folk horror

The Wicker Man at 50: how the strange 1970s British film became a cult classic

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It may have got off to a shaky start, but The Wicker Man is now one of British film’s best-loved horror stories, thanks to its deeply disturbing plot.

By Gill Jamieson

It tops the poll of the 50 greatest British horror films, according to readers of Horrified Magazine, while the Guardian pitches it at number four in its list of the 25 greatest horror films.

David Bartholomew of Cinefantastique magazine described The Wicker Man as “the Citizen Kane of horror films.

Bizarrely, it even has its own rollercoaster ride in the British theme park Alton Towers. Made of wood, naturally.

But when the film was released on December 6 1973, the studio behind it – British Lion – tried to bury it with a limited release. It was briefly tacked on as the supporting feature in a double bill with Nicolas Roeg’s atmospheric psychological thriller Don’t Look Now.

However, The Wicker Man has grown in stature over the years and is now considered a cult classic. A remarkable change in fortunes for a film described by its own music designer, Gary Carpenter, as being about “semi-mystical occult shit”.

A middle aged man sitting on a doorstep wearing a shirt, cravat and cardigan.

The film was directed by novice Robin Hardy and written by Anthony Shaffer, a credible dramatist who had just finished working with Alfred Hitchcock on Frenzy (1972). But the production gained traction with the support of Christopher Lee who would take on the role of charismatic cult leader Lord Summerisle.

Lee, by that point a huge star and cemented in the public imagination as Count Dracula (of Hammer Horror fame), gave much of his time to ensure the production got off the ground.

Reversal of horror tropes

It’s an unsettling story that commences with the arrival of devout Christian police officer (Sergeant Howie, played convincingly by Edward Woodward) on the remote island community of Summerisle, in search of a missing girl.

Hardy has explained that they key to understanding the appeal of the film is that it’s a satisfying puzzle that rewards repeat viewing:

Essentially, one must think of The Wicker Man as a game, with clues gradually suggesting Summerisle is not run in accordance with the Christian values of Sergeant Howie. Setting it in Scotland was crucial: in the early 1970s, Christianity was still widely practised, and it had a very puritan aspect.

The audience share Howie’s narrative viewpoint, experiencing the island for the first time and noticing, as he does, the peculiarities and practices of a community at odds with conventional society. From the sweet shop window with its phallic confectionary to the couples openly copulating after a night at the Green Man pub, the sense of weirdness is palpable.

As Howie’s investigation progresses, it becomes clear that the community have embraced a way of life that rejects Christian values in favour of pagan rites and rituals. From the hapless beetle tethered to a nail in the schoolroom to the placing of a frog in the mouth of a child suffering from a sore throat, this is an isolated community committed to an alternative belief system. The film succeeds in tapping into a rich repertoire of folk imagery to build incrementally to its harrowing conclusion.

It transpires the investigation is a trap carefully orchestrated by the islanders to secure a suitable human sacrifice for their May Day celebrations to rectify the drought that has blighted their apple harvest. Howie’s fate is sealed in a giant wicker effigy set alight in front of the islanders.

The story derives much of its power from its thrilling reversal of the commonplace horror trope that sees young women victimised. Rather, it offers a “male in peril” story made all the more terrifying because the man in question is an upstanding authority figure, a man utterly convinced of the rightness of his convictions.

The film used around 25 different locations in Scotland. These served the production well despite notorious filming conditions. The early summer setting was in fact shot from October through to November.

It remains a rich slice of cultural geography with a vivid sense of place that is entirely in keeping with the folk horror of the subject matter. It feels authentic. Diehard fans can follow The Wicker Man trail, a tour of the most famous filming locations such as Anwoth Kirk, Culzean Castle, Plockton and Kircudbright, amongst others.

Shocking ending

The film also features impressive production design despite its relatively modest budget. There are some film sequences that live long in the imagination because of the sheer scale of the production and the evident commitment to the craft of special effects.

Great films are remarkable for pushing the envelope in terms of what can be accomplished with their production design: think of the burning of Atlanta sequences in Gone with the Wind (1939) or Skull Island in King Kong (1933). The Wicker Man has such a sequence to rival anything seen in film history.

A man imprisoned in a makeshift prison made of wood, his hands outstretched in plea.
The end of The Wicker Man is truly disturbing. TCD/Prod.DB / Alamy

As the May Day celebrations snake down to the beach it is revealed that the missing girl is alive and well after all: Howie has been duped. Lord Summerisle patiently explains to Howie his fate has been predetermined from the outset and he is then forcibly hoisted into a giant wicker colossus (alongside a number animals) where he is to be burned alive.

Drawing on tales of druid sacrificial rituals, the sequence provides one of the most haunting spectacles in film history. The ending is horrifying because it is a “reveal”: this is what the islanders had in mind all along. Howie’s entrapment is our entrapment: we too have been fooled.

The very drab ordinariness of Summerisle with its sweet shop and post office, cosy village pub and modest schoolhouse, conceals a community enthusiastically committed to human sacrifice. The shocking ending would be instrumental in elevating the film and securing The Wicker Man’s place in the horror film canon.

Source: The Wicker Man at 50: how the strange 1970s British film became a cult classic

Watch a “semi-rural folk horror,” 1969’s cult film “The Watchers”

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“Described by writer Kelly Loughlin as a “semi-rural folk horror,” The Watchers may feature the earliest depiction of an alien abduction in British cinema. Filmed around the moors of Todmorden by RCA students in 1969 and directed by Richard ‘Dick’ Foster, the film weaves together themes and stylistic elements that would later become hallmarks of British folk horror — as seen in works like Nigel Kneale’s Beasts (1976), David Rudkin’s Penda’s Fen (1974), and Alan Garner’s Red Shift (1979).

Yet, despite its thematic resonance and creative achievements, The Watchers remains a largely overlooked gem — standing shoulder to shoulder with these classics, but still waiting to be fully acknowledged…” | Read more of this article in The Quietus

Exploring the pioneering world of British folk horror

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From ‘Witchfinder General’ to ‘The Wicker Man’, British folk horror has inspired many horror movies from today, like ‘Midsommar’ and ‘The VVitch’.

By Aimee Ferrier

During the 2010s, a trend emerged that many dubbed ‘elevated horror’. It’s a lazy term, suggesting that all horror that came before it wasn’t artistic or explored deeper themes beyond scares and thrills. Regardless of the argument for and against ‘elevated’ horror, it is interesting to note that two of the most acclaimed movies from this period fell into the folk horror subgenre – The VVitch and Midsommar.

Both were distributed by A24 and became well-loved titles in the canon, praised for their exploration of themes such as trauma, gender, grief, life and death, and isolation. To explore these topics, the filmmakers used folklore as their foundation, calling upon old stories that have echoed through generations of humans, and the innate fears and beliefs that have followed people for centuries.

Perhaps that’s why these films came to be labelled ‘elevated horror’: at their core, folk horror relies more on creating a general atmosphere of fear through the exploration of human anxieties and the power of group beliefs, as found in religious cults and close-knit villages.

There is a lack of masked killers, extreme gore, jumpscares, haunting spectres, zombies, and vampires in folk horror. When the genre focuses on witchcraft, the audience doesn’t fear terrifying images of witches per se. Instead, the fear is often found in the humans that hunt them down as though they’re animals, attacking femininity and alternate ways of thinking that don’t align with an autocratic system of beliefs.

Thus, the folk horror genre has a particular allure, bringing us face to face with fears that have been carried down through generations and were experienced by our ancestors. No matter the year, folk horror movies explore themes that remind us of our heritage and that people have always been persecuted for being different and outcasts for religious or social reasons, even to the point of extreme violence and death.

The Witchfinder General - 1968 - Vincent Price - Michael Reeves
The Witchfinder General – 1968

Before Midsommar and The VVitch, and even more recent titles like Starve Acre, Lamb, Men, and Enys Men, British folk horror movies from the 1960s and ‘70s helped to pioneer the genre. Most people will be familiar with the Unholy Trinity: Witchfinder General, The Blood on Satan’s Claw, and The Wicker Man. These movies, released between 1968 and 1973, took audiences to beautiful British countryside landscapes, only to reveal cult-like locals, tyrannical men in power, and intensely religious beliefs. In each film, female sexuality becomes incredibly important, too, with female bodies possessing a significant allure for male characters, who often find it hard to resist temptation, their morals thrown into question.

These movies are considered the cream of the crop as far as folk horror is concerned, with each containing unnerving and claustrophobic atmospheres heightened by strange characters whose ways of thinking are firmly stuck in the past. There is also a sense of isolation felt by certain characters who do not fit in, like Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man, who comes to mirror Dani in Midsommar in certain ways, although their endings are rather different.

The influence of these films has allowed a new revival of folk horror, perhaps because they’re the perfect vehicle for exploring themes of disillusionment and nihilism. We long for these quaint countryside scenes with green pastures and flowers growing, but these films subvert this idyllic imagery with a reminder of England’s dark past full of witch hunts and religious persecution.

The resurgence of folk horror within the 2010s and early 2020s mirrors its popularity in the 1970s, coming after the hippie boom and the swinging sixties. Perhaps, in our technology-ridden society, we desire to go back to basics – a desire complicated by the fact that the world hasn’t changed as much as we might think. Discrimination, misogyny, and religious divisions – common themes in folk horror – are still prevalent today. These newer folk horror movies remind us that the folkloric stories we were told by our grandparents – violent and strange tales passed down from their grandparents – are still etched into the fabric of our society.

Besides the Unholy Trinity, movies like The Devils, The Witches, Requiem for a Village, and Village of the Damned are all examples of British films containing folk horror elements. Additionally, slightly lesser-known works like Cry of the Banshee, The Devil Rides Out, and various Play for Today episodes and other BBC shorts, such as Robin Redbreast and A Warning To The Curious, further proved that folk horror was a popular trend in late 1960s and early ‘70s Britain.

In 1999, The League of Gentlemen emerged as a folk horror-esque series, using many conventions from the genre, such as small-town oddballs that look down on anyone who isn’t local and elements of the supernatural. Evidently, British cinema has never been able to shake the enduring influence of folk horror, which inspired a new wave of the genre in recent years to great success. While folk horror movies emerged in other countries too (think Häxan and The White Reindeer, for example), it is The Unholy Trinity that has made the genre so unforgettable and enticing, even decades later.

Source: Exploring the pioneering world of British folk horror