Unholy Harvest: The Wicker Man and the Birth of Folk Horror

In the misty isles of Scotland, a policeman uncovers a ritual that burns away the veil between civilisation and savagery.

As The Wicker Man (1973) turns fifty, its shadow looms larger over the landscape of horror cinema. This singular film not only redefined terror through pagan rites and communal dread but also planted the seeds for folk horror’s sprawling evolution. From its folkloric roots to its echoes in contemporary chillers, The Wicker Man stands as the inferno that ignited a subgenre.

  • How The Wicker Man shattered conventions by blending musical whimsy with ritualistic horror.
  • The subgenre’s progression from 1970s British countryside nightmares to global, modern pagan revivals.
  • Its enduring influence on filmmakers like Ari Aster and Robert Eggers, reshaping folk horror’s boundaries.

The Ritual Unveiled: Summerisle’s Seductive Trap

Sergeant Neil Howie, a devout Christian policeman from the Scottish mainland, receives a distress call about a missing girl on the remote island of Summerisle. What begins as a routine investigation spirals into a confrontation with a hedonistic pagan society led by the enigmatic Lord Summerisle, played with aristocratic glee by Christopher Lee. Howie, portrayed by Edward Woodward in a career-defining performance, arrives by seaplane, his rigid morality clashing immediately with the islanders’ earthy customs. They greet him with phallic maypoles, nude dances, and songs celebrating fertility, all under the watchful eye of a community that reveres ancient gods like Nuada and Aphrodite.

The narrative unfolds through Howie’s growing alienation. He interrogates villagers who deflect with riddles and rituals: the schoolteacher Willow MacGregor (Britt Ekland, her body double famously providing the nude scenes) tempts him with sensual songs; the pub bursts into bawdy tunes about the phallus; and graveyards reveal not death but resurrection myths. Howie uncovers the supposed grave of the missing Rowan Morrison, only to find it empty, leading him to suspect a cover-up tied to the island’s failing apple harvest. The lord explains their religion demands sacrifice to appease the gods, positioning Howie as the perfect virgin offering.

Climaxing atop a cliffside cliffhanger, Howie is trapped in the titular wicker man—a colossal effigy woven from branches—and set ablaze amid chants and drums. The film ends with his screams merging into the sea, a pyrrhic victory for Summerisle’s faith. Robin Hardy’s direction masterfully builds tension not through gore but psychological erosion, using the island’s isolation to mirror Howie’s entrapment. The screenplay by Anthony Shaffer weaves folklore from Frazer’s The Golden Bough with Christian critique, making every folk custom a barb against Howie’s piety.

Production lore adds layers: Funded by British Lion Films, the shoot faced tempests on the Isle of Mull, mirroring the story’s elemental fury. Christopher Lee’s wardrobe, sourced from his personal collection, lent authenticity to the laird’s eccentricity. The folk score by Paul Giovanni, with its mix of sea shanties and hymns, underscores the film’s dual nature—joyous yet ominous—propelling viewers into the ritual’s trance.

Pagan Reveries: Folk Horror Before the Wicker

Folk horror predates The Wicker Man, drawing from Britain’s rural underbelly. Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968) unleashed Puritan paranoia amid East Anglian witch hunts, Vincent Price’s Matthew Hopkins carving a bloody swath through folklore-tinged landscapes. Piers Haggard’s Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971) evoked satanic cults in pastoral Devon, where modish youth succumb to claw-induced possession, blending Hammer aesthetics with emerging countercultural unease.

Alan Clarke’s Penda’s Fen (1974), though televisual, crystallised the triad later coined by Adam Scovell: landscapes of the mind, skewed belief systems, and failing communal structures. These films tapped post-war anxieties—imperial decline, secular drift—against verdant backdrops hiding primordial violence. The Wicker Man refined this, elevating folk customs from backdrop to antagonist, where the community itself devours the outsider.

Globally, precursors lurked: Japan’s Onibaba (1964) pitted warring factions against reed-masked demons in feudal swamps; Italy’s The Wailing wait no, earlier like Bava’s rural giallo tinges. Yet Britain’s output dominated, reflecting a Celtic revival amid 1970s oil shocks and EEC entry fears, where ancient pacts seemed preferable to modernity’s barrenness.

Fields of Dread: Thematic Pillars of the Subgenre

At folk horror’s core lies the ‘unholy trinity’: rural isolation breeding skewed religions that collapse under external pressure. The Wicker Man exemplifies this—Summerisle’s matriarchal paganism crumbles without harvest, demanding Howie’s blood. Themes of regression abound: Christianity as brittle overlay on pagan bedrock, sexuality as sacred force perverted by repression.

Class tensions simmer; Howie’s middle-class propriety contrasts the islanders’ earthy communalism, echoing Marxist readings of rural exploitation. Gender flips norms: Women wield power through seduction and song, subverting male authority. Trauma manifests collectively, the island’s failed crops symbolising national malaise.

Sound design amplifies unease—Giovanni’s accordion wails mimic wind, folk tunes twist into dirges. Cinematography by Harry Waxman employs wide lenses to dwarf Howie amid cliffs and cottages, mise-en-scène rich with maypoles and masks evoking fertility cults.

Religion’s clash peaks in Howie’s hymn-singing defiance, yet the film critiques both faiths’ fanaticism, a nuance lost in its American recut, which excised songs for slasher vibes.

Blazing Trails: Influence on Modern Folk Horrors

The Wicker Man‘s 2006 remake by Neil LaBute faltered with Nicolas Cage’s bee-phobic ham, but true heirs thrive. Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) transplants Swedish midsummer rites to daylight, Dani’s grief fuelling a sacrificial purge akin to Howie’s immolation. Robert Eggers’ The Witch (2015) excavates Puritan New England for goatish devilry, Thomasin’s arc mirroring Rowan’s elusive innocence.

Ben Wheatley’s Kill List (2011) mutates folk into urban hitman horror, pagan contracts lurking in Norfolk barns. The Borderlands (2013) probes Welsh chapel hauntings, while Apostle (2018) Netflix’s isle-bound cult channels Summerisle directly. Global spreads: India’s Tumbbad (2018) unearths greed-god in monsoon hills; Australia’s The Babadook twists maternal folklore.

Evolution shows diversification—night to day, Britain to world, overt ritual to subtle unease. Yet The Wicker Man endures as ur-text, its wicker effigy replicated in festival burnings and fan recreations.

Crafting Nightmares: Special Effects and Artifice

Effects in The Wicker Man prioritise practical authenticity over spectacle. The wicker man itself, built from willow on a Hebridean hill, stood thirty metres, its interior a claustrophobic cage for Woodward’s final agonies. Flames were real, controlled by petrol-soaked bales, Hardy directing from a boat amid real winds.

Illusions abound: Rowan’s ‘corpse’ via double; snake props from London Zoo; Ekland’s skin painted gold for siren allure. No gore—horror gestates in implication, severed limbs glimpsed in harvest rites. Editing by Eric Boyd-Perkins intercuts Howie’s descent with mounting festivities, rhythmic cuts syncing to drumbeats.

Modern folk horrors upscale: Midsommar‘s cliff jumps practical yet choreographed; The Ritual (2017)’s Norse wight a motion-capture marvel. Yet Hardy’s low-fi restraint proves elemental terror needs no CGI—wind, fire, flesh suffice.

Behind the Veil: Production Perils and Censorship Wars

Financed on a shoestring £180,000, the film battled studio meddling; producer Michael Deeley championed Hardy’s vision post-Dunwich Horror admiration. Location hell: Storms wrecked sets, locals wary of pagan portrayal. Censorship struck—BBFC demanded twenty minutes cut, including lesbian trysts and folk songs, yielding the infamous 87-minute US version with Hammer footage shoehorned in.

Restored 96-minute cut in 2001 vindicated it, earning cult status. Legends persist: Lost negatives rumoured dumped at sea, recovered like Howie’s plane. These trials forged its raw potency.

Director in the Spotlight

Robin Hardy, born 1929 in Surrey, England, emerged from a theatrical dynasty—father advertising magnate, mother actress. Educated at Rugby School and Oxford, where he read English, Hardy directed theatre before film. Influenced by Powell and Pressburger’s mythic visuals and Bergman’s faith interrogations, he cut teeth on TV docs and shorts.

Breakthrough with The Wicker Man (1973), a passion project adapting David Pinner’s novel. Despite initial flops, it birthed his folk horror legacy. Followed by The Fantasist (1986), an Irish psycho-thriller with Moira Harris; The Wicker Tree (2011), contentious sequel critiquing American fundamentalism via Texan evangelicals on Summerisle redux.

Hardy helmed Les Folies Bergère (2024, posthumous), a musical oddity. Documentaries like The Wicker Man: The Final Cut (2013) preserved his vision. Knighted for services to film? No, but revered at festivals. Died 2016, legacy in pagan revivalism. Filmography spans commercials (1980s Hamlet cigars), Suicide Brigade (unmade script), underscoring eclectic zeal.

Actor in the Spotlight

Christopher Lee, born 1922 in London to aristocratic stock—father Lt. Col., mother Contessa—served WWII with SAS, enduring malaria in desert campaigns. Post-war, Hammer Horror icon: Dracula (1958) launched 150+ films, voice like gravel thunder.

In The Wicker Man, Lord Summerisle crowned his folk phase post-Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970). Career zeniths: Saruman in Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003), Count Dooku in Star Wars prequels (2002-2005), awards like BAFTA fellowship (2001).

Early: Corridor of Mirrors (1948); Hammer run: Horror of Dracula (1958), The Mummy (1959), Rasputin (1966 Oscar nom). 1970s: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) as Scaramanga; 1941 (1979). Later: Hugo (2011), voice in The Hobbit (2012-2014). Autobiography Tall, Dark and Gruesome (1977). Died 2015, buried with WWI medal. Prolific: 280 credits, polyglot fluency in six languages.

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Bibliography

Hardy, R. (2011) The Wicker Tree. Momentum Pictures.

Scovell, A. (2017) Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange. FAB Press. Available at: https://fabpress.com/products/folk-horror (Accessed 15 October 2024).

Shaffer, A. (1978) The Wicker Man. Lorrimer Publishing.

Wood, R. (1986) Hollywood from Vietnam to Reagan. Columbia University Press.

Jones, A. (2003) The Rough Guide to Horror Movies. Rough Guides.

Harper, J. (2004) ‘The Wicker Man: A National Treasure’, Sight & Sound, 14(8), pp. 22-25.

Chibnall, S. and McFarlane, J. (eds.) (2007) The British ’70s Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan.

Interview: Lee, C. (2001) In Conversation with Mark Kermode. BBC Radio. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00n3z4k (Accessed 15 October 2024).