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“Here the old gods aren’t dead”: Review of
The Wicker Man (1973)
by John Plunket
Anthony Shaffer is best known for his 1971 Tony Award winning play Sleuth, and for the screenplay of Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972). Following these successes, Shaffer set out to write a horror film that would fly in the face of horror film conventions, and The Wicker Man was the result.
The likeable, though straitlaced and devout Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward, fresh from the UK television series Callan, and later known for his role in the ‘80s television series The Equalizer) comes to the remote island of Summerisle, off the west coast of Scotland. He is acting on an anonymous tip regarding the disappearance of a young girl, Rowan Morrison (Geraldine Cowper).
The residents, as islanders tend to be, are insular and wary of outsiders. They claim to have no knowledge of the missing girl. Howie questions Rowan’s supposed mother (Irene Sunters), the smarmy proprietor of the Green Man Inn (Lindsay Kemp) and the innkeeper’s seductive daughter, Willow (the stunning Britt Ekland) to no avail.
Digging deeper, Howie is soon shocked to discover that the islanders have reverted to pagan ways. They take their names from trees and flowers, they believe in reincarnation (“When the human life is over the soul returns to fire, water, animals…”), and they practice bizarre fertility rites. Maypoles and images of Celtic deities are everywhere. The church is crumbling, and in the churchyard graves are planted with trees. There is much preparation for the upcoming May Day festival.
The pagan beliefs seem harmless enough when not viewed through the lens of Howie’s strict Christianity; the only fly in the ointment is the obvious cover-up of Rowan’s fate. Howie’s frustration, bewilderment, and sense of moral outrage swell as he goes from one dead end to another.
The charismatic leader of this pagan island, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), offers a trenchant defense of his beliefs, but no help to Howie’s investigation. Lee is debonair and silky smooth in the part, proclaiming Howie’s God to be dead (“He can’t complain. He had his chance, and in modern parlance ‘blew it’.”), and responding to the Sergeant’s outrage at seeing naked girls ritually jumping through a fire by remarking dryly that it would be much too dangerous to jump through with their clothes on. The part of Lord Summerisle was in fact written for Lee, and he ranks The Wicker Man as the best film of his career.
Woodward does a good job portraying a man of perhaps too strict a faith, who is cast into (to him) a den of heathens. Howie sternly sticks his jaw out and carries on with the investigation, but finds he is not as unflappable as he imagined. He fears that Rowan either has been or will become the victim of a blood ritual, and becomes increasingly enraged and muddled as the islanders attempt to make a fool out of him.
Along with the strong performances by Woodward and Lee, The Wicker Man has much to like. It takes Hammer Films standbys like Lee and Ingrid Pitt (in a small but revealing role as the town librarian) and places them in a very different context – no vampires or crumbling castles here. The film shows the islander’s pagan ways in detail; the filmmakers obviously did their research. Part of the film’s appeal is that it shows the loneliness of the outsider; Howie is isolated from the mainland, cast into a culture where the norms are reversed. He is the outsider in terms of belief as well as location; he thinks the islanders are crazed and immoral for behaving the way they do, and they feel the same of him. Shaffer takes the time to portray the islanders as more than just cardboard cultists; they are normal, multi-dimensional people with a valid religion, sensible and pleasant – except perhaps for some unsavory rituals which may lurk below the surface. This realism and attention to detail leaves one with the feeling that somewhere, just such an island may exist.
The Wicker Man contains some excellent folk music by Paul Giovanni, but therein lies what some will see as a flaw: bizarrely, this is also a bit of a musical. The pagans like to sing. Topical songs spring up at odd moments: a bawdy homage to the Britt Ekland character Willow and a Maypole song with a gaggle of schoolchildren, among others. With the exception of Willow’s song and dance as she attempts to seduce the prudish Sgt. Howie, these numbers seem a little random and may leave viewers nonplussed.
The Anchor Bay DVD also contains enlightening interviews with the principals, revealing that the cast went through some discomfort during filming due to bad weather and other factors; particularly enjoyable is Edward Woodward’s reminiscence about being urinated on by goats.
Director Robin Hardy states: “The Wicker Man resulted from a long series of conversations… [with Anthony Shaffer] about doing a film which was a kind of anti-horror film, a film that was frightening without using all the conventional, clichéd, pentagrams and garlic and stakes-through-the-heart and all that stuff.” The Wicker Man is not very frightening, but it is unique, a sort of mystery/thriller/musical/horror film. It is overall a well-crafted and atmospheric work, thought-provoking and memorable, and highly enjoyable.With superior being a bright full moon, this movie rates:
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© Plunket, 2006
