Screened: October 29, 2007
Format: DVD - Anchor Bay (2001) (Extended Version)
Horror-Fest 2007
Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult classic The Wicker Man is one of the most enigmatic British films of the past fifty years. Film magazine Cinefantastique once claimed it as “the Citizen Kane of horror movies.†However, some critics have dismissed it as a misguided jumble of mystery, melodrama, allegory, camp, and musical numbers. The film was plagued with production problems, and it is miraculous that Hardy and screenwriter Anthony Shaffer ever saw their work released. Yet actor Christopher Lee, a veteran of the British Hammer horror film era, has called The Wicker Man the most intelligent film he has ever made.
Strictly as a work of art, The Wicker Man is a success. Shot on location in Scotland, the film’s gorgeous photography captures the windswept, hardscrabble details of the insular North Atlantic. The film features a host of colorful walk-ons by British character actors, as well as some genuinely memorable performances, particularly the strong lead by Edward Woodward. Indeed, The Wicker Man would be Woodward’s film if it were not for the sudden and sinister appearance of Lee about halfway in. The depictions of pagan or neo-pagan magical practices are admirably realistic, at least given the expectations of a horror film about paganism. The folk music featured prominently in the film has a palpable 1970s character, a mixture of earnestness and absurdity that makes it strangely appealing.
Although it is often labeled a horror film, The Wicker Man is not particularly horrifying. It has no gore, no monsters, no sudden scares, and minimal special effects. What makes it haunting and memorable is its atmosphere of creeping dread. The film scatters small details before the viewer–objects, symbols, facial expressions, lines of dialogue. These details coalesce to create a tableau of chills, and the final scene of the film unfolds with an unblinking, unnerving ferocity. The Wicker Man is almost certainly a film with a message; disturbing currents run through it regarding belief, superstition, fate, choice, and morality. Whatever wisdom it offers remains something of a secret wisdom. I like to think that the moral of The Wicker Man, if one ever existed, was only whispered by cast and crew, and only over whiskey on lonely nights.