‘An immensely enjoyable piece of hokum’: The Wicker Man reviewed in 1974

• Note: This review is of the original theatrical release of The Wicker Man, which has a runtime of 88 minutes. The 4K restoration of The Wicker Man: The Final Cut has a runtime of 93 minutes. 

Synopsis

Police sergeant Neil Howie flies to Summerisle, a small island off the west coast of Scotland, to investigate the disappearance of twelve-year-old Rowan Morrison. A devout churchgoer, he is shocked by the inhabitants’ apparent disregard for Christian doctrine; a firm believer in the sanctity of marriage, he is disgusted when the landlord’s daughter Willow offers herself to him; and he is perplexed when everyone, including the woman he took to be Rowan’s mother, denies that the girl ever existed. When he finds evidence to the contrary in the school register, schoolmistress Miss Rose admits that Rowan was buried in the churchyard some months previously. But finding that no death certificate was made out, Howie visits the island’s leader, Lord Summerisle, to gain permission to exhume the body. Granting it, Summerisle attempts to rationalise the islanders’ paganism and explains that in 1868, when his grandfather made the island fertile for the first time, all other religions were ousted in favour of mass worship of the gods of nature.

When he finds nothing but a dead rabbit in Rowan’s coffin, Howie’s research leads him to believe that, in order to ensure a good harvest, the islanders intend to sacrifice the captive Rowan at the forthcoming May Day celebrations. Disguising himself as the Fool, Howie joins the parade, which leads him straight to Rowan, alive and apparently terrified. He runs to rescue her and finds that he has been led into a trap. Realising that last year’s poor harvest would require a very special sacrifice, Summerisle and the islanders had faked Rowan’s disappearance in order to attract to the island an adult, male virgin who would join the May Day parade of his own free will. Howie is imprisoned in the “wicker man”, a giant, sacrificial pyre; and as the rejoicing islanders set light to it, he prays for his soul.

Review

Absolute nonsense, of course. And yet it is so persuasively written by the remarkably agile-minded Anthony Shaffer, that few will be able to suppress a shudder as the awful truth finally dawns. Relentlessly building an atmosphere of unease that is more akin to that of his brother Peter’s electrifying play Equus than anything he himself has hitherto written for the screen, the writer manipulates the mechanics of the mystery thriller with a sly delight.

Summerisle is familiar territory indeed: virtually inaccessible from the mainland and populated entirely by sinister, inhospitable yokels who obviously know more than they’re prepared to admit. But the mystery is of a sufficiently diabolical nature to carry such clichés along, and it is dressed up to the nines by cameraman Harry Waxman and art director Seamus Flannery. Perhaps there is one bottle too many of pickled organs in the chemist’s shop, but the equally eerie confectioner’s is a joy, a veritable Aladdin’s cave of olde worlde sweetmeats with not a bar of Cadbury’s to be seen.

The nicest surprise, however, is that every scene which at first seems too melodramatic, too frenzy-oriented, rebounds beautifully on the viewer when he realises that each has its individual purpose. For obvious reasons the landlord’s daughter must attempt to seduce the hero on the night he arrives; her plot to drug him must be divulged in a stage whisper outside his door; and he must decide to solve the mystery by donning a disguise and infiltrating the enemies’ ranks. It is a cleverly dovetailed script of the highest order. As far as the treatment of it goes, one could admit to reservations about the presence of so many foreigners in the Highlands (Britt Ekland, Ingrid Pitt and even Christopher Lee), although under the circumstances it is remarkable what post-synchronisation and a red wig respectively can achieve.

A more serious intrusion is that of the ‘production numbers’ which, with the exception of the spinechilling finale (the islanders ecstatically chanting “Sumer Is lcumin In” as their victim roasts to death), were surely not intended to be quite so reminiscent of the Shangri-La routines from Lost Horizon. An unfortunate miscalculation here, one suspects, but one that does no real harm to an immensely enjoyable piece of hokum, thoroughly well researched, performed and directed. An encouraging achievement for those who had begun to despair of the British cinema.

► The Wicker Man: The Final Cut returns to UK cinemas for one night only on 21 June to mark the summer solstice.