If you are yet to see The Wicker Man, or if, in your mind, that title is synonymous with Nicolas Cage and a cage of bees, then I envy you. Robin Hardy’s twisted, erotic vision is re-released in UK cinemas this Friday. This ‘Final’ version will not be anything new to already established Wicker Man fans. For those not in the know, upon its completion in 1973, The Wicker Man was brutally recut by its own distributor, British Lion, into a version that was a whole 13 minutes shorter than director Robin Hardy’s original cut. British Lion released their shortened version as a B-movie accompanying Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now.
Since then, various versions of Hardy’s film have been made, roughly compiled with footage, often varying in picture quality, from the many cuts that have been floating around since the film’s release. Whilst this is the first time the film will be seen in UK cinemas in such consistently fine quality and in a version which, in Hardy’s own words, “fulfils [his] vision of what it was intended to convey to the audience”, it does not contain any never before seen footage from any of the lost reels which urban legend tells us are buried somewhere under the M4 motorway. Most hardcore Wicker Man fans will already possess this, and even one longer, version in one of the DVD box-sets already available to those who look for it.
So what does a film first released 40 years ago have to offer for new audiences? Originally it would have been the ending that everyone was talking about. Few films have an end so unexpected or so unforgiving. Where is the calvary? You can’t just kill off the good guy, can you? The incredible tension created in that last scene as we wait for the expected impossible rescue, and slowly realise that it may never come, cannot be replicated. Even amongst those who have yet to see the film, you would struggle to find someone oblivious to the horrific ending that ends the life of the poor fool Inspector. Indeed, the film’s poster and much of its marketing images make use of the final iconic image of the giant burning man, on the assumption that the final twist is no longer any secret. You would have to be pretty hard-hearted not to be moved by the concept of a human being being slowly burned alive, and that image will always have immense power, but the original strength of the ending is undoubtedly weakened.
Of course, the blazing man isn’t the only image burned into your mind after watching The Wicker Man. Just as unforgettable are the bare naked beauties that make up the female population of Summerisle, which surely has the highest babe population per square mile than anywhere else in the British Isles. It’s enough to make anyone take that torch to the feet of the Wicker Man. Amongst the many nymphlike nudes, seen leaping over fires and cavorting in midnight graveyards, none are as memorable as the Landlord’s Daughter, played by Britt Ekland. If Ekland’s trance inducing stare and hypnotic mating dance doesn’t work its magic on new audiences, I don’t know what will. With this re-release I predict an entire new generation of men enchanted by the sight of that lovely bottom pounding against Inspector Howie’s wall. An entire generation, too, will subsequently be disappointed to learn that that iconic derriere is famously not that of Ms Ekland, but of a body double, the name of whom is a mystery as convoluted and as rife with rumour as the plot of The Wicker Man itself.
The Wicker Man’s contemporary audience were living in a very different UK. This was the era of Mary Whitehouse, that unrelenting campaigner for moral values, who had unleashed the Nationwide Petition for Public Decency just two years before The Wicker Man was released to the very same public. One can only imagine what the society of Summerisle, one which thrives on free love, and where the closest thing to a heroine (that would be Ekland again) is a character whose town status is that of the reliever of virginities, would have meant for Whitehouse and her posse. This may be lost on modern audiences, but there are other, less explicit messages in the film that are most applicable to these times. At its core, The Wicker Man is a tale of two conflicting faiths; modern Christianity and Paganism. As Robin Hardy has said, “What we thought was rather fascinating was there are so many words, symbols, superstitions that we have today, which come front [the Celtic] period”.
When the comically uptight Inspector Howie arrives in Summerisle, he is immediately and repeatedly confronted with the horrors of this primitive, backwards religion, blind to the similarities it bears to his own, rigid faith. It is even more of a tragedy, then, that he should be sacrificed in the name of the pagan belief, and that, as he dies, he should scream the name of his Lord until the very end. Hardy once said, remembering the time in which the film was released, “I certainly thought then that thinking, educated people regarded religion as an interesting sort of a byway in their history or in their present, but not the main political force it has become. It’s a very distressing development, frankly”. With this in mind, The Wicker Man has a highly pertinent message for new audiences in the modern political age, for whom the contradiction of polarised religions with similar roots must seem only too familiar.
Or maybe it’s enough that this re-release simply serves as an eraser of the more recent, terrible memory of Nicolas Cage in that bear suit, once and for all.
The Wicker Man is being released nationwide on September 27, and you can check out our interview with the director Robin Hardy here.
