Sex, human sacrifice, a notorious bum double and gleeful ritual transvestitism all wrapped in four decades of conspiracy theories: movies don\u2019t come more cult than The Wicker Man.<\/p>\n
It was dismissed as an \u2018interesting failure\u2019 (The Telegraph) on its 1973 release and buried (literally, some say) by the studios \u2013 myth has it the original cans of celluloid were mistakenly (or not, if you believe its star, Christopher Lee) used as landfill somewhere under the M3 motorway \u2013 before its resurrection today as \u2018The best British horror film ever made\u2019 (Empire magazine).<\/p>\n
\u2018Of course, it wasn\u2019t a horror film at all, really, it was a black comedy,\u2019 insists its director, Robin Hardy, now aged 83. \u2018One of the things Tony Shaffer, the writer, and I did was to break the rules of so-called horror films.\u2019<\/p>\n
Though released in the same year as The Exorcist, The Wicker Man might as well have been from another planet. In The Wicker Man, sex doesn\u2019t equal death \u2013 quite the opposite \u2013 and, though it\u2019s based around religious conflict, good doesn\u2019t conquer evil, since it\u2019s never clear which is which.<\/p>\n
\u2018We went behind all those clich\u00e9s of the horror story \u2013 all that Roman Catholic medieval propaganda,\u2019 says Hardy. This is why, 40 years on, The Wicker Man still remains so radical and refreshingly peculiar.<\/p>\n
The story is an elaborate game played on Sergeant Howie (Edward Woodward), an earnest virgin \u2018Christian copper\u2019 who catches a plane to remote Scottish island Summerisle to investigate a missing girl.<\/p>\n
He finds a thriving pagan community, led by a lusty, wild-haired Lord Summerisle (The Lord Of The Rings\u2019 Christopher Lee in his favourite role), that enjoys orgies in graveyards, teaches reincarnation and phallic symbolism in school, dances naked over fires and, like the Christians, believes in sacrifice \u2013 just of a very different, scary nature\u2026<\/p>\n
On completion, the studio\u2019s managing director, Michael Deeley, called it \u2018one of the ten worst films I have ever seen\u2019, hacked 20 minutes out and released it as a B-movie on a double bill with Don\u2019t Look Now.<\/p>\n
Ever since, there\u2019s never been such a thing as a \u2018finished\u2019 cut as the original print was lost\/buried\/hidden\/cursed. But now, Hardy has given his blessing to a new-release, 94-minute \u2018final cut\u2019 derived from an old print of the 1979 US theatrical version.
\nWicker Man director Robin Hardy says he broke the rules of horror (Picture: Alamy)Wicker Man director Robin Hardy says he broke the rules of horror (Picture: Alamy)<\/p>\n
Most significant for Hardy is the reinsertion of a scene where Britt Ekland, as the landlord\u2019s fruity daughter, indoctrinates a young boy into the world of sexual intercourse while Lord Summerisle gazes fondly at some copulating snails. \u2018I love those snails,\u2019 Hardy yearningly recalls. \u2018They played their part very well, I thought.\u2019<\/p>\n
Hardy holds less fondness towards the infamously dire 2006 remake starring Nicolas Cage, whose \u2018worst scene\u2019 reel (\u2018Nooo, not the bees!\u2019) has had millions of hits on YouTube. \u2018They just missed the point,\u2019 shrugs Hardy, who recently directed his own sequel, The Wicker Tree, and is now working on a threequel.<\/p>\n
\u2018This third film will really stick it to the gods,\u2019 he says. \u2018It\u2019s about an American company, not unlike the Mouse House [Disney] or Universal, who decide to do a historic theme park in the Shetlands based on Norse sagas.\u2019<\/p>\n
Hardy is keen to develop a similar park himself, which is not a bad idea as, 40 years on, the original movie has never been more popular. There\u2019s already an annual Wickerman Festival in Scotland, which started in 2001 \u2013 last year\u2019s acts
\nincluded Scissor Sisters.<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s the eternal appeal? Partly, the film taps into a lost British paganism we half remember when we deck the halls with holly and sing rhymes such as Oranges And Lemons \u2013 a strain enhanced by Paul Giovanni\u2019s iconic and eerie folk-based score. But mainly we love it because, despite the odd echo in the work of fellow \u2018folk horror\u2019 director Ben Wheatley (Kill List, A Field In England), The Wicker Man remains a one-off.<\/p>\n
\u2018The film exists in its own time and place \u2013 which is outside of time \u2013 so it doesn\u2019t date too easily,\u2019 says Hardy. \u2018It didn\u2019t fit into any genre at that particular moment and it never really has. It\u2019s become its own genre.\u2019<\/p>\n
The Wicker Man is in cinemas now.