FANTASIA OBSCURA: Halloween’s Coming, Which Means It’s Time for a Horror Musical
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, there really is no need to try again, because you hit the right notes the first time around…
The Wicker Man (1973)
(Dist.: British Lion Films; Dir.: Robin Hardy)
If the name of this film seems familiar, it might be because it has a reputation that’s greater than the size of the audience that’s actually seen the film. Hardcore horror buffs will tell you that this is supposed to be one of the best-made films that came out of the 1970s in the genre.
The folks who have actually seen it will tell you it’s the better of the two horror musicals to have come out of the decade.
Our story centers around Police Sargent Howie (Edward Woodward) who, as the credits roll, comes from the mainland (Scotland) via seaplane to Summerisle, a remote island off the Hebrides. His visit is official business, as he’s received via post word that a young girl, Rowan Morrison, has gone missing, and he intends to find her.
For some reason, though, the islanders don’t seem to spring into action to help locate their missing child. In fact, when Howie asks for a room at the local inn, run by Mr. MacGregor (Lindsay Kemp), the villagers break out into a bawdy song about the landlord’s daughter, Willow (Britt Ekland).
Willow doesn’t appear to mind the song — in fact, she later tries to seduce Howie with a number that’s rather NSFW — but as a pious man engaged to be married back home, he resists and keeps up the investigation. His line of inquiry leads him to the island school, where some very vigorous lessons regarding the meaning behind the maypole dance are being conducted.
At the school, there’s an effort to deny that the child ever existed, despite Howie uncovering her name in the school attendance registry. Appalled by both the island’s blasé attitude about a missing child and apparent abandonment of Christian ideals in favor of old pagan ways, Howie seeks understanding from Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee), who provides him with an explanation as to how things came to be that horrifies him.
When Howie uncovers the fact that last year’s crop was abysmal, he concludes that Rowan, as per the pagan custom, has been absconded by the locals in preparation for her being sacrificed to appease the gods and grant them a better bounty. In pursuing this line of reasoning, however, the sergeant uncovers a much, much darker truth to the case, one that shocks the audience as much as it does him.
Unlike that better-known 1970s horror musical, The Wicker Man has a quiet but firm dignity to it, an attitude that reflected its troubled production history. British Lion, the production company responsible for the film, had just been acquired by Barclay Securities, and the unions involved with the production arm were concerned that their operation was going to be sold for parts to other producers.
In an effort to show good faith, the new managers eagerly ramped up on a project the studio head had just green-lit from Hardy, an adaptation of the novel Ritual by David Pinner, which Lee was enthusiastically attached to, looking for a new direction after his long string of Dracula films for Hammer Films.
Lee, in fact, waived his fee for doing the project, playing Lord Summerisle for free, which helped keep the budget to only £420,000 (about $6M in today’s currency). This allowed the production to take on a seven-week location shoot throughout Scotland, using different villages here and there to create the fictitious island (even though the Lord Summerisle and his subjects are thanked in an opening title card “for their generous co-operation in the making of this film.”)
The result of the shoot, however, was disliked by the new regime (EMI Films bought British Lion as a whole during filming), and the film went through various drastic edits, including cutting away the entire original opening, which showed Howie on the mainland at a time when he was secure in knowing that his god was in heaven and all was right with the world, with different releases varying in run time between 87 and 99 minutes in length. (A great discussion of the further tribulations that went into marketing the pic, reflecting the chaos that the film was enrobed in, can be found in Linda Hutcheson’s examination of its marketing history, a good read on its own.)
The overall flow of the film, and its story about a man who encounters a community that rejects what is considered the “accepted” worldview with dire consequences, comes through in all versions of the film, which makes this the regarded piece of cinema that it is.
The visceral terror at encountering something that challenges your core, finding yourself a sudden minority and an outsider in the midst of the “other,” is a very deep fear that most of us carry whether or not we acknowledge or realize it. The unfamiliar can be a great source of fear, especially when you’ve found you’re among people who either see you as a problem or decide that they can do something with or to you that will make their lives better at great cost to you.
What greatly adds to the sense of being amidst the other was the choice to make this a musical. The need to do a horror film that was both not like anything else before and had to be made quickly gave the film a folk-immersed soundtrack which fans of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span would be proud to add to their collection.
Composers Paul Giovani and Gary Carpenter made choices for the music based on the rushed production history noted above, and recorded much of it before shooting began; that both men appeared and performed in the film shows the ascetic in play during the production.
It’s an ascetic that is sorely missed when we see a large studio in 2006 undertake a remake without the pressures the original faced.
Instead of an economically plotted musical filled with tight, measured songs, we end up with an overwrought and overwritten drama with an out-of-control Nicolas Cage.
Sadly, it may be through this that the name The Wicker Man may seem familiar. But like the beliefs held by the Summerileanders, there is a much older tradition that deserves attention…
NEXT TIME: Whoever you favor for next month’s election, we can at least agree on one thing: thankfully, this dude’s not on the ballot…
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