Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man makes a police enquiry funny, seductive and frightening, with Edward Woodward giving its religious conflict a stubborn human presence. A little stiff in places, it earns its lasting unease.
Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man is a frightening, funny horror film that makes religious conviction matter to the people holding it. Anthony Shaffer’s screenplay follows Sergeant Neil Howie, a Christian policeman investigating a disappearance on a remote Scottish island, into a community that sees nothing shameful in its pagan customs. Howie objects, and the islanders have little interest in accommodating him. Hardy lets us enjoy his discomfort long enough for that enjoyment to become something we ought to question.
Edward Woodward gives Howie’s disapproval the force of a physical effort; even allowing these people to explain themselves seems to cost him something. His stiffness is funny because the islanders appear so comfortable with the customs he finds intolerable. We laughed at his discomfort among the singing islanders, then felt uneasy about our readiness to join in. Woodward keeps his conviction sufficiently serious that dismissing him as a fool would mean ignoring much of what the performance tells us.
Christopher Lee’s Lord Summerisle is good company in a way that ought to worry us. Lee gives the island’s ruler an ease that makes Howie’s outrage seem faintly provincial, and he does not need to strain for menace. Their opposition is the film’s most useful source of tension: each man regards his own beliefs as perfectly reasonable. The religious conflict works because both actors play people who expect to be believed, even when what they are saying sounds alarming.
Harry Waxman’s photography makes effective use of the island locations, giving the community a convincing place to live. That matters when the rituals arrive, since they belong to people we have already spent time watching. Paul Giovanni’s folk music is just as important, giving the singing islanders an appeal that a more insistently threatening score would destroy. We are allowed to enjoy the music without being told at every moment how to respond to the people making it.
Eric Boyd-Perkins’s editing keeps the police enquiry clear as Hardy moves between comedy, folk songs and unease. The enquiries keep us occupied while the differences between Howie and his hosts become harder to laugh off. There are stiff passages, though, when the screenplay’s need to explain a belief becomes too easy to hear in the dialogue. Hardy does not always get those exchanges moving naturally, and for a few moments the people seem to be waiting their turn to state a position.
Hardy does not need everyone to behave like an obvious threat. These people can sing, discuss their beliefs and seem quite at ease without making us feel safe. Shaffer understands the suspicion generated by a mystery, but he also understands the irritation of being surrounded by people who think our objections are absurd. The humour is worth keeping: without it, Howie would be easier to support and the islanders much easier to dismiss.
At 93 minutes, it has time to make the island attractive without wearing out the police enquiry. The later developments deserve to be encountered without a guide, so we will say only that Hardy’s confidence in the story is justified. We recommend it even to those who usually avoid horror, with one warning: the songs are no promise of a comfortable evening.
