You’ll simply never understand the true nature of sacrifice
(Warning: spoiler alert)
So much has been written about the classic British cult horror film THE WICKERMAN that anything I add to the mix can only be entirely superfluous …but (he said, sharpening his trusty HB and tidying away the shavings into a convenient ashtray) can I just say that this film is one of those rarest of things – a horror film that still horrifies, even after repeated viewings. No one who’s seen the film can ever forget that dreadful moment at the film’s climax when Sgt Howie’s appalling destiny is revealed – his response, given moments before we the viewer are shown that first terrible vision of the Wickerman, is, despite its awful inevitability (what with it being called The Wickerman and all) one of the great visceral movie moments – even now, after some 40 odd years, his reaction still has the power to stun, as we share with him the realization of the shocking fate that awaits him.
Until that point, of course, it’s not much of a horror film, preferring to be merely spooky, weird, wyrd, disturbing, unsettling, disorientating, hauntingly erotic, and faintly hallucinatory instead (although that last bit may be because I own the 2-disc collector’s version on which the restored film is made up of two prints of varying quality and colour that leap unexpectedly between each other), but there is a mounting sense of unease that plays with our heads as much as our expectations. Howie, brilliantly played by Edward Woodward, is a humourless, uptight, devoutly religious Presbyterian; a virgin, no less; deeply conservative; a police sergeant; a man of unswerving moral conviction, is the film’s unlikely hero. I read somewhere that Woodward chose a uniform one size too small for him to make his character appear even more rigid and uncomfortable in his surroundings – the pagan island of Summerisle, celebrating the springtime in a frankly unrestrained heathen manner. This remote, isolated island is where Howie arrives to investigate the disappearance of a local schoolgirl – a girl the locals tell him doesn’t exist. As a result he is a man out of place, out of step, and very much out of time in this alien community, a community shamelessly devoted to the old ways, the old rites, the old gods (the sort of place you’d expect Julian Cope to turn up and play a few gigs).
Released in 1973, following five years or so of green activism and a resurgence of interest in Britain’s mythical past typified by hippy occult thinking and a return to middle earth neo-mysticism, the film, at first, unfolds as a clash between two belief systems; Howie’s uncompromising Christianity against the islander’s native Paganism, represented by the enigmatic Lord Summerisle, played by Christopher Lee, fresh from playing Dracula, and clearly enjoying himself in his professed greatest role. One of the ways the film plays with our heads is that at first our sympathies lie with the islanders, who seem so much more comfortable in their own skins. We like their natural ability to break into a bawdy ballad at the Green Man Inn, the way they celebrate May Day by dressing up as characters from a Mummer’s play and dancing around a May pole– and for it to mean something – we admire their veneration of Mother earth and how they hold the land to be sacred, we think the way the local chemist sells foreskins from a jar is quaint and eccentric, and we certainly want to be ‘initiated’ by the landlord’s daughter (although anyone familiar with the precepts of gestalt psychology may see an illuminating pattern going on here - but you’re wrong). The islanders seem to have an earthy, Arcadian integrity about them, of the sort once crushed and besmirched beneath the heels of an intolerant and dogmatic desert god, embodied by Howie and the authoritarian axis of church and state he represents. In contrast, the islanders are free in their thinking; they have reclaimed our lost, mystical heritage, made large the ancient gods, and they are emboldened and fearless in their beliefs.
In fact, that’s one of the joys of watching the film repeated times – different perspectives are revealed. At first we see the film through Howie’s stern authoritarian gaze and in doing so we can’t but help align ourselves with the islanders, with whom we would perhaps share a convivial spliff or two. A second viewing and we see the film from the islander’s perspective, and we become aware of the head games the islander’s are playing on Howie, the testing of his nature, the chances he is given to escape his destiny, drawing him in like a beetle attached to a thread, led in ever diminishing circles to his fate. But Howie is a victim of his own nature as much as he is the islander’s sinister designs, and as lies are told, and later uncovered, our suspicions grow and our sympathies begin to turn to turn away from the inhabitants of Summerisle and towards Howie after all – we share his frustration, his conviction that something is very wrong on Summerisle, way beyond women leaping over fires in the nud or couples making out on the village green. We want him to succeed, we want him to find the child, we want him to discover the islands’ secrets, but all too late. When the truth is revealed and Howie reels with understanding, we discover that, actually, the islander’s are way beyond any simple hippy ideals we may have mistakenly projected onto them in our need to find a place where such Utopian beliefs might actually work (and perhaps take a holiday there one day). Instead, like Howie, we have been hoodwinked - we don’t belong there either; it’s very hard to relate to people who cheerfully have a right old knees-up to Sumer is a-Cumen In whilst pitilessly watching the hero of the film burn to death.
Upon its release, it was ignored by the public, of course; largely as the result of a terrible distribution deal, and savage cuts inflicted upon the finished print that saw it reduced in length and sold as the B-movie in a double-bill with Nic Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (which still would have made a grand night out at the pictures); but this is all part of the legend that surrounds The Wickerman and is discussed in countless blogsites dedicated to the film. If you’re interested in the film’s history and the story behind the restored prints that are now available on DVD (and it is a good story) I’ve provided a couple of links at the bottom of the page that should tell you all you need to know. But for me, what elevates The Wickerman above other horror films of a similar cult folk appeal – and I’m thinking of films like Witchfinder General and The Blood on Satan’s Claw here – is the accompanying soundtrack which, in it’s own way, is every bit as legendary as The Wickerman itself. Composed by American folk song-writer Paul Giovanni, and performed by a hastily assembled band who came to call themselves Magnet, comprised of members of the Royal College of Music, the soundtrack to The Wickerman, featuring ‘ballads of seduction, fertility and ritual slaughter’ contains within its eerie charms, Corn Rigs, Willow’s Song and Gently Johnny, three of the loveliest examples of acid-folk ever recorded, and in Willow’s Song, simply the most gorgeous song ever produced by pretty much anyone ever – I’m quite the fan, me. In fact, there are so many songs and musical interludes woven within The Wickerman that at one point, director Robin Hardy informed the cast that they were making a musical.
Like the film itself, the soundtrack has its own story. When the very cool Trunk records came to release a soundtrack of the music in 1998, it was discovered that the original recordings had been lost, possibly buried as landfill beneath the M3 in England along with those cuts from the original print, and that record of the soundtrack (now something of a collector’s item) was taken from a mono version sound and effects tape, dubbed from the shortest version of the film, resulting in a pre-Tarrantino-esque soundtrack with some of the dialogue and sound effects present in the mix. It wasn’t until the superior original stereo recordings were released by Magnet member Gary Carpenter, that a definitive master of the soundtrack could be created, released in 2002 by Silva Screen. This release contained Gently Johnny, missing on the Trunk recordings (on account of it being cut from the original print of the film, and the missing, butchered lines from Willow’s Song – surely one of the most erotic songs ever recorded (regardless of the fact that this song is accompanied on screen with the sight of Britt Ekland prancing around in the nud, albeit with a highly improbable body double). Although the song has been covered many times - I own 17 versions of the song by artists as varied as The Sneaker Pimps, The Mock Tutles, Doves, The Go! Team and Isobell Campbell – the original, sung by Lesley Mackie is surely the most exquisitely sublime.
There’s something about The Wickerman that lingers long after the film has finished and been returned to its DVD case, awaiting its next viewing – an image, or a musical refrain, often both, as in the scene in the ruins of the abandoned churchyard, where Howie discovers the mysterious woman breast-feeding her child whilst holding an egg in her out-stretched hand (although I think we could have done without the wah-wah porno music for the chase scene through the caves), but ultimately it comes down to that last scene, the flaming image of the wickerman falling in on itself, the setting sun blazing gloriously behind it, the islanders hand-in-hand, joyously celebrating the terrible sacrifice, and one final question that I occasionally return to late at night, or early in the morning, when I can’t sleep: namely, who was right – Howie or the Islanders? Were they murderously misguided, deluded, raving mad, as Howie protested to the end, or did their sacrifice of the virgin king, a fool for the day, work? We can only speculate, setting one belief system up against another – one that has failed us, and one that is lost to us – but which one is which? It is one secret The Wickerman takes with it to its fiery grave.
This piece was inspired by a recent article I found which reports that the original, definitive cut of the film has been found and will soon enjoy a re-release. See here for details
(Did anyone notice that didn’t once make reference to the abysmal and indeed pointless 2006 remake with Nicholas Cage? Not once.)
The original trailer
Willow's Song
A really good summary of the legend surrounding the film here,
and a very good article discussing the various versions of The Wickerman here.
