The Wicker Man
You've gotta respect that honest hedonistic moralizing. Or maybe not. A straightlaced, religious police sergeant is sent to a mysterious Scottish island to investigate a missing girl. At first, the inhabitants seem like peaceful, solitary British folk, until he starts seeing people copulating outdoors in the middle of the night. As he begins uncovering the mysteries of the island, things start getting stranger and stranger until he finds himself in the middle of an ancient pagan rite involving flaunted sexuality and human sacrifices. This is a horror film that will no doubt defy any expectation one might have about the genre, beginning with the opening titles which has a Celtic folk song playing over it. And then there's Bond girl, Britt Eckland dancing naked through her room and singing another folk diddy. Best of all is Christopher Lee as the leader of the island cult. It manages to create a strange atmosphere where you start to give up trying to guess what's going to happen next. The ending is memorable, and once again unexpected. For a movie that's so indulgent, it seems to be strangely moralistic. Particularly for the first half, it's the kind of film that has you chuckling to yourself for its wreckless abandon while at the same time leaving you to constantly ask yourself what the hell is going on from one scene to the next. I guess I can say that I have strange respect for this film, yet I don't think it's any good.
posted by Clint @ 4:42 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I still consider this one of the most overrated horror films ever made, despite its many distinguishing qualities (a literate screenplay by Anthony Shaffer, good art direction, an unusual folk soundtrack, a great performance by Christopher Lee). I think Shaffer takes too much pleasure in depicting the Christian protagonist as an impotent fool—Howie only prays when death is upon him. Still, his character is redeemed because he dies a good death (he doesn’t renounce God or anything of that sort), and the pagans are reduced to raving lunatics. We don’t believe their human sacrifice will bring them a better harvest.
The film’s strength is its uniquely unsettling atmosphere—sunny, erotic, with scary undertones. One gets the feeling that something unspeakably evil lurks just beneath the surface of the ordinary. As an examination of the “old religion,” it is singularly interesting, but still, as you say, no good.
One more vote for overrated. Good thing I have Nate as a friend, or I probably would have given up on British horror altogether based on this film.
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