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Post by dem on Oct 31, 2007 8:17:18 GMT
Robin Hardy & Anthony Shaffer - The Wicker Man (Pan, 2000: originally Crown, 1978) Cover pictures: Collection of Allan Brown and Summerisle Films Blurb: IN THE EVER-GREEN PARADISE OF SUMMERISLE LURKS A PAGAN HORROR UNIMAGINED BY THE CHRISTIAN WORLD …
This island is to be found somewhere off the harsh Scottish coast, yet it is bathed in the light of a perpetual spring. Someone has beckoned to its shores Sergeant Howie, a rigidly moralistic police constable from the mainland, to search for a missing girl.
On the eve of May Day strange, mystical and erotic events erupt around him: the stage is set for a terrifying and thrilling clash between ideas and beliefs
The Wicker Man was first published five years after the release of the chilling cinema classic. Called by Christopher Lee ‘the best-scripted film I ever took part in’, it was hailed in America as ‘the best horror movie to have come out of Britain in 30 years… for sheer imagination and near terror, The Wicker Man has seldom been equalled.’ Robin Hardy, author of The Education of Don Juan, also directed the film, and Anthony Shaffer, whose many creations include FRENZY and SLEUTH, wrote its screenplay. Allan Brown is the author of INSIDE THE WICKER MAN. Adored the film and incredibly, this novelisation is every bit its equal! Working from Shaffer's script, Hardy has fleshed out both story and characters, most notably that of Sergeant Howie. In the film he's a humorless, one-dimensional religious bigot. A decent man doing his best by the church and the law but, his terrible fate aside, it's difficult to feel sympathy toward him. Hardy's Sergeant Howie is a more complex proposition. Like Summerisle he is a nature lover whose favourite off-duty pursuit is birdwatching. Before he joined the force he trained as a priest but had doubts he was really cut out for it. He also has a long-term fiance, Mary Bannock. Realising that his sexual attraction toward her (and vice versa) is in danger of getting the better of him, he finally proposes marriage. Ah, how blissful it will be, loving and rearing children with this beautiful woman! We'll be wed just as soon as I return from Summerisle, because I've had an anonymous letter asking me to investigate the disappearance of twelve year old Rowan Morrison. I'll only be gone a couple of days! That's his real tragedy. If the note had arrived a week later, he'd have been utterly useless as the "ideal sacrifice"! The celebrated scene in Alder MacGregor's The Green Man Inn is, if anything, far more riotous in print. "He thought of hooligans at soccer games, demonstrators on picket lines, drunks at closing time". There's a nude teen orgy in progress on the village green outside while at the bar sexual juggernaut Willow is being half man-handled to death and loving it. Howie near loses his sanity at that point. She's all his for the taking and he wants her, but to succumb is to go against his religious beliefs, the woman he loves and his position as upholder of law and order on an island where there is none - save the word of Lord Summerisle. Best horror novelisation ever? Well, I've not read a better one.
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Post by sean on Nov 17, 2007 13:59:46 GMT
 Here's our copy of an earlier edition (Hamlyn, 1980).... It doesn't look so grubby in real life! |
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Post by allthingshorror on Sept 25, 2009 21:42:21 GMT
Hamlyn (1980) Somewhere in the sub-tropical beauty of Summerisle, pretty little Rowan Morrison has disappeared. Police Sergeant Neil Howie has come to investigate. Nothing can prepare him for what he will find.
There is unimaginable horror lurking here - a horror that hides behind every smiling face, that peers out of every lust-crazed eye...a horror that is reflected in every fierce erotic act of pagan worship.
And as the Lord of Summerisle prepares the island for its ultimate ritual, Neil Howie moves ever closer to the black and bloody truth, the final meeting with...THE WICKER MAN.
The film of THE WICKER MAN has been called the best horror movie to come out of England in thirty years.
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Post by dem on Nov 17, 2009 17:10:31 GMT
Only the vaguest memories of Callan, but who will ever forget his performance as the doomed Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man? And it's scary. Edward Woodward (1930-2009) R. I. P. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Nov 17, 2009 18:51:51 GMT
Great actor. Callan was a must see as a kid
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Post by allthingshorror on Nov 17, 2009 19:46:09 GMT
Only the vaguest memories of Callan, but who will ever forget his performance as the doomed Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man? And it's scary. Edward Woodward (1930-2009) R. I. P. And who could forget his unforgettable cameo in the *ahem* highbrow Incense for the Damned. QUOTE: Yes, of course! Now, come, come, Tony, don’t be naïve. Man works and loves in many ways. Some men, for instance, get excitement only from statues – the "Pygmalion Syndrome". Other men can only make love in coffins. You have voyeurs, transvestites, narcissists, bestialists--- Ah, it’s a funny old world we live in! |
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Post by andydecker on Nov 17, 2009 21:36:23 GMT
Unforgetable in the Wicker Man or The Equalizer, wasted in the terrible New Professionals.
A fine actor. He will be missed.
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Post by ripper on Nov 18, 2009 20:45:17 GMT
A really fine actor who always gave a touch of class to whatever production he was in. To most genre fans he will always be remembered for The Wicker Man, but whenever I remember him, it is as Callan, a truly memorable series for those fortunate enough to have seen it and surely long overdue for re-runs on one of the digital channels.
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Post by Dr Strange on Nov 23, 2011 11:52:02 GMT
DAVID PINNER - RITUAL (1967)Of course I don't have a copy of the original (never ever seen one), but it's recently been reprinted by Finders Keepers - who seem to be a weird record label of some sort.  Read the first few chapters last night and it certainly deserves it's reputation for general weirdness and, in particular, for bonkers characters and dialogue. But it's also a lot of fun. Anyone else read it? [Sorry - originally posted this in the Wheatley section but moved it here]
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Post by pulphack on Nov 23, 2011 12:33:04 GMT
ooh, this looks good! i love a bit of barm sixties writing that can't make up its mind whether its art or pop culture.
finders keepers is a cracking label, recently hit by losing lots of its stock in the enfield riot (it was in the sony warehouse that was burnt down). they've been releasing mp3 comps by names like jarvis cocker designed to raise some cash and stop them going under.
most interesting man there is andy votel, whose mix of old vertigo prog stuff into a 70 minute piece is wonderful (ahem). he's a real curator and explorer of hidden corners around the world, and can often be heard as a guest on stuart maconie's freakier zone (an hour shorter than the main show, but often much more interesting) on bbc6.
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Post by Dr Strange on Nov 23, 2011 13:54:14 GMT
finders keepers is a cracking label, recently hit by losing lots of its stock in the enfield riot (it was in the sony warehouse that was burnt down). they've been releasing mp3 comps by names like jarvis cocker designed to raise some cash and stop them going under. most interesting man there is andy votel How strange... they also have a "sister label" called Twisted Nerve, presumably named after the 60s film that's been talked about here in recent days! |
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Post by pulphack on Nov 23, 2011 15:57:35 GMT
that is one of life's little synchronicities, isn't it - especially as i've just finished watching the aforesaid film, as can be seen over at...
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Post by Dr Strange on Nov 24, 2011 10:54:30 GMT
About a quarter of the way through Ritual. It's not giving anything away by saying it's about a policeman investigating the mysterious death of a young girl in rural Cornwall. And I hope it's not giving too much away by mentioning - a gang of primary school aged youngsters that are like a cross between the Bash Street Kids and the children from Lord of the Flies, a semi-naked guy running around the woods with a bow and arrows, loopy villagers having seances in a room above a shop, and a policeman who appears to be no less bonkers than everyone else. I'm loving it.
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Post by Knygathin on Oct 14, 2012 9:31:58 GMT
Discovered this film for the first time. Although much coloured by the hippie era, The Wicker Man is truly the most interestingly intense film I have ever seen. Why is it not better known?! It is an original classic!
I made a quick comparison between the 88min theater version and the uncut film. Thank God I watched it uncut! It is a crime that the public was only allowed to see the short version. Some of the most ecstatic scenes are not there, and certain key elements have been removed so things don't make sense.
I understand the editor of the The Wicker Man was a Christian, who found the film a pagan blasphemy, and tried to destroy as much of it as he could. But if it hadn't been him, someone else would have done it. Again, it is a crime that all films made, are conventionalized (except for a few odd moments in films that never reach the wide public). Films that assert to be provocative, even the grossest of horror films, are not really provocative, or only superficially provocative. They don't display true ecstasy (as Arthur Machen would put it). Their form is polished, balanced, and the aim is still designed to keep us "normal", to press us down under the narrow confines of society control.
Artistically speaking, even a director like Stanley Kubrick, one of the very best, polishes and perfects the form so much that odd outcroppings get lost. For all film directors known to the public, form and balance take overly important command, and the balancing intellect, ego, or self-consciousness, rub away the most intense and instinctive of initial and primitive ecstasy (like my intellect does now, but which I struggle to free myself from).
The scenes in The Wicker Man simply don't care about propriety. This film doesn't speculate in sales-point, or if an audience is impatient, want entertainment, and quick variation. It trusts its own instinct, isn't slave under artistic "balance", and is not afraid to draw out a scene for a long time until the subject matter is fully tapped. It takes the time it needs. It is true ecstasy.
I feel that art could take great inspiration from this film, and deliver the ecstasy even much further. Opening up unknown vistas.
One of the best scenes, when Britt Ekland dances in the night, clapping on the walls, and the music ever escalates in intensity, is near to perfection of purpose. I am sure the director and musician could have gone on for another five minutes (if they had not said, enough is enough), lifting it to even greater heights. So the audience in the theater hall would have lost their final resistance, and started writhing and squirming their bodies in dancing movements, careless about propriety.
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Post by pulphack on Oct 15, 2012 5:55:06 GMT
Not heard the Christian film editor bit before, but that might explain a lot. By the way, it's not Britt Ekland's arse, sadly.
The truth about the film getting cut and lost might be much more prosiac. It was an independent production at a time in the UK when even the few 'studio' brands like Tigon and Hammer were struggling and going under. The cinema chains at that time were strictly controlled by companies that had agendas (the UK chains have always been in thrall to US distributors and their demands), and the few indies were either art houses or showed skin films that pulled in punters (pre-internet, home video, etc)
The Wicker Man was not the only movie to be hacked for fitting a bottom bill (see also Incense For The Damned aka Bloodsuckers), and the cut footage lost because of storage bills not being paid, people going bust, or just no-one caring and it getting lost.
Most Brit movies that suffered like this weren't of the quality of The Wicker Man and so never get talked about or remembered. Thus a common business (or lack of) practise can become a bit of myth about persecution. Don't fall for it. The Wicker Man suffered because it was made on little money, had a crap distributor, and had the lousy timing of being made during a slump in the Brit movie business.
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