhat interesting in terms of the plot as the audience is sitting there waiting for the Wicker Man to pop up.
It is not a film for the faint hearted; although there’s none of the adrenaline typical of films like Paranormal Activity, it is frightening in an intriguing way. It is weird but the plot is exceptionally good, definitely worth a watch if you can handle the gruesome, the sex and the nudity.
