Cinema Seminar:
The Wicker Man

Taught by Paul McEwan, Ph.D.
Professor of Media & Communication and Film Studies, Muhlenberg College

Sunny Scottish islands are not common settings for horror films, but perhaps that is one of the secrets to the cult success of The Wicker Man (1973). Another is surely the screenplay by Anthony Shaffer (Hitchcock’s Frenzy), loosely based on the horror novel Ritual. Of the script, Sight & Sound wrote: “it is so persuasively written that few will be able to suppress a shudder as the awful truth finally dawns. Relentlessly building an atmosphere of unease . . . the writer manipulates the mechanics of the mystery thriller with a sly delight.”

Such praise was welcomed by a British film industry experiencing a low period in the early 1970s. The heyday of the classic “Hammer Horrors” was over by the mid-1960s, and that studio’s efforts to compete with the more “mature” content permeating all genres in the ensuing years not only failed to capture audiences, but drove away one of its biggest stars.

Christopher Lee (The Lord of the Rings trilogy), who had built a career playing Dracula in the Hammer films, was looking for something new. He worked with Shaffer to bring forth a revitalization of the British horror film that incorporated pagan religious ideas and a slow-burn mystery plot. In so doing, and by starring as the Lord of Summerisle, Lee helped elevate the material into a genre landmark.

He is joined by Edward Woodward (Breaker Morant) as a devoutly Christian police sergeant sent to investigate the disappearance of a young girl. He finds life on the island to be much darker than he had anticipated. The people have abandoned Christianity in favor of Celtic paganism, and this horrifies him as much as what might have befallen the missing girl.

The Wicker Man thus becomes, in a way, a parable about colonialism, and about the sureness of “mainland” authority in the absolute rightness of its beliefs. This tension gives the film much of its depth and creates a fascinating and disturbing portrait of an island that seems both utterly fantastic and disturbingly real.