Wicker Man
It’s midweek, and the honey and I are making plans to watch a few horror movies Saturday night- good ones that neither of us have seen before. I look around on the web and see some positive reviews of an old British horror film called Wicker Man. I check IMDB, and I see that the flick has a pretty good rating- like eight stars out of ten. You can’t argue with the cast, either: Edward Woodward, who played The Equalizer on TV when I was a kid, Christopher Lee, Britt Ekland. Excellent- I have my pick.
So we pop the movie in after dinner, and almost from the first frame, we get the feeling the movie is gonna be strange, but I have faith in IMDB, I really do. With reviews like this:
Simply a perfect movie
by Scifiboy666 (Sat Jul 26 2008 21:06:53)
I mean, is there anything negative to say about this film? I think it’s a perfect movie. Everything about it is just so chilling and so real. The acting, the music, and the scenery makes it so authentic, almost like it’s actually happening. It’s a spectacular movie…
who wouldn’t? Really, if Scifiboy666 thinks it’s spectacular, who am I to argue?
The movie opens with the protagonist, Sgt Neil Howie, played by Woodward, flying his single engine police pontoon plane over to the small Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a girl on the island, Rowan Morrison. What’s truly weird about this opening scene is the progression in the music from a totally appropriate Scottish sounding tune to what sounds like folk music sung by Tiny Tim, in baritone and minus the ukulele. But you know, it’s the early 70s, and we let it slide.
Howie meets some resistance, but he’s obviously a determined detective, and he doesn’t give up the search despite the initial reluctance of the inhabitants to tell him anything resembling the truth.
We follow our hero to the isle’s inn, where we’re treated to a few more gems of song, which climaxes in a dance of seduction- in the buff- by Britt Ekland, playing the innkeepers daughter, Willow. Click the picture to see the dance…
It might be sexy and seductive, except that the whole thing is extremely corny and the words to the song are atrocious.
Having somehow survived the night without going next door to bang miss Willow, Howie spends the next day gathering clues to Rowan’s disappearance and gradually we learn that Howie is a devout Christian virgin, this is a whole island full of pagans with loose morals, and the crops have been bad these past few years…
Of course, there’s another musical number, that consists of a kid playing a mouth harp and a bunch of preadolescent boys dancing around a maypole singing about the erect male penis. (No, I’m not making this up; I haven’t even gotten to the circle of nude virgins jumping through a fire and singing fertility songs, yet…)
By the end of the day, Howie has met the Lord of Summerisle- played by Christopher Lee- and concludes that Rowan is to be offered as sacrifice the next day in the May Day celebration, so that the good people of Summerisle can once again offer their delicious apples to the Queen. Sigh.
Howie’s second night at the inn, alas, brings no nude dancing by Britt Ekland, but the next day, we get to see Howie dress up as the Fool and take part in the May Day parade.
Oh yes, that is foreshadowing. I won’t give away the ending, but I will say that the duel between the pagans and the Christian takes part largely through Woodward screaming some prayers and bargaining for his life.
This movie is hard to describe- it has an earnestness that can’t be denied, and from what I’ve read about the movie, they did a lot with a small budget. The cinematography is excellent, and Woodward in particular is good in his part. But the vibe of the movie veers wildly into the campiness of the Batman TV show and it’s definitely not a horror movie. Even the shock of the ending, which isn’t quite as astonishing as the reviews make it out to be, is lessened by the jarring juxtaposition of the final scenes with the funny costumes and bad folk music throughout.
The short “making of” extra on the dvd was interesting, but as we watched it, I found myself wanting to see the movie they were talking about, because it most definitely wasn’t the one we watched that night.
Watch it for the weirdness alone, don’t expect much, and you may enjoy. We didn’t.
