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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

The Long Good Friday’: A Gangster Noir That Saw the Future

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London crime kingpin Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) faces a disastrous Easter weekend as he watches his criminal empire disintegrate.

By Paul Parcellin

‘The Long Good Friday’ (1980)

(Contains “spoilers”)

As Good Friday approaches it’s fitting that we look at one of the slender number of crime films set on the holiest of Christian holy days. In filmdom, the connection between religious rites and acts of criminal savagery can be jarring (think of the baptism scene in “The Godfather”) and, by some viewers’ standards, just this side of blasphemous. But the marriage of the odious and the sacred often underlines the hypocrisy of those who tread on both sides of the fence.

 

In “The Long Good Friday,” which saw its U.S. debut 43 years ago this month, London crime kingpin Harold Shand (Bob Hoskins) faces a disastrous Easter weekend as he watches his criminal empire disintegrate. A stubby, barrel chested Tasmanian devil of a man, Harold is about to launch a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan. The project is designed to revitalize London’s then desolate Docklands property and fill his pockets with more cash than an East End geezer such as he could dream of.

 

The idea is to remake himself into a legitimate businessman, more of less, with the help of some startup cash from the New York Mafia, a detail that casts doubt on his grand plans.

It’s 1979 and the Docklands and its surrounding area is depressed after the shipping industry moved on to larger, more suitable ports. With astonishing accuracy “The Long Good Friday” foretells the city’s future after the conservative government redeveloped the property into a sterile haven for the upper classes, a real-life outcome that would line up well with Harold’s planned cash grab.

We meet Harold after he touches down in a Concorde, returning from a secret mission in the States. He wastes no time getting down to business, entertaining guests on a cruise aboard his yacht on the Thames. Among the invited are corrupt cops and city officials as well as New York gangster Charlie (Eddie Constantine). With the zest, if not the eloquence, of an evangelical preacher, Harold pitches his scheme to rebuild part of the city in time for the upcoming Olympics (a London setting for the Olympic Games is purely fictional in this time frame). His goal, he says, is to make England a dominant European country again. As he speaks, he’s framed by the Tower Bridge which looms behind him, but as the craft glides onward the bridge recedes into the background and Harold stands alone, proclaiming his grand ideas and giving the impression that perhaps he’s grown too big for his britches.

 

Hoskins, as the blustery, violent and highly temperamental Harold, is the very embodiment of a gangland boss. But his inflated sense of self importance, his arrogance and overconfidence are among his greatest weaknesses and are instrumental in his ultimate downfall. He’s a character who can only be matched is sheer hutzpah by Edward G. Robinson’s Rico Bandello, another bullying fireplug who dominates the mob in “Little Caesar” (1931).

 

P.H. Moriarty, Helen Mirren, Bob Hoskins, Brian Hall

Keeping Harold anchored to terra firma is his girlfriend, Victoria (Helen Mirren), who, unlike Harold, the plain spoken ruffian, is educated and comes from a good middle class family. The role of Victoria was originally written as Harold’s bubble headed slice of arm candy, but Mirren fought with director John Mackenzie, insisting that the character take on a more consequential role in the story, and it’s a good thing that she did. Victoria is Harold’s guiding light, and later when she begins to lose her composure as Harold’s world crashes down around him, we know that things are bad. A side note: The world of mobsters is one that the actress knew first hand. In the scene aboard the yacht, some real gangsters were brought on as extras, and they were all familiar with Mirren’s uncle, who was himself a member of the London underworld.

Once Harold’s luck takes a turn for the worse, things come apart in rapid order. He hopes to dazzle the visiting money men, but inexplicably, bodies begin to drop and bombs detonate as he and Victoria try to make nice with the visiting Mafioso, hoping in vain that they won’t notice that something’s terribly wrong. But a bomb in the pub where he and the New York contingent plan to dine is proof positive that Harold’s plans are being swept away like beach stones in a tsunami. The bombings are a clue to who’s behind the mayhem — the story was pitched to producers as “terrorism meets gangsterism.” Incidentally, the pub that’s leveled in a bomb attack was merely a set, but must have been a convincing one because passersby popped in from time to time expecting to be served drinks.

Understandably, Harold’s at wit’s end and means to find out who’s liquidating his close associates and trying to wipe him off of the map. “I’ll have his carcass dripping blood by midnight,” he growls.

In one of the film’s more visually arresting and grotesque scenes, he rounds up a band of his associates and dangles them upside down on hooks in an abattoir, hoping to scare the bejesus out of them and learn who’s betraying him (If these are his pals, we’d hate to see what he does with his enemies).

Conditions get worse still for one fellow who endures some stigmata body modifications on a warehouse floor, a scene reminiscent of a real-life incident perpetrated by notorious gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray, who lorded over London’s underworld in the 1960s. The film’s replication of that occurrence is a fitting if shocking development in this Easter tale beset by paranoia and blood letting.

Harold is continually one step behind his mysterious tormentors, but finally learns that, after a series of fumbled actions and misunderstandings, the IRA has put him in its crosshairs. Blinded by his arrogance, he opts to take an ill-advised path to sew up his problems, a drastic move that demonstrates Harold’s delusional thinking.

Although the film was completed in 1980 it wasn’t released in the U.K. until the following year and didn’t premiere in the U.S. until 1982. Britain’s ITC Entertainment originally backed the production, but got cold feet after seeing the final cut. The film’s political undertones and graphic violence prompted the firm to refuse the film a theatrical release. But Handmade Films, the company founded by former Beatle George Harrison, acquired the rights and agreed to distribute it. The delays, however, only served to build the public’s anticipation of its release and helped secure the film’s cult status.

For those curious about the real-life Docklands development project, which became Canary Wharf, the film predicted with surprising accuracy the project which didn’t begin until after “The Long Good Friday” was filmed. Unfortunately for many, much of the housing lost to the developer’s wrecking ball was replaced with high end living quarters and commercial buildings. Opinions on the project’s success are mixed, with some lauding the rejuvenation of the downtrodden docks, and many feeling that the working class was steamrolled over in this bid to create valuable properties and big profits.

While many of the Docklands denizens’ lives were adversely affected over time by the project, Harold’s world falls apart before his eyes, and in a most dramatic manner. As the film ends, he’s trapped in his fancy automobile, framed this time not by the magnificent Tower Bridge, but by the vehicle’s windshield, and he’s behind it, under glass, as it were. There’s no wiggle room for him to get away. Victoria is spirited away in another car and Harold, alone and vulnerable, is in the hands of one of his tormentors (Pierce Brosnan, in his first film role). There’s little else for him to do but ponder his past and try to work out how he ended up at this juncture. He’s been roused from his reverie and his dream may one day be realized, but by someone other than himself.

Source: life and death in l.a.: ‘The Long Good Friday’: A Gangster Noir That Saw the Future

What is gaslighting? The 1944 film Gaslight is the best explainer

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Gaslight (1944)
Gaslight (1944)

 

It’s just as chilling today as it was back then.

The term “gaslighting” has gotten thrown around a lot over the past year, mostly in reference to political campaign tactics — when candidates claimed something had (or hadn’t) happened, and refused, when confronted with contradictory evidence, to acknowledge otherwise. Lauren Duca most famously wrote about the term for Teen Vogue in a piece titled “Donald Trump Is Gaslighting America,” for which she caught some heat and also raised the profile of Teen Vogue.

But as with most terms that quickly become popular, a lot of people don’t know what it really means. Does it just mean deceiving people? Or is it something more specific?

You could look up definitions, but the best way to understand gaslighting is to go to the source. George Cukor’s Gaslight — based on a 1938 play by Patrick Hamilton — stars Ingrid Bergman as a naive, sweet young woman named Paula who as a young girl witnessed the murder of her beloved aunt (and guardian) at their home. Years later, in Italy, she meets and marries dashing Gregory (Charles Boyer), who returns with her to London to live in the house she inherited from her aunt, which is also the house where the murder occurred.

But slowly, over time, Paula begins to doubt her sanity. Gregory tells her that she’s becoming forgetful and fitful, acting in irregular ways. He confines her to the house, and tells everyone she’s not well. At night she hears knocking in the walls. She sees the gas lighting dim. But he tells her she’s imagining things.

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The Hard Truths of Mike Leigh

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Director Mike Leigh

Fears, trauma, and family relationships come into focus in Mike Leigh’s existential drama, Hard Truths. The film examines the human condition as the characters struggle and survive in a post-pandemic world. Hard Truths will make you laugh and cry, possibly at the same time.

by Gill Pringle

A true original, it’s almost comical to imagine a version of British director Mike Leigh where he went to Hollywood.

Apart from his historical dramas, Leigh’s films have always been celebrations of ordinary British folk with ordinary problems, “kitchen sink dramas” as they have sometimes been called. His latest film, Hard Truths – competing in the San Sebastian Film Festival’s Official Selection – is no different.

Set in London, it explores family relationships in a post-pandemic world — namely, housewife Pansy, played by Marianne Jean-Baptiste, an unhappy, angry woman. Agoraphobic, hypochondriac and paranoid about animals, birds, insects, plants and flowers, she is confrontational with everyone, especially her plumber husband, Curtley (David Webber) and their stay-at-home unemployed adult son, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett).

“You couldn’t make a film like Hard Truths without the most fantastic, brilliant actors. All the actors that I work with are character actors. They’re actors who don’t just play themselves, don’t just perform their own narcissism. They actually are really good and passionate about making characters that are like real people out there in the street,” says the 81-year-old director, who was in feisty form at San Sebastian, the first time he has ever competed at this elegant festival.

Having previously directed Marianne Jean-Baptiste to a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role in his 1996 film Secrets & Lies, he says of their latest collaboration, “We develop the character together, but if I started from the premise of the idea of the kind of person that Pansy is, and I found an actress who was like Pansy, it would be a nightmare, and we’d never make the film.

“But the thing is, that Marianne has got a great sense of humour and is a very generous, open, and passionate person who is able to create somebody like Pansy with total accuracy – but she is not Pansy.

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