The genesis of the movie lies in a meeting between screenwriter Anthony Shaffer, producer Peter Snell, and Christopher Lee, which culminated in the desire for the trio to collaborate on a film together. A property was found which they felt could be developed into a decent Horror film, David Pinner’s 1967 novel Ritual. As the film’s composer Paul Giovanni described it, “the novel was bad, a 5th-rate piece of work, a bare, unrealized sketch of an idea that only hinted at the things that would later become The Wicker Man.”

    Shaffer spent some time trying to adapt the novel into a workable screenplay, only to decide that it just wasn’t possible. Instead, while he and his friend Robin Hardy were visiting one weekend in early 1972, they began discussing the project. Hardy and Shaffer had worked together throughout the 1960s producing industrial films for H&S Associates, a British production house that packaged documentaries and travel programs for British and French television. Hardy, recovering from a heart attack, was unable to work. They decided to collaborate on a new script, retaining only the core premise of Pinner’s book.

    They agreed that Shaffer would write the screenplay, while the convalescing Hardy would research the background needed for the script. They wanted authenticity for the project, and they wanted to avoid the traditional Horror movie tropes. Most importantly, they wanted the film to remain true to their vision, that of a conflict between old and new religions, with Christianity being the newcomer. Shaffer wanted to convey the sense that, while the ancient Celtic religion is far from thriving, traces of it do linger in our everyday customs and superstitions. To ‘knock on wood’, in order to protect oneself from being jinxed by something one has said, references the pagan ‘golden bough’. Mistletoe at Christmas is derived from the same source, as is the Christmas tree itself. Early Christianity co-opted many of the pagan symbols and customs as a means of easing the conversion to the new religion.

    Shaffer and Hardy wanted to explore that, as well as the tension that would result from a devout Christian finding himself among a group of modern day pagans. Hardy recalled being in the Cornish town of Paidstow in the 1960s when they were celebrating the May Day festival, much as would be depicted in the movie. Though it lacked the sinister motivations of the Summerisle festival, every other element was there—the hobby horse, Punch, and the Woman/King leading the procession, the Morris Dancers, the maypole—it was little different than it had been hundreds of years before. However, as he described it, “… they had seemed to put up a wall of evasion about it. And it was very unpleasant being a stranger in that town on that day.” It was that sense of being an outsider, of being an intruder into a situation one doesn’t understand, that they wished to capture.

    The script was finished in a little over ten weeks, and Shaffer took it to Snell, who by this time had been named Managing Director of British Lion Films, Ltd. In May of 1972, British Lion had been taken over by a thirty-two year-old businessman named John Bentley, who, lacking any film experience, hired Snell to run the company . One of Bentley’s first actions upon gaining control of the company was to announce his intention to split Shepperton Studios, the production side of British Lion, from the company and sell the studio property.

    This sent shockwaves through an already trembling industry, certain that Bentley was intent on stripping the corpse of Sir Alexander Korda’s creation for whatever ready cash it could bring. Bentley, who would today be described as a corporate raider, wanted to spin off the production part of the business, and restructure British Lion to focus on film distribution. However, he needed stability to accomplish this, and to keep the company attractive to potential buyers; he also needed to reassure a frightened industry, and more importantly, the unions, and the best way to do that was to get something—anything, in production, and fast.

    Snell had one property that fit the requirements—The Wicker Man. It was ready to go, could be shot cheaply, and it had commercial potential. What’s more, Snell liked the script. Hardy was hired to direct the movie, his first feature film. The budget he was given to work with was small, around $750,000, and to make it stretch further, Snell and Shaffer both declined their entire salaries for the production, as would Christopher Lee. Hardy would receive only a nominal payment for directing the film.

    The first order of business for Snell, Hardy, and Shaffer was to find someone capable of composing the music for the film. The music was going to be such an integral part of the film, so important to establishing the mood and texture of the movie, that the choice of composer would be second only to that of director in importance. They chose Paul Giovanni, a young American composer, who had never scored a film before. Shaffer had been introduced to Giovanni by the screenwriter’s twin brother Peter. Giovanni had been appearing in an off-Broadway musical at the time, an avant-garde piece full of experimental folk-rock music that he had composed, and the Shaffers felt that he would be a good choice to conceive the music needed for The Wicker Man.

    They showed him the script, explained the concept to him, and he agreed to do the music for the movie—if it should ever be made. As he recalled, “It was one of those things where British Lion fiddled with the screenplay for a time, couldn’t make up their minds, then—Bang! … Suddenly, I had about six weeks to research, prepare, compose, and record the soundtrack, which all had to be done before the first day’s shooting. ”

    While that was underway, Hardy had been scouring the west coast of Scotland for locations suitable for the project. Oddly enough, considering that one of the film’s stated goals was to convince people that Shepperton Studios would continue in business, not one frame of the production was shot there. This was very much a conscious choice on the part of Hardy; coming from his background of documentary and travelogue filmmaking, he had an aversion to working in the confines of a studio. Though Summerisle actually does exist (and apples actually do grow wild on the island), it’s a small, barren island, without a permanent population. Hardy and Art Director Seamus Flannery skillfully created the sense of isolation and the anachronistic life of the village of Summerisle, primarily using the towns of Newton Stewart, Gatehouse of Fleet, and other locations in the Dumfries and Galloway region of western Scotland.

    The extended version of the film (more on that later) opens as Sergeant Neil Howie (Edward Woodward) of the West Highland Constabulary is returning from his patrol of the offshore islands, using a seaplane to reach the small, isolated communities. Howie is a strict, by-the-book officer, and a devout, almost Puritanical, Christian. His life is one of order, of following and enforcing the rules, in his private life as well as his professional one. There’s no room for passion, for spontaneity, in Howie’s life. He’s active in his church, which he attends with his fiancée, and one gets the impression that even with her his reserve never falters, he never exceeds the bounds of propriety.

    One morning as he arrives at the station he is greeted with a letter addressed to him personally. It is postmarked “Summerisle,” and in it, the anonymous correspondent reports that a young girl has been missing for several months. Rowan Morrison is the child’s name, and no one has seen her; or, at least, will admit to having seen her. The writer of the letter feels that it must be investigated, as the child was far too young to have left the island on her own, and her mother, May Morrison, has made no effort to report her daughter’s disappearance. The letter is signed, “a child lover” and a photo of a pretty young girl of about twelve years is enclosed.

    Howie is compelled to investigate the matter, and flies to Summerisle. Though his reception upon reaching the island is cordial, it is also reticent, and the island’s inhabitants are uncooperative, to say the least. All deny that anyone by the name of Rowan Morrison lives on the island; even the woman whom the letter named as her mother denies any such girl exists. Howie goes to the island’s pub, The Green Man, to seek lodgings and to show the girl’s photograph around to the patrons. To his obvious discomfort, the customers are serenading the landlord’s beautiful daughter Willow (Britt Ekland) with an incredibly suggestive song, which both she and her father are enjoying immensely. He shows the photograph, again to no avail, but he notices a series of photos on the wall, Harvest Festival photographs, one for each year. Each shows a young girl before an altar piled high with fruits, vegetables, and baskets of grain. However, the one for the most recent harvest, 1972, is missing. The landlord explains that it was accidentally broken, and hasn’t been replaced. Howie goes for a stroll, to check out the village, and is shocked to see young couples having sex, in the open, apparently wherever the desire overtook them. Even in the churchyard, he sees a naked woman, straddling a fresh grave, crying and moaning piteously. Incensed, he rushes back to the pub, and retires to his room in impotent anger.

    Later that night, two men come to the pub, standing beneath Willow’s window, next to Howie’s. It is Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee) with a young man whom he is bringing to Willow, for her to introduce to the pleasures of sex. Howie, hearing the lighthearted discussion of what he doubtless considers a private, perhaps sacred, certainly shameful, act, is driven to prayer, though he cannot tune out the sounds of the carnal activity in the room next to his. As the sounds echo in the Sergeant’s room, they also carry from Willow’s open window down to where Summerisle stands listening, as he watches two snails sensuously slide over and around each other. He soliloquizes on the common sense of animals, who bow to no one, least of all one of their own kind. They do not deny themselves in supposed duty to a god, nor do they refuse their pleasures from some false sense of morality. Howie falls into a troubled, restless sleep with Summerisle’s words drifting up through the open window.

    The next morning, the officer begins his search for the missing girl at the schoolhouse. As he crosses the village square, the young boys are busy decorating the maypole for the following day’s festivities, as a man sings a song concerning the circular nature of life. At the schoolhouse, he finds the teacher, Miss Rose (Diane Cilento), lecturing the girls on the meaning and symbolism of the maypole. Howie is shocked to hear the girls respond, correctly, that it is a phallic symbol, and is further scandalized by Miss Rose’s casual discussion of its importance in their religion. He questions the children, and their teacher, regarding the missing girl. All deny any knowledge of her, but when he examines the class register, over the objections of Miss Rose, he finds the name of Rowan Morrison clearly inscribed within. Under threat of arrest, he questions Rose at length about the girl; though she’s very evasive, parsing every word she says, Howie is finally able to gain the impression that the girl is dead.

    He goes to the ruined church, finding a woman sitting in the abandoned chapel, nursing a baby. The desecrated altar is piled with apple crates and rotting fruit, which Howie angrily sweeps onto the ground. He fashions a crude cross, laying it on the altar. In the churchyard, he encounters the caretaker, and asks where the body of the girl might be found. The man points out a grave marked only by the presence of a rowan tree sapling, indicating that it is Rowan Morrison’s grave. From there Howie goes, first to the town’s physician, then to the town registrar. The doctor informs him that the girl burned to death, and that’s the cause of death on the death certificate. At the registrar’s office, however, he discovers that there was no death certificate; at least, the death was never registered. Howie decides there’s only one way to get to the bottom of the mystery—to seek, from Lord Summerisle, permission to exhume the girl’s remains.

    On the way to his lordship’s manor, Howie passes a Stonehenge-like stone circle. In it, the girls from the village school are sitting naked around a bonfire, as Miss Rose performs a ritual before the fire. After he arrives at the manor, and is ushered into a drawing room to wait for Lord Summerisle, he observes the girls at the stone circle through the window, leaping over the flames, and dancing around the fire. Summerisle rises from a high-backed chair in front of the fireplace, where he had been concealed from Howie’s vision, and asks him if he finds the sight of the children refreshing. The Sergeant, nearing a state of exasperation with what he considers the degenerate nature of the islanders, replies most emphatically in the negative. He insists on knowing the purpose of such a spectacle. Summerisle replies that the children are engaged in their divinity lessons. When Howie wants to know what sort of religion has young girls dancing naked through a fire, Summerisle explains that the population of the island worships the old Celtic gods and goddesses, and the girls are merely asking the god of fire to make them fruitful, to give them children. Howie finds this hard to believe and demands to know if the children are taught about the one true God, and the Christian faith. Summerisle’s reply infuriates the devoutly Christian Howie. Summerisle states flatly that the Christian God is dead; he’s had his chance and blown it.

    He explains how his grandfather had found the islanders eking out a meager subsistence, fishing and raising sheep, when he purchased the island in the last century. An eccentric agronomist, whose interest in the island lay in its unique combination of warm Gulf Stream currents and volcanic soil which allowed the cultivation of a great range of fruits and vegetables on the island, he reintroduced the old gods to the islanders as a way to motivate and encourage their switch to growing the produce he cultivated, especially apples. Though at first they did it simply to please their benefactor, their newfound prosperity soon made them earnest converts to the old religion. Howie calls him a pagan, but Summerisle prefers to think of himself as an enlightened heathen. He gives Howie permission to exhume Rowan’s body, and bids him farewell.

    Later that night, the policeman and the cemetery caretaker unearth the coffin in Rowan’s grave. As they pry the lid off the casket, the caretaker begins laughing at the looks on Howie’s face, for the coffin contains, not the decaying body of a twelve-year-old girl, but the fresh corpse of a March hare. That hare is soon cast at the feet of Summerisle himself, as he sits at his piano, singing a bawdy duet with Miss Rose. A livid Howie demands to know where the girl’s body has been hidden. Summerisle tells him that he is the detective; it’s his task to figure it out. Howie tells him that he plans to do that. He will return to the mainland the following day, where he will report the matter to the chief constable, and return to the island with more officers. They will turn the island inside out, but they will solve the mystery. Summerisle replies that it is good that he will be returning to the mainland; doubtless, the officer would find the May Day celebrations disturbing.

    When he goes back to the village, Howie breaks into the shop of the village chemist, who is also the photographer. He wants to see the Harvest Festival photograph from last year, the one missing from The Green Man. He finds the negative dated 1972, and prints an enlargement of the photograph. It is virtually identical to the others he observed in the pub, with two important differences. The girl in the photo is undoubtedly Rowan Morrison, and instead of the heaping mounds of produce on and around the altar, there are a pitiful few crates of apples sitting there. The meaning is obvious—the crops failed last year. Rowan was the queen of the Harvest, and the crops failed. Howie recalled Summerisle mentioning the need to appease the gods on occasion. Was that what had happened to Rowan Morrison? Did she pay the price for the poor harvest?

    The Sergeant retires to his room for the night, but it will not be a restful one. He hears Willow pass by his door as she goes to her room, and sees the light from her open window shining in his. Soon there comes a knocking on the common wall between the two rooms, and the soft sound of Willow’s voice, singing a song that not even the naïve Howie could mistake for anything other than an invitation to come to the young woman’s bed. As she dances naked before her door, he’s drawn to his, opening it briefly before slamming it shut. She presses her body to the wall, and he’s compelled to do the same, writhing in torment as he undergoes the temptation of the flesh. He is bewitched by the pagan beauty, but with great effort overcomes the temptation to go to her.

    The next morning he heads to the village library, in order to research the customs and rituals associated with the pagan May Day celebrations. What he discovers leads him to the realization that the girl is still alive; they need a powerful sacrifice to ensure that the crops are successful this year, and the sacrifice of a virgin on this day would go a long way towards appeasing the old gods; at least, according to their beliefs. He has to get back to the mainland, and return as quickly as possible with help, if they’re to have any chance to save the girl.

    But there will be no help from the mainland for Sgt. Howie. His plane, not surprisingly, has been tampered with. Whatever he has to do to stop the islanders from carrying out their terrible plans, he will have to do alone, and he resolves to do that very thing. Little does he know the part that he will play, unwittingly, in fulfilling Summerisle’s dreadful sacrifice.

    With photography completed, the production was packed up, and Hardy, Snell, Peter Shaffer (filling in for his brother, who had moved onto another assignment), and Giovanni returned to Shepperton to begin the complex process of editing the thousands of feet of exposed film into a finished motion picture, ready for release. Normally a straightforward, if time-consuming and contentious task, it was made nearly impossible through the efforts of the editor, Eric Boyd-Perkins. According to Paul Giovanni, as recounted to Cinefantastique Magazine in 1977, “I think the editor really undermined it a lot, even at this stage. He seemed to keep losing things, saying they hadn’t been shot, but we knew damn well that they had. There were things in there that Perkins hated—I mean, he used to get red in the face and say, ‘that’s disgusting’! This, in 1973!” In fairness to Boyd-Perkins, however, though he may have had an antipathy to the material with which he was working, events outside the editing room had a much greater impact on the shaping of what would be the movie’s final form.

    The Wicker Man was produced during a period of transition at British Lion. We’ve discussed John Bentley, the youthful corporate raider who swept into British Lion and oversaw it’s separation from Shepperton Studios. In the spring of 1973, barely a year after purchasing British Lion for a reported $13 million, he sold the company to Great Western Investments, a concern formed by a group of investors headed by Michael Deeley. Deeley, who did have a background in the film industry, became, along with fellow investor Barry Spikings, co-Managing Directors of British Lion. Though Peter Snell was allowed to remain at Shepperton until his contract ran out, which would be in June of 1973, he no longer had control over his projects—including The Wicker Man.

    While this was underway, a supposedly finished cut of the film was ready for screening for the studio executives and marketing department people. Running 102 minutes in length (there is some controversy about the exact run time), getting even that much had been a struggle. Lee, perhaps the film’s most ardent proponent, felt that twenty to twenty-five minutes had been lost. “We had shot the entire screenplay, word for word, scene for scene, and that should’ve been the film, apart from the inevitable minor editing, the tightening, that happens to all pictures, that went out to the theaters.” Given the reaction of the executives to the 102 minute cut, however, it’s perhaps a good thing that Lee’s desires for the film were not made a reality. To say that they were not enthusiastic would be a huge understatement; to a man, they hated it. It is doubtful that they understood the film; it is certain that they didn’t get the point of it. The marketing people asked if that were truly the ending, was there really no cavalry coming over the hill to rescue the policeman? When Shaffer told them that that was, indeed, the ending of the film, their response was that it was a “downer.”

    Nor was Deeley impressed by the film. As Christopher Lee later recounted, he and his wife paid a visit to Deeley’s offices at Shepperton, a courtesy call to welcome him aboard, as Lee described it. When they were ushered into Deeley’s private office, Lee noted that he didn’t rise to greet him and Mrs. Lee, not the best of beginnings, from Lee’s point of view. The talk eventually turned to the subject of The Wicker Man, and the actor asked him for his appraisal of the movie. Deeley’s reply, according to Lee, was blunt. “It was one of the ten worst movies I have ever seen.” Deeley himself would, years later, deny saying that. “I never said that. I don’t think it’s one of the 10 worst films I’ve ever seen. I’ve made worse films than that myself. I thought it was fascinating and genuinely ahead of its time. But it was also rather indulgent, and very difficult for an audience.” While both Robin Hardy and Anthony Shaffer tended to support this version of events, stating that that was more or less the official studio line on the movie, it’s quite possible that there’s truth to both recollections. Lee was passionate in his regard for the film, and likely took any disparagement personally. And it’s equally possible that Deeley’s initial dislike of the film mellowed over time, especially in light of the critical acclaim the film garnered.

    Whatever Deeley’s true feelings about the film may have been, he still had a major problem on his hands. Whether he hated the movie or not, he certainly had no faith in its commercial potential. His own marketing people were telling him that it was, in its present form, unsalable. He sent a print of the film to Roger Corman, to see if he would be interested in the American rights to the picture. Corman, whose New World Pictures regularly distributed Art House fare, including films from such renowned international directors as Ingmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, and Akira Kurosawa, was eager to handle The Wicker Man, though he didn’t consider it an Art film. Deeley asked him if he thought it was good in its current form, to which Corman replied that it could probably use some judicious cutting, but cut or uncut, he would be happy to handle it. There was only one drawback to Corman’s offer—it would be back-loaded, with only a $50,000 upfront payment for the rights. The balance would come from a share of the box-office earnings—and Deeley had no confidence that there would be any. He did take Corman’s suggestion about cutting the film down to heart, though he forgot the qualifier “judicious.” Boyd-Perkins was told to go back in and gut the film; Deeley wanted fifteen minutes removed, and he didn’t much care what fifteen minutes they were. In effect, he gave the editor the authority to alter the film completely from what Hardy and Shaffer had envisioned, and which they, the cast, and crew had labored to create. Boyd-Perkins, who had no care for the film at any rate, did his job with abandon.

    Gone was the prologue on the mainland that served to introduce Howie to the audience, and established the nature and depth of his religious beliefs, as well as his devotion to duty. Gone was the scene below Willow’s window on the first night, and Paul Giovanni’s song Gently Johnny, which served much the same purpose for Summerisle. The three days and two nights that Howie spends on the island are condensed down to one night, losing much of the plot and character development, compressing the action into an unbelievably short period. Deeley loved it; he rewarded Boyd-Perkins with a case of whisky, then gave the finished project a half-hearted domestic release, shoving it out the door as the bottom half of a double-bill, paired with another film that was produced during Peter Snell’s tenure, the Nicholas Roeg-directed Don’t Look Now.

    The secondary rights to distribute the film were sold to an investment group, National General. David Blake, British Lion’s agent here in the US, declined to state the exact arrangements for publication in 1977, but did state that it was for something more than $200,000, plus prints and paper . Four days later, National General went bankrupt. Its catalog was bought up by Warner Bros., who had no interest in distributing most of the films it now owned. They test-marketed the movie at a few Drive-Ins, then promptly forgot about it.

    For the next few years, the movie drifted from tax-shelter to tax-shelter, getting a limited release on occasion, just enough to satisfy the IRS so that the film could be claimed as a loss. While the film languished in vaults, however, an amazing thing had been happening. The film’s principals—Hardy, Shaffer, Snell and Lee—had never given up on the project. They entered it in festivals and competitions, begged critics to seek it out and give it a chance, Lee even offered to pay the admission price, from his own pocket, for any critic who would see the film. Even in its truncated form, critics who took him up on his offer were enthralled, proclaiming it the best British film in years. One such critic was Stirling Smith, who hosted a weeknightly film review show based in New Orleans, which was seen in several Southern markets. Not only a critic, Smith was also the head of a distribution company, Abraxas, a company that was building a reputation for rescuing neglected films that might have a limited appeal, and giving them a proper release. He loved The Wicker Man, and Abraxas was able to win the rights to the film at auction, for $20,000. Hardy, Shaffer, et al. were thrilled—finally, their film was in the hands of someone who viewed it in the same light as did they, and who wanted to treat the film as it deserved. They wanted to restore the film to its original running length of 102 minutes, and contacted British Lion for the original negatives. This would begin the most bizarre chapter in the film’s epic journey from conception to its recognition as a masterpiece. They were informed, quite matter-of-factly, that all the elements—negatives, cut segments, prints—had been thrown out. Someone suggested that they had been dumped into the roadbed for a highway that was then under construction next to the Shepperton studios, and were now buried under tons of concrete and asphalt.

    Everyone concerned with the film was shocked. As Snell would say, “People don’t destroy negative trims, but it happened.” Deeley, and British Lion, were embarrassed, but what was done was done, and that was that. Hardy and Lee felt that it was a deliberate act on Deeley’s part, and were convinced that the cans of film, three hundred and eighty-six cans of film, to be precise, were not disposed of, but had been hidden away. Snell and Shaffer, who when interviewed in 1977 were still involved in projects with Deeley, were more willing to chalk it up to a simple error. At any rate, all that was extant of The Wicker Man were the twenty-five short (87-plus minutes) prints that National General had originally purchased.