The Wicker Man Went From Production Disaster To Changing Horror Forever

Publish date: 2024-05-10

The Big Picture

On its 50th anniversary, The Wicker Man is still cited as an icon of horror cinema, often high up on lists of the best and most influential horror movies, alongside the likes of The Shining and The Exorcist. Considering the long-running feud between writer and director, the cheap, drunk, and thoroughly uncomfortable production process, the lost footage and multiple cuts, and the minimal impression it made upon release, the movie’s masterpiece status is quite incredible. But beyond its own legacy, The Wicker Man realized new possibilities when it came to making scary stories for the screen; possibilities that generations of filmmakers have since embraced.

Based on ancient occult traditions, The Wicker Man is a deeply thematic exploration of the complex gray area between good and evil. Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward) is a devout Christian policeman who has ventured by plane to the remote island of Summerisle, in response to a letter regarding a girl who has gone missing. A stuffy deadpan figure of formal authority, he takes an instant distaste for the eccentric hippies inhabiting the island; when he discovers that they are all practicing pagans, he is desperately lacking pearls to clutch. The islanders are evasive from the start, offering contradictory explanations of the situation. First, nobody recognizes the girl Rowan at all; then they say they know her, but she is recently deceased; then Howie finds that her grave contains the body of a hare rather than a child. All this suspicious behavior in the run-up to the highly-anticipated Mayday celebrations convinces Howie that Rowan is intended as a sacrifice. He finds out the hard way that he was way off.

The themes and tone of The Wicker Man not only lend themselves superbly to suspense but work as a parallel of old morality tales and even stories of biblical martyrdom. Howie is set in his ways, certain of his convictions and unbending to any outside influence. He is no picketing redneck hollering about damnation: he takes his work very seriously and maintains a steely facade in the face of personal challenges. He is the perfect martyr: he is dedicated to the tenets of his faith, including being a 30-something-year-old virgin, saving himself for marriage. He begins the story as the virtuous paragon of goodness, although a contentious one, and ends up being put to death on account of his beliefs about the world around him. It is easy to observe that Howie could take action to avoid a painful death, but any such intervention would void his character’s journey and the point of the story. Even during production, the idea of some deus ex machina was laughed off-set, and they plowed ahead with the iconic ending that the movie would still be fondly remembered for to this day.

'The Wicker Man' Had a Lot of Behind-the-Scenes Drama

Throughout its production, nothing indicated that The Wicker Man would be such a huge success. It was filmed on location on the Scottish coast — an infamously frigid climate — in the winter of 1972, and being that the story was set in late April, the cast spent much time outdoors in floaty cheesecloth outfits and freezing their asses off. It was a cheap production, so much so that Christopher Lee did the job for free, and on which the cast and crew leaned into Scottish tradition and drank heavily. Britt Ekland particularly hated her surroundings, telling the media so and inciting the fury of locals, and only felt worse when she found out she was pregnant during filming. Director Robin Hardy and writer Anthony Shaffer were at each other’s throats and continued to be for decades after. When released, it garnered some praise but proved unmemorable in the immediate aftermath. It was only over the later years that it would be re-evaluated and brought to mainstream attention.

'The Wicker Man' Doesn't Offer Easy Explanations

One of the defining characteristics of The Wicker Man is where it sources its fear. Since its inception, the horror genre has largely stuck to certain kinds of menace: the paranormal, and singular human killers whose motives are cruelty or sadism. Within this frame, a village full of hippies presents no real threat, unless there is one bad apple among them with an opportunistic bloodlust. No one would ever suspect that there is an active group effort to manipulate a single victim to their death over the course of several days. Howie stays the night at a local inn, and wakes up the next day as normal — everything seems fine. His only real issue is that there is still a missing child, and everybody around him clearly knows something but won’t give him the truth. Until its closing minutes, it masquerades as a basic crime thriller. Howie is experienced in his field to the point of being jaded and seems a sharp and physically capable man. Surely he is not the one in danger.

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It is time to keep your appointment with the wicker tree.

The story pulls the classic magician’s trick of misdirection on both the audience and Howie. Rowan is framed as the victim of the story, the one who needs to be rescued from imminent danger, and that is how Howie approaches the situation. He is effectively distracted from what is really going on by his professional and moral convictions, so when he arrives for his appointment with the Wicker Man, the rug is pulled out from under him, and he comes to realize what has been going on under his nose the entire time. It is a horrifying realization. It undermines not just his astuteness as a policeman, but his belief in salvation under the protection of God. At this moment, his Lord has forsaken him, but his pious nature compels him to accept his painful death in the name of his faith. Lord Summerisle (Lee) appeases Howie by declaring that they will “bestow upon you a rare gift these days: a martyr’s death.” The purpose of his death is to bring new life to the island’s crops, affording him the eternal afterlife he expected, but in the twisted context of pagan tradition.

Music Plays an Important Role in 'The Wicker Man'

Music by Paul Giovanni is a fundamental component of the movie’s storytelling and overall folksy tone. While one or two songs are used non-diegetically to help set the mood of a scene, the songs are mostly played and sung by the characters within the context of their world, and each one has a ceremonial purpose. Within the tradition of folk bands like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span, the lyrics tell centuries-old stories. The children sing a song about the life cycle of mankind while dancing around the maypole, the pub patrons sing about their lust for the landlord’s daughter, and no fewer than three numbers are about sex. The traditional tune "Sumer is Icumen In" plays out the dramatic finale, the islanders singing it in celebration of their successful sacrifice and ringing in the summer and bountiful crop. Their joyous, carefree performance of it could be viewed as one last taunt toward the helpless Howie but ultimately underpins their own dedication to their faith. It was never anything personal against Howie, just as his Christian-oriented discomfort toward them was never personal. It is a battle of outlooks, of traditions.

'The Wicker Man' Wasn't an Instant Horror Classic — But It Still Influences Cinema

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If it took a while for audiences to circle back around to The Wicker Man and grow to love it; it took even longer for horror itself to embrace it. By the end of the decade it was made in, horror had swung heavily in the direction of exploitation and slasher for audiences of either degenerates or teenagers. It had fallen out of any vogue it once held, and while the ‘90s brought about a fresh self-awareness, horror was largely considered a young man’s game lacking in subtlety. Since the tail-end of the ‘00s, indie horror has expanded more than it has in decades, and filmmakers have started to break away from common tropes and explore the furthest corners of fear. Within this climate, the influence of classics like The Wicker Man has begun to emerge.

The works of modern filmmakers like Ti West not only tread similar thematic ground but in some cases, but seem to draw direct inspiration. West focuses greatly on character and background to organically grow suspense, even when stepping out into the supernatural, such as The Innkeepers. But there is one West movie in particular that can be seen to have been heavily influenced by The Wicker Man: The Sacrament. The film examines the inner workings of cults and how they impact both their members and outsiders. It explores the social nuances and psychological decadence of cult mentalities and how higher influences guide the morals and actions of followers.

The Sacrament harkens back to a traditional, almost medieval form of storytelling, embracing the baser elements of human existence: the elements, harvest, and reproduction. More specifically, it aims to examine baser human emotions and interactions, like fear, suspicion, grief, and power. It exposes the more realistic dangers of life, the ones that can so easily be overlooked or mistaken until it’s too late, even for police officers. The Sacrament is an almost beat-for-beat retelling of the Jonestown massacre and pays close attention to the ways that the leader manipulates the minds of his followers without needing to be physically imposing. It looks at divisions of loyalty, to what extent one family can replace another, and ultimately the downfalls of such blind loyalty.

'The Wicker Man' Remake Doesn't Compare to the Original

Of course, the influence of The Wicker Man cannot possibly be discussed without mentioning the infamous 2006 remake by Neil LaBute starring Nicolas Cage. It is perhaps a good thing that it turned out so laughably bad, as its silliness helps cushion the blow of needlessly remaking a classic. Although it follows all the same beats, it demonstrates an inherent misunderstanding of the original's stakes, and what made it so good. The Christian vs. Pagan element becomes a disingenuous battle of the sexes and any subtlety that the original had was shouted from the rooftops. It's not enough for the audience to casually notice that all the island's residents have plant names; Cage has to scream it out loud. Without the skill to craft true suspense in the run-up, the remake has nothing to offer; any viewer knows what will happen in the end as they are familiar with the original. But who really cares when the protagonist is stupid and unlikeable, and the islanders couldn't make their intentions more obvious if they wrote it on their foreheads?

While it seems unlikely that the same combination of folklore horror, big-name actors, a quasi-musical format, and right-place-right-time luck will ever be hit upon again, The Wicker Man proved not only palatable but thoroughly enjoyable to mainstream audiences, despite its many quirks. It set a bar in many ways: it showed that a good movie could come of a limited budget, that horror could be psychological and humanistic, and that perhaps the scariest things were those hidden within us. And now, filmmakers and creatives are taking those same concepts and questions and running with them into the future of the genre. It’s an exciting time.

The Wicker Man is available to stream on Tubi in the U.S.

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