Sadly, if you mention The Wicker Man in polite conversation nowadays some chuckle-head will invariably drop to their knees and start doing their best scenery-chewing Nic Cage impersonation:
But long before Neil LaBute's ill-conceived, meme-a-licious remake was crapped into existence, the original Wicker Man from 1973 not only birthed the "folk horror" sub-genre it eventually became a celebrated cult classic. Star Christopher Lee even went so far as it call it the "best film he ever made."
The story centers around the investigations of an Uber-religious Police Sergeant named Howie, played by Edward Woodward of The Equalizer fame. After learning about the disappearance of a young girl named Rowan Morrison, Howie travels via seaplane to isolated Summerisle off the west coast of Scotland. Once there, he discovers that the locals are being pretty cagey about Rowan and pretty soon their collective stories are rife with inconsistencies.
Seemingly even worse for the Puritanical cop are the villager's ethical and spiritual views. To Howie's horror, they've collectively veered away from Catholicism and fallen back into their old Pagan beliefs. Their pub songs are overtly ribald and cheeky, folks bone outdoors right in front of each other and the fetching daughter of the innkeeper, Willow (Britt Eklund), enthusiastically attempts to seduce Howie with a pretty alluring nude dance / spell combination.
Sounds like an awesome getaway to me, but, for the repressed police officer, it's a worst case scenario. Between his palpable disgust over the "heathen's" libertine behavior and the hubris that stems from his false sense of moral and spiritual high ground, Howie soon finds himself at odds with the island's ancestral leader, Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee. Eventually the officer starts to unravel the mystery surrounding the girl's disappearance, leading to one of the most shocking and powerful twist endings in cinema history.
Unlike most modern horror pictures, the setting, performances and the music are all top notch here. Shot on location in a series of small Scottish towns, the film's mise en scene is completely convincing. The various shops, the Green Man pub, Summerisle Castle and all of the exteriors really sell the illusion of authenticity.
This is augmented by a soundtrack that starts off deceptively innocuous, via folksy tunes like "Corn Riggs"; a song I suspect only makes sense to people who own a disproportionate amount of sheep. But then, thanks to bangers like "Maypole Song" and "Fireleap", the movie's aural presence starts to veer into increasingly esoteric, odd and unsettling territory. "Willow's Song", for example, is hauntingly- evocative of both the scene where it's used as well as the film's overall cock-eyed tone.
Equally convincing are the film's off-kilter performances. Edward Woodward plays Detective Howie with stick-up-the-ass perfection, bringing the perfect balance of pent-up distaste, Catholic arrogance and patronizing bravado to the role. He shows tremendous range, especially when things start to go sideways, upon which time he's forced to pivot from square-jawed swagger to twitchy, sweaty desperation.
As for Christopher Lee, he shares some great "OooOoo...snap!" exchanges with Woodward, such as the following:
Howie: Oh, what is all this? I mean, you've got fake biology, fake religion...Sir, have these children never heard of Jesus?
Summerisle: Himself the son of a virgin, impregnated, I believe, by a ghost.
(Howie suddenly looks visibly shaken)
Summerisle: Do sit down, Sergeant. Shocks are so much better absorbed with the knees bent.
Even as a rational, modern viewer who knows full well that the medicinal properties of toads are limited at best and blood sacrifices can be messy and complicated, Lee's portrayal of Lord Summerisle is so cool, confident and self-assured that I'm tempted to call up my travel agent and rent a B&B there next May Day weekend.
Genre fans will certainly appreciate the brief, albeit welcome, presence of penultimate Hammer horror Scream Queen Ingrid Pitt, who plays the tightly-wound town librarian, who we later see um,...unwinding in the bathtub. Diane Cilento is also wonderfully flinty as Miss Rose, the local schoolteacher. I love her verbal sparing match with Howie and how genuinely perplexed she seems to be by his obstinate, and abstinent, ways.
Then there's the impossibly-gorgeous Britt Ekland who, by all accounts, didn't have the best time filming The Wicker Man. Even though the Swedish actress was dubbed by two other women to sound convincingly Scottish, but I think she was perfectly cast as the ethereal Willow and her performance is still downright mesmerizing. Also deserving mention is her on-screen pops, Alder, played by Lindsay Kemp. There's a wonderfully slippery, besotted and vaguely degenerate quality to Kemp's demeanor, which sets off alarm bells whenever he's on screen.
But, honestly, the film's two greatest strengths are its script and the escalating parade of oddities that we bear witness to, leading up to a finale which I can only describe as the cinematic equivalent of being struck in the head with a surfboard. Between the discordant tone, quirky performances and the increasingly-inexplicable conveyor belt of visual and aural oddities, the film maintains a gloriously sustained atmosphere of creeping dread throughout the entire run time.
The Wicker Man might be the great-grandfather of the "folk horror" sub-genre, but it's also still one of the best.
Tilt: up.
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